- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
- technology@lemmy.world
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I’m so intrigued by the prospect of mining asteroids! The amounts of metals and other resources, including rarer things like platinum family metals is incredible. There are some serious challenges that would need to be overcome, but the first country or company which pulls it off would open the doors to a future where we don’t need to rip up earth to obtain all the rare stuff we need for high tech industry. And with huge amounts of asteroids being in the belts in our solar system, a practically inexhaustible supply too.
It is exciting but what’s the market? It’s hard to see this being at all a reasonable cost having to bring it back to Earth, especially unrefined, and it’s hard to imagine it not being worse than current mining, given the flight back to Earth, especially if refining is still on Earth
On the other hand I’m more excited over mining regolith and water. Such simple things, but will be a huge difference in cost to maintain any off-world presence. Shelter, radiation control, rocket fuel, drinking and bathing, growing food : water and dirt are pretty basic, but just think of the sheer tonnage of supply missions launching from Earth it could replace
I think the real value is amount of rare metals that could be harvested, scientists have found an asteroid that is comprised mostly of metals. Scientists think it may be the exposed core of a proto planet:
Metal asteroid Psyche has a ridiculously high ‘value.’ But what does that even mean?
So that kind of haul could potentially be worth it, but smelting, refinement and processing would probably be more cost effective in space. Who knows what the future will bring, mining the asteroid belt may only make sense once we have a much strong presence in space, I.E., colonies on Mars, the Moon, etc etc.
This is a lot of exciting words to say “instead of digging up the effectively limitless amount of rock under our feet we can go into space to do it in the least efficient and most expensive way”
It’s very cool, but I would rather we spend our time and resources on more pressing things, given we have the rocks right here.
I would agree if mining the rocks on earth didn’t cause ecological collapses and kill off animals and displace indigenous and exploit underprivileged ethnic classes in post colonial hellholes
I’m sure mining in space will have its own problems but at least it can’t kill our biosphere
There’s been studies that have found metal particles in the atmosphere, so anything entering and exiting are seemingly shedding particles.
So it’s likely to cause issues down the road unfortunately.
I’ll take the issue down the road over the one already in my doorstep any time of the week.
Atmospheric pollution is at least something that seems fixable with extraterrestrial resources. Ruined biospheres due to mining on earth seems less avoidable/fixable unless we go back to pre-industrial living standards.
How would it be fixable? The more stuff entering and exiting the atmosphere, the more particles. The particles aren’t from manufacturing on earth from what I read.
Particles we can bind with chemical reactions (like ad-blu for diesel engines), would be expensive and we would need to be careful to select chemical reactions that actually solve the problem but fundamentally it’s a fixable problem.
How. Ruined biosphere from mining affects many discrete places that can be cleaned up, in theory. Messing up the atmosphere affects all biospheres, is much more vast, and we have to breathe in the meantime
Look at current mining - true crimes against the environment in specific places but do not directly impact most humans. Could you say that about messing up the atmosphere?
the asteroid belt is like a protective barrier. if earth’s orbit was on a flat surface the belt would be on it too. this imaginary plane is where earth is most likely to collide with extraterrestrial objects. so if it was possible to reduce the asteroid belt to half its current mass, earth would technically be more vulnerable to collisions along our orbital path. it’s not the biggest threat but i felt the need to explain that.
Rocks ≠ ore. There are numerous materials (e.g. lithium) for the total known deposits on Earth won’t cover more than a few decades’ worth of projected demand, and even then, the mining process is an environmental disaster. Asteroid mining is a long-term project that will require huge advances in multiple fields, but it addresses a real need.
known deposits. There’s functionally endless amounts of all elements we need on earth. And there is zero need to go mine asteroids at a truely astronomical cost of efficiency.
I said mostly the same thing as you in (my own words) elsewhere inside this post. Most people don’t want to see this reality.
So, maybe this is a business opportunity : to attract investment and then face investors with hard facts. Of course we write the contract so that, after this, we just keep their stupid money.
Edit : Oops ! I just read your other comment :
you’ll also see (…) investment scams
And so I realize you were thinking along these lines already. (although my statement was much more cynical)
I can imagine a sort of a conveyor belt made of miniature cargo vessel with one robotized mining station at one end, cutting away an asteroid piece by piece, and a cargo dock at the Earth side.
With enough cargo vessels deployed, let’s say one would arrive at each end everyother day, the moment the conveyor belt was full, the mining operation would be swift.
Assuming a global deal between nations could be struck to have a refinery or at least a cargo dock placed on the moon, to organize large cargos to come to Earth at programmed intervals, it could prove to be a very interesting endeavour.
Raw matterials price could drop, given the sheer available volume.
At least it sounds like a diferent sci-fi plot
You could do that on earth
Which part?
All of it.
Launch costs are coming way down. Once we get enough people into space to get industry going this will be great. Give adventureous people something to do and not destroy our planet. Asteriods are airless lumps of rock and metal just hanging around.
Give adventureous people something to do and not destroy our planet
Space Mining, Deep Rock Galactic style
yeah rocket launches are excellent for the planet.
We launch a few rockets to bring starter ewuipment and from then on everything gets mined from NEAs (Near Earth Asteroids) or the moon. Then no more rocket launches needed except to refresh crew as we already do with ISS.
ROCK AND STONE
Rock and stone in the heart
If you rock and stone, you’re never alone!
IF YOU DON’T ROCK AND STONE, YOU AIN’T COMING HOME!
I sure hope we find a way to do this and spread the increase in wealth and prosperity mostly equally amongst all people.
I would hate it if one guy got super powerful and filthy rich off this and then monopolized the asteroid mining industry.
If the movie Armageddon taught us anything it’s that it’ll be super easy to train miners for space.
Harry Stamper never never misses a depth that he aims for.
Also love how this movie stuck up for Mom and pop oil companies
Can we just get on with engineering a space elevator already? We’re going to want one if we’re serious about exploiting resources off planet.
You might as well ask: “Can we just get on with engineering an FTL drive?” as it is about as far beyond our capabilities as a space elevator is.
It really isn’t. We know it’s possible, we roughly know how to build one, it’s only our material science that isn’t there yet. But there are promising leads in that direction and with the right investments that problem looks solvable.
https://youtu.be/lldv_u4R6BU?si=65llxa5uHygOlT3K
With FTL our current science is saying that it’s probably impossible and will never happen. We might be wrong about that, but if we are it’s not going to be cracked anytime soon.
Yes, we have the theory of what is required to build one but every material we have (including graphene and carbon nanotubes) is about 2-3 orders of magnitude below the tensile strength that is required for a space elevator on earth. Add in the fact that the longest graphene and carbon nanotube we can currently produce is in the mm range and we need it to be ~50,000 km and perfect at the atomic level we would be at best decades away from production if they could be used.
Ironically the best place for us to begin is in space.
Building space elevator on the moon is much, much easier (1/6 G and no atmosphere) and Mars is also a much easier proposition than on earth (1/3 G and 1/1000th the atmospheric pressure).
I fully expect that if humans ever build space elevators the first one will not be on earth.
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Well we’re gonna need one of those too might as well get to work
I’m in the middle of an MA in astrophysics…
I don’t know why we have not been working out the kinks on the moon given how achievable its been for that for years.
💰💰💰
It hasn’t been profitable just yet.
Probably never will be.
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
My guess is that we won’t be doing any digging on asteroids at first. We will send a Spaceship (with 100tn of cargo capacity) and grab a whole small asteroid. Then the spaceship with the small asteroid Inside the cargo bay will return to earth. It sounds science fiction but don’t forget we have already collected material from asteroids twice (the Japanese returned with 5gr and tre US 250gr).
You don’t even have to go very far, there are hundreds of small asteroids between the moon and earth. I think we will be able to collect a whole small asteroid in 10 years max.
Can’t wait for them to try and redirect an asteroid into orbit, fuck it up, and cause it to crash into earth
Yeah, I’d vote for a space treaty saying that if you bring a chunk of rock toward earth that is too big to burn up in the atmosphere, it’s a potential act of war that can be dealt with ASAP
“ I’m from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all!”
Aw cmon, we’ll turn them into moons and harvest them!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For instance, a study by Ian Lange of the Colorado School of Mines considers the potential—and challenges—for a fledgling industry that might reach a significant scale in the next several decades, driven by the demand for critical metals used in electronics, solar and wind power, and electric car components, particularly batteries.
While other companies are exploring the controversial idea of scooping cobalt, nickel, and platinum from the seafloor, some asteroids could harbor the same minerals in abundance—and have no wildlife that could be harmed during their extraction.
Lange’s study, coauthored with a researcher at the International Monetary Fund, models the growth of space mining relative to Earth mining, depending on trends in the clean energy transition, mineral prices, space launch prices, and how much capital investment and R&D grow.
By their assessment, metallic asteroids contain more than a thousand times as much nickel as the Earth’s crust, in terms of grams per metric ton.
Electric vehicles and their batteries need about six times the minerals conventional cars do, and they require both nickel and cobalt in significant quantities.
The Democratic Republic of Congo accounts for 70 percent of cobalt production, for example, while nickel primarily comes from Indonesia and the Philippines, and Russia and South Africa have most of the global supply of platinum-group metals.
The original article contains 701 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Fantastic ! Well, in the next millenia we could see some real progress in this field (if we are lucky). So, lets look forward to the next million years with joy !
I don’t think it will take a millenia. Rocket science is making good progress towards astroid stuff.
I certainly hope your guess is better than mine.
Did you notice how time and time again science fiction was overly optimistic concerning developments in future transportation capabilities ?
I can say that I’m very happy that we don’t have flying cars. That would be a nightmare.
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STOP MINING. STOP EXPANDING. STOP BEING OBSESSED WITH “GROWTH”
b-b-but 8 billion people isn’t enough
YES IT IS
Well said from a chip made from rare minerals.
Yay! Let’s continue our fucking up of everything into the solar system!
We did it, boys!!
I mean. If the planet or asteroid isn’t habitable and has no ecosystem to speak of, then we aren’t really fucking anything up.
It’s just a new frontier playground for billionaires after they fuck everything up here. It won’t be used for anything worthwhile, like actual science or whatever.
Need a hug?
