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If we could just get these probes to be cheap enough we could conceivably mine asteroids. Then again the economics just don't make sense since we have plenty to

If we could just get these probes to be cheap enough we could conceivably mine asteroids. Then again the economics just don't make sense since we have plenty to mine on Earth already.

ianai 7y ago
No, getting them smart enough to build more probes to do more work should be the goal...eons from now.
- teej 7y ago
  You’ve just invented Universal Paperclips.
  - gbrown 7y ago
    Meh, as long as they're not designed to improve themselves, and there are strict protocols for ensuring all active units are controllable, it's not necessarily a recipe for solar system paperclipization.
    - kolinko 7y ago
      Given enough units any protocol will be broken by pure chance sooner or later.
      - gbrown 7y ago
        With appropriate organization and accounting, there's no reason malfunctioning units couldn't be repaired or reprocessed. It seems like that would be a sensible regulation for companies building self replicating machines.
        ianai 7y ago
        Ah, but if they’re in space who’s doing the regulation?
        pavel_lishin 7y ago
        > there's no reason malfunctioning units couldn't be repaired or reprocessed If you have enough of them, and a long enough time scale, they might mutate in such a way to avoid being detected.
        gbrown 7y ago
        It's an important concern, but I think mitigatable - especially since we're not neccessarily talking about actual self contained replicating machines, and instead more likely automated factories producing drones - a multi step process where everything has to go right for replication, and into which safeguards can be engineered/studied. Basically, the process needs to be designed to fail due to entropy without external intervention/maintenance. If we become advanced enough to consider building such things, we can engage in a serious investigation of the risks - for now it's just speculation.
- dasKrokodil 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...
kjs3 7y ago
We're talking about grams of raw dirt, not commercially interesting amounts of rare material that wouldn't be easier just to find on earth. It would be nice enough to get them cheap enough that we could conceivably send enough to enough asteroids to determine if mining them was actually ever going to be worth it.
- LilBytes 7y ago
  How much energy would it take to just, capture an asteroid and have it sat in the orbit of earth or some other consistently distant place, rather than having a mining operation on the asteroid as it zips around the solar system? Could the latter be more economically viable than the former?
  - kjs3 7y ago
    There is an entire school of research associated with asteroid capture-and-return versus mining-in-place. I don't think it's a settled area of research, probably because we really don't know how to do at what cost either alternative.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    Capture might be done with gravity assists (via the moon) and aerobraking at earth, but it is still a significant amount of energy. It is probably easier to just mine deeper into the earth for raw materials.
BurningFrog 7y ago
If we can get a few metal asteroid to earth, prices would fall to near nothing and we could close all mines for the metals that are out there.
- dylan604 7y ago
  I understand all things are relative, but isn't the most expensive part of space travel escaping gravity to get from ground to LEO? Parking a mineral rich rock in orbit would still require lifting dump trucks up to the orbiting rock just to have them return with their loads. Might as well plan a controlled re-entry of the rock to the surface. Drop it into the desert somewhere, then go mine it on the surface.
  - lightedman 7y ago
    "Might as well plan a controlled re-entry of the rock to the surface. Drop it into the desert somewhere, then go mine it on the surface." Any commercially-viable amount of rock dropped from orbit into the desert would probably hit with enough force to cause a second K-Pg extinction event. Even if it hit the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we'd be horribly screwed. The amount/cost of fuel needed to control the descent of any commercially-viable quantity of rock would probably outpace the mineral value itself.
    - kolinko 7y ago
      I might be wrong, but asteroids hitting earth are a problem more because of the speed than their mass? (E=m*v^2) Asteroids usually hit earth with speeds from 16 to 32 km/sec, but if we brought it to earth it would be closer to 0.5km/sec
      - lightedman 7y ago
        Any commercially-viable asteroid would need to be at least a mile in some dimension or another to have enough minable material. Let's assume 3200 Phaethon was our target - three mile wide asteroid, mass of 140 x 10^12 Kg. I'll let you do the math, but just the 10^12 kg along should tell you that the idea is quite infeasible before you ever get to doing the actual calculation. BTW it's easier to just do (KE) = 1/2mv^2 as your calculating formula.
ShorsHammer 7y ago
Water or hydrocarbons are the only decent thing to mine and then move to Low Earth Orbit. The value of already being in space seems to be lost in these big dreams of many people.
Symmetry 7y ago
It doesn't make sense to bring the material back to Earth. But getting mass to Earth orbit from Earth is very expensive and if you want a big space habitat the material from an asteroid might be very useful, even if just as radiation shielding.

If we could just get these probes to be cheap enough we could conceivably mine asteroids. Then again the economics just don't make sense since we have plenty to mine on Earth already.

ianai 7y ago

No, getting them smart enough to build more probes to do more work should be the goal...eons from now.

teej 7y ago
You’ve just invented Universal Paperclips.
- gbrown 7y ago
  Meh, as long as they're not designed to improve themselves, and there are strict protocols for ensuring all active units are controllable, it's not necessarily a recipe for solar system paperclipization.
  - kolinko 7y ago
    Given enough units any protocol will be broken by pure chance sooner or later.
    - gbrown 7y ago
      With appropriate organization and accounting, there's no reason malfunctioning units couldn't be repaired or reprocessed. It seems like that would be a sensible regulation for companies building self replicating machines.
      - ianai 7y ago
        Ah, but if they’re in space who’s doing the regulation?
      - pavel_lishin 7y ago
        > there's no reason malfunctioning units couldn't be repaired or reprocessed If you have enough of them, and a long enough time scale, they might mutate in such a way to avoid being detected.
        gbrown 7y ago
        It's an important concern, but I think mitigatable - especially since we're not neccessarily talking about actual self contained replicating machines, and instead more likely automated factories producing drones - a multi step process where everything has to go right for replication, and into which safeguards can be engineered/studied. Basically, the process needs to be designed to fail due to entropy without external intervention/maintenance. If we become advanced enough to consider building such things, we can engage in a serious investigation of the risks - for now it's just speculation.
dasKrokodil 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...

kjs3 7y ago

We're talking about grams of raw dirt, not commercially interesting amounts of rare material that wouldn't be easier just to find on earth. It would be nice enough to get them cheap enough that we could conceivably send enough to enough asteroids to determine if mining them was actually ever going to be worth it.

LilBytes 7y ago
How much energy would it take to just, capture an asteroid and have it sat in the orbit of earth or some other consistently distant place, rather than having a mining operation on the asteroid as it zips around the solar system? Could the latter be more economically viable than the former?
- kjs3 7y ago
  There is an entire school of research associated with asteroid capture-and-return versus mining-in-place. I don't think it's a settled area of research, probably because we really don't know how to do at what cost either alternative.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  Capture might be done with gravity assists (via the moon) and aerobraking at earth, but it is still a significant amount of energy. It is probably easier to just mine deeper into the earth for raw materials.

BurningFrog 7y ago

If we can get a few metal asteroid to earth, prices would fall to near nothing and we could close all mines for the metals that are out there.

dylan604 7y ago
I understand all things are relative, but isn't the most expensive part of space travel escaping gravity to get from ground to LEO? Parking a mineral rich rock in orbit would still require lifting dump trucks up to the orbiting rock just to have them return with their loads. Might as well plan a controlled re-entry of the rock to the surface. Drop it into the desert somewhere, then go mine it on the surface.
- lightedman 7y ago
  "Might as well plan a controlled re-entry of the rock to the surface. Drop it into the desert somewhere, then go mine it on the surface." Any commercially-viable amount of rock dropped from orbit into the desert would probably hit with enough force to cause a second K-Pg extinction event. Even if it hit the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we'd be horribly screwed. The amount/cost of fuel needed to control the descent of any commercially-viable quantity of rock would probably outpace the mineral value itself.
  - kolinko 7y ago
    I might be wrong, but asteroids hitting earth are a problem more because of the speed than their mass? (E=m*v^2) Asteroids usually hit earth with speeds from 16 to 32 km/sec, but if we brought it to earth it would be closer to 0.5km/sec
    - lightedman 7y ago
      Any commercially-viable asteroid would need to be at least a mile in some dimension or another to have enough minable material. Let's assume 3200 Phaethon was our target - three mile wide asteroid, mass of 140 x 10^12 Kg. I'll let you do the math, but just the 10^12 kg along should tell you that the idea is quite infeasible before you ever get to doing the actual calculation. BTW it's easier to just do (KE) = 1/2mv^2 as your calculating formula.

ShorsHammer 7y ago

Water or hydrocarbons are the only decent thing to mine and then move to Low Earth Orbit. The value of already being in space seems to be lost in these big dreams of many people.

Symmetry 7y ago

It doesn't make sense to bring the material back to Earth. But getting mass to Earth orbit from Earth is very expensive and if you want a big space habitat the material from an asteroid might be very useful, even if just as radiation shielding.