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Effectively, what we need to do is to get some kind of space resource rush going. Similar to what fueled the likes of the East India Company.
by digi_owl 10y ago
Effectively, what we need to do is to get some kind of space resource rush going. Similar to what fueled the likes of the East India Company.
- dalke 10y agoYes, if only Mars were already settled and we could exploit the people there. The question has always been what resource, with 3He and platinum being the two main contenders. Otherwise, it could be like coal mining in Antarctica, or manganese module mining from the deep seafloor - technically possible, but not profitable, and certainly not enough for a new EIC.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> what resource Ideas. That crazy nuclear experiment you want to run? Fat chance in Montana. But on the far side of Mars? Why not.
- dalke 10y agoWhy would that interest a potential East India Company-like organization? The best I could come up with would if be it leads to a fuel production source, like the satellite at the end of Heinlein's "Blowups Happen". But we know of no such thing, nor do the economics seem to work out.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 10y agoThere is no "far side" of Mars. It's not tidally locked, to either the Sun or Earth.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago"Far side" relative to Mars's principal human installations, not to the Earth.
- dalke 10y agoYou still haven't addressed why there are "principal human installations" on Mars in the first place, much less why they are only on one side of the planet, or why the experiments require local human involvement.
- jeffwass 10y agoYou mean a private company that can legally declare interplanetary war?
- jakub_h 10y agoOr just tell the government there's oil on Titan. ;)
- bewaretheirs 10y agoThere's lots of liquified natural gas on the surface of Titan.
- jakub_h 10y agoClose enough, wouldn't you say? There are slightly heavier molecules to be found there as well.
- dredmorbius 10y agoAnd create addicts of the most advanced and ancient civilisation on the planet.
- dredmorbius 10y agoIn space, if you have a rock, you're among the ... well, let's see. There's about 1,000 atoms per cm^3 of interplanetary space. Let's say you've got 1 kg of silicate rock -- SiO4. That's 4 parts oxygen (atomic weight 16) to 1 part silicon (atomic weight 14). A kilogram is about 10^30 atomic masses. So we need 10^27 cubic centimeters, which works out to about 100 million km^3. The Earth has a volume about 16,000 times larger -- which means at the average density of interstellar space, there would be about 16,000 of those rocks you have in hand, or 16 tonnes of matter. Rather than the six thousand billion billion tonnes of matter actually in the Earth. We've met the space resource rush and it is us.