10 ms·

I liked the hard sci-fi elements in The Expanse, but the idea of people mining asteroids in poor third world-like conditions makes absolutely no sense to me. Or

by f00zz 5y ago

I liked the hard sci-fi elements in The Expanse, but the idea of people mining asteroids in poor third world-like conditions makes absolutely no sense to me. Or an evil megacorp that murders millions of people with no adequate explanation. Couldn't get past the first book.

cryptoz 5y ago
Both of those things happen on Earth today. Haven't seen the show or read the book or whatever, but those both seem totally believable to me. Earth mining is often done in horrendous and poor conditions. Megacorps and industry do kill millions of people on earth today with little explanation or repercussions.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Related, if you want to discover a new class of horror, read up on how shipping industry operates.
- dagw 5y ago
  Earth mining (and truck driving) is moving more and more towards robots and automation. In a 100 years time there probably won't be many traditional miners or truck drivers left on earth. So why does it make financial sense to send humans (and all the infrastructure they need) out to the asteroid belts to work as truckers and miners, when you could just send robots.
  - HeckFeck 5y ago
    Sometimes human livestock is cheaper than automation, especially when the value of life is cheapened. As an example, slave societies don't have industrial revolutions because there's never a need to invest in labour-saving devices. Indeed, the Romans knew of water wheels and windmills but never used them much because you could just buy a few slaves. If slavery hadn't been introduced to Rome, who knows what alt-history would've emerged from the Roman engineering prowess.
    - dagw 5y ago
      The huge difference is that keeping humans alive on earth is really cheap and easy. Air and water is basically free, and with some tiny scraps of land you can basically make your slaves feed themselves via subsistence farming. They don't have to generate much value to be profitable. Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive. It is now. But the most expensive part of that is shuttling people and infrastructure up the Earth's gravity well. Imagine that our society retains some level of sanity for the next couple decades. In that scenario, we'll continue on the path of expanding to space, starting with a rudimentary cislunar economy. This means near-Earth asteroid mining and in-space construction, which lets us drastically reduce the amount of mass needed to be launched into orbit. That economy would not be independent - it would sell resources mined in space (to be shipped to the surface) and manufacturing services, hopefully moving most heavy industry upwell. In exchange, they'd buy food, organics and specialized components from Earth. Imagine couple decades of iterative improvement on this. Eventually, humans will be able to survive long-term in space with minimum input of terrestrial resources. E.g. almost-closed-cycle greenhouses that can supply a ship with food for a decade until they need restocking with substances that can't yet be created in space. Such capacity allows people to expand further, access more resources and ship them back. What's the value for Earth in this? Continuing the exponential growth past the carrying capacity of the planet. The more industry is moved upwell, the more space there is downwell for habitation, consumption and service economy. Why not robots? Light lag. To me, the challenges we need to overcome to send humans into interplanetary space are easier than those required for fully autonomic, AI-powered robots. If that's true, then we'll have to make interplanetary expansion a mixed human/robot endeavor. The time it takes for a signal from Earth to reach Mars is between 5 to 20 minutes - so 10-40 minutes RTT. This is unacceptable for any kind of serious remote operation, so even if robots do most of the work, you still want human controllers to be on the work site. Once you start sending mixed human/robot on long-duration missions far from Earth, dumber robots operated more directly by humans - and, importantly, serviceable on-site, will be the cheapest option.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    1. People want to go into the solar system. They need something to do. 2. We're nowhere near the level of smart, self-repairing automation. Given the distances involved, there's value in having a community of smart, agile, self-replicating flesh-and-blood humans to tackle unknown engineering challenges as they appear. 3. People keep expanding, and settle for good. Years pass. An interplanetary economy forms. People on the further edges focus on resource extraction and building up infrastructure for long-term settlement - but they still need things only Earth can provide, like food (and organics in general). So they trade. 4. Decades pass. On the outer edges of humanity, people are born who've never seen Earth. They start to develop their own culture and identity. Mars is being colonized. The trade arrangements is stable - Earth sells organics and R&D, they buy lots of resources to use for in-orbit manufacturing. 5. Many more decades pass. Mars is full of people who were born there, and never seen Earth in the first place. They trade with Earth and the space dwellers - the Belters, in Expanse - for resources. They develop their own culture too. Over generations, the Belters become adapted to low-gravity conditions, and can no longer survive Earth's gravity - cementing the cultural divide. 6. More decades pass, you arrive at the world of The Expanse. Mars and the Belt both declared independence, as they're their own separate cultures and nations. Trade dependencies, however, remain. Earth and Mars both have the advantage of infrastructure density and crucial resources abundance - they're developing their planets and surrounding orbital space. Stuck in an arms race, they develop superior military. Meanwhile, the Belters are stuck in a disadvantaged position. They own most resources in the Solar System, but can't effectively control them with inferior technology. And none of the resources are actually missing on Earth and Mars - they're just more expensive to get. The Belt has all the riches, but no leverage to turn them into wealth and power. That's how you arrive at "mining asteroids in poor third world-like conditions".
  - bserge 5y ago
    In 100 years we may just as well have run out of resources for robots while (poor and desperate) people are aplenty. They'd probably be volunteering to go, no one would need to force them. Just a "fun" fact I discovered recently: it's cheaper to buy new powerbanks and salvage the battery cells than buy the battery cells themselves. It is also cheaper to buy a whole new laptop than replace a laptop processor. That is insane levels of wastefulness.
- f00zz 5y ago
  Asteroid mining, if it ever happens, won't be done by poor exploited people toiling under the sun with pickaxes. It will be very expensive, and most likely fully automated. Even today Rio Tinto operations are becoming increasingly more automated. And a civilization that can mine asteroids should be unimaginably rich by our standards. Sure, there were horrible industrial disasters like Bhopal, but in the book the aforementioned megacorp kills millions seemingly out of sheer evil. It felt too videogamey for my taste.
  - dstick 5y ago
    Sheer evil? It wasn’t personal or aimed at one specific group of people. It’s just the cost of doing business. Like other siblings said: that’s happening today all over the world. From Amazon warehouse workers to miners.
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    Sci-fi is full of thinly veiled social commentary. The sci-fi aspect distracts you from the fact that messages and themes are shallow and don't really stand on their own. I loved Star Trek as a kid, it inspired my imagination and I didn't really pick up on the social messages, watching it now it's sort of comical or just boring. But I do get a nostalgic feeling from it and it's entertaining enough to be second screen distraction material when doing boring tasks.
    - inopinatus 5y ago
      It is not thinly veiled: sci-fi is social commentary. Even Greg Egan dialling up the quantum mechanics is ultimately doing so to explore the societal consequences. As you point out, only children think it is actually about the damn robots and spaceships.
      - reader_mode 5y ago
        Yeah but the need to place it in sci-fi setting feels like adding fluff to mask the fact that the commentary is weak/trivial/boring or detached from reality/wrong. I wish they made more sci-fi about robots and spaceships, I find that stuff entertaining and inspiring. If I want social commentary I have better sources than sci-fi writers. And there is Sci-Fi that's not social commentary.
krapp 5y ago
>but the idea of people mining asteroids in poor third world-like conditions makes absolutely no sense to me. Or an evil megacorp that murders millions of people with no adequate explanation. I haven't read the books but this just seems like the "British imperial colonialism but in space" trope typical of space opera.
ilogik 5y ago
I really hope you're being sarcastic
- lucideer 5y ago
  I assumed it was but noone else replying here seems to agree... "/s" really is needed I guess
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I dunno, Musk has already indicated he'd put people in feudal serfdom to pay off a loan if they want a trip to Mars. And he'd get people volunteering for it.
- ben_w 5y ago
  I’ve seen people claim that, but the closest I’ve actually seen from Musk is this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217991853615677440 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12179918536156774... Do you have a better citation? Because loans are not feudalism — and if you want to insist they are, only Islamic Law jurisdictions (which bans interest rather than loans but eh) are non-feudal.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    > loans are not feudalism Loans in themselves are not 100% "feudal", though I don't think it's a binary "is feudal" -vs- "is not feudal"; more of a "how feudal". The implication above was that loan repayment via mandatory labour is feudal (or at least "more feudal"). > if you want to insist they are, only Islamic Law jurisdictions (which bans interest rather than loans but eh) are non-feudal That's a pretty big "eh" tbh; I don't many people think interest is the problematic part of loans. Don't think Islamic Law can be excluded here.
  - HappySweeney 5y ago
    No entity based on Earth has juristiction on Mars. Over there, SpaceX will be the law. I don't see them forgiving loans and shuttling "contract-breakers" back to Earth for free.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      That’s false. The Outer Space Treaty means anything launched from Earth remains the responsibility of the nation who launched it. SpaceX most certainly is under the jurisdiction of the US and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
flohofwoe 5y ago
What do you think the first Mars colonies will be like? I bet living on an Siberian oil rig will be like a vacation compared to Mars, except you can't return to civilization if you've had enough.
- passerby1 5y ago
  Interesting comparison. How in your mind is a Siberian oil rig different from others?
  - chewbacha 5y ago
    Well, compared to the Santa Barbara oil rigs, I bet it’s a bit colder in the winter.
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    ...or any oil rig north of the polar circle... hostile environmental conditions combined with too many people crammed into too little living space and nowhere to go. Basically a prison camp, but with (I assume) higher than average wages (but nothing to do with the money except sending it home to the family on Earth). (PS: this of course assumes that's there's anything to do on Mars, it's not clear to me what the Mars colonists would actually do there all day, except constructing the actual colony - but what then?).
    - FredPret 5y ago
      Wages on rigs are not just higher than average, they are in fact eye-wateringly high
      - hef19898 5y ago
        Only on the European ones. The UAE ones use cheap labor for everything not needing engineering masters.
      - Arrath 5y ago
        As well they should be considering the isolation, usually severe conditions, back-breaking work, and all the potential danger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha
erellsworth 5y ago
We have people right here on earth mining in actual third-world countries. It's not hard to imagine that phenomenon being exported to asteroid mining. In fact, it seems quite likely.

by f00zz 5y ago

cryptoz 5y ago

Both of those things happen on Earth today. Haven't seen the show or read the book or whatever, but those both seem totally believable to me. Earth mining is often done in horrendous and poor conditions. Megacorps and industry do kill millions of people on earth today with little explanation or repercussions.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Related, if you want to discover a new class of horror, read up on how shipping industry operates.
dagw 5y ago
Earth mining (and truck driving) is moving more and more towards robots and automation. In a 100 years time there probably won't be many traditional miners or truck drivers left on earth. So why does it make financial sense to send humans (and all the infrastructure they need) out to the asteroid belts to work as truckers and miners, when you could just send robots.
- HeckFeck 5y ago
  Sometimes human livestock is cheaper than automation, especially when the value of life is cheapened. As an example, slave societies don't have industrial revolutions because there's never a need to invest in labour-saving devices. Indeed, the Romans knew of water wheels and windmills but never used them much because you could just buy a few slaves. If slavery hadn't been introduced to Rome, who knows what alt-history would've emerged from the Roman engineering prowess.
  - dagw 5y ago
    The huge difference is that keeping humans alive on earth is really cheap and easy. Air and water is basically free, and with some tiny scraps of land you can basically make your slaves feed themselves via subsistence farming. They don't have to generate much value to be profitable. Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > Keeping humans alive in space on the other hand is stupidly expensive. It is now. But the most expensive part of that is shuttling people and infrastructure up the Earth's gravity well. Imagine that our society retains some level of sanity for the next couple decades. In that scenario, we'll continue on the path of expanding to space, starting with a rudimentary cislunar economy. This means near-Earth asteroid mining and in-space construction, which lets us drastically reduce the amount of mass needed to be launched into orbit. That economy would not be independent - it would sell resources mined in space (to be shipped to the surface) and manufacturing services, hopefully moving most heavy industry upwell. In exchange, they'd buy food, organics and specialized components from Earth. Imagine couple decades of iterative improvement on this. Eventually, humans will be able to survive long-term in space with minimum input of terrestrial resources. E.g. almost-closed-cycle greenhouses that can supply a ship with food for a decade until they need restocking with substances that can't yet be created in space. Such capacity allows people to expand further, access more resources and ship them back. What's the value for Earth in this? Continuing the exponential growth past the carrying capacity of the planet. The more industry is moved upwell, the more space there is downwell for habitation, consumption and service economy. Why not robots? Light lag. To me, the challenges we need to overcome to send humans into interplanetary space are easier than those required for fully autonomic, AI-powered robots. If that's true, then we'll have to make interplanetary expansion a mixed human/robot endeavor. The time it takes for a signal from Earth to reach Mars is between 5 to 20 minutes - so 10-40 minutes RTT. This is unacceptable for any kind of serious remote operation, so even if robots do most of the work, you still want human controllers to be on the work site. Once you start sending mixed human/robot on long-duration missions far from Earth, dumber robots operated more directly by humans - and, importantly, serviceable on-site, will be the cheapest option.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  1. People want to go into the solar system. They need something to do. 2. We're nowhere near the level of smart, self-repairing automation. Given the distances involved, there's value in having a community of smart, agile, self-replicating flesh-and-blood humans to tackle unknown engineering challenges as they appear. 3. People keep expanding, and settle for good. Years pass. An interplanetary economy forms. People on the further edges focus on resource extraction and building up infrastructure for long-term settlement - but they still need things only Earth can provide, like food (and organics in general). So they trade. 4. Decades pass. On the outer edges of humanity, people are born who've never seen Earth. They start to develop their own culture and identity. Mars is being colonized. The trade arrangements is stable - Earth sells organics and R&D, they buy lots of resources to use for in-orbit manufacturing. 5. Many more decades pass. Mars is full of people who were born there, and never seen Earth in the first place. They trade with Earth and the space dwellers - the Belters, in Expanse - for resources. They develop their own culture too. Over generations, the Belters become adapted to low-gravity conditions, and can no longer survive Earth's gravity - cementing the cultural divide. 6. More decades pass, you arrive at the world of The Expanse. Mars and the Belt both declared independence, as they're their own separate cultures and nations. Trade dependencies, however, remain. Earth and Mars both have the advantage of infrastructure density and crucial resources abundance - they're developing their planets and surrounding orbital space. Stuck in an arms race, they develop superior military. Meanwhile, the Belters are stuck in a disadvantaged position. They own most resources in the Solar System, but can't effectively control them with inferior technology. And none of the resources are actually missing on Earth and Mars - they're just more expensive to get. The Belt has all the riches, but no leverage to turn them into wealth and power. That's how you arrive at "mining asteroids in poor third world-like conditions".
- bserge 5y ago
  In 100 years we may just as well have run out of resources for robots while (poor and desperate) people are aplenty. They'd probably be volunteering to go, no one would need to force them. Just a "fun" fact I discovered recently: it's cheaper to buy new powerbanks and salvage the battery cells than buy the battery cells themselves. It is also cheaper to buy a whole new laptop than replace a laptop processor. That is insane levels of wastefulness.
f00zz 5y ago
Asteroid mining, if it ever happens, won't be done by poor exploited people toiling under the sun with pickaxes. It will be very expensive, and most likely fully automated. Even today Rio Tinto operations are becoming increasingly more automated. And a civilization that can mine asteroids should be unimaginably rich by our standards. Sure, there were horrible industrial disasters like Bhopal, but in the book the aforementioned megacorp kills millions seemingly out of sheer evil. It felt too videogamey for my taste.
- dstick 5y ago
  Sheer evil? It wasn’t personal or aimed at one specific group of people. It’s just the cost of doing business. Like other siblings said: that’s happening today all over the world. From Amazon warehouse workers to miners.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  Sci-fi is full of thinly veiled social commentary. The sci-fi aspect distracts you from the fact that messages and themes are shallow and don't really stand on their own. I loved Star Trek as a kid, it inspired my imagination and I didn't really pick up on the social messages, watching it now it's sort of comical or just boring. But I do get a nostalgic feeling from it and it's entertaining enough to be second screen distraction material when doing boring tasks.
  - inopinatus 5y ago
    It is not thinly veiled: sci-fi is social commentary. Even Greg Egan dialling up the quantum mechanics is ultimately doing so to explore the societal consequences. As you point out, only children think it is actually about the damn robots and spaceships.
    - reader_mode 5y ago
      Yeah but the need to place it in sci-fi setting feels like adding fluff to mask the fact that the commentary is weak/trivial/boring or detached from reality/wrong. I wish they made more sci-fi about robots and spaceships, I find that stuff entertaining and inspiring. If I want social commentary I have better sources than sci-fi writers. And there is Sci-Fi that's not social commentary.

krapp 5y ago

>but the idea of people mining asteroids in poor third world-like conditions makes absolutely no sense to me. Or an evil megacorp that murders millions of people with no adequate explanation. I haven't read the books but this just seems like the "British imperial colonialism but in space" trope typical of space opera.

ilogik 5y ago

I really hope you're being sarcastic

lucideer 5y ago
I assumed it was but noone else replying here seems to agree... "/s" really is needed I guess

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I dunno, Musk has already indicated he'd put people in feudal serfdom to pay off a loan if they want a trip to Mars. And he'd get people volunteering for it.

ben_w 5y ago
I’ve seen people claim that, but the closest I’ve actually seen from Musk is this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217991853615677440 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12179918536156774... Do you have a better citation? Because loans are not feudalism — and if you want to insist they are, only Islamic Law jurisdictions (which bans interest rather than loans but eh) are non-feudal.
- lucideer 5y ago
  > loans are not feudalism Loans in themselves are not 100% "feudal", though I don't think it's a binary "is feudal" -vs- "is not feudal"; more of a "how feudal". The implication above was that loan repayment via mandatory labour is feudal (or at least "more feudal"). > if you want to insist they are, only Islamic Law jurisdictions (which bans interest rather than loans but eh) are non-feudal That's a pretty big "eh" tbh; I don't many people think interest is the problematic part of loans. Don't think Islamic Law can be excluded here.
- HappySweeney 5y ago
  No entity based on Earth has juristiction on Mars. Over there, SpaceX will be the law. I don't see them forgiving loans and shuttling "contract-breakers" back to Earth for free.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    That’s false. The Outer Space Treaty means anything launched from Earth remains the responsibility of the nation who launched it. SpaceX most certainly is under the jurisdiction of the US and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

flohofwoe 5y ago

What do you think the first Mars colonies will be like? I bet living on an Siberian oil rig will be like a vacation compared to Mars, except you can't return to civilization if you've had enough.

passerby1 5y ago
Interesting comparison. How in your mind is a Siberian oil rig different from others?
- chewbacha 5y ago
  Well, compared to the Santa Barbara oil rigs, I bet it’s a bit colder in the winter.
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  ...or any oil rig north of the polar circle... hostile environmental conditions combined with too many people crammed into too little living space and nowhere to go. Basically a prison camp, but with (I assume) higher than average wages (but nothing to do with the money except sending it home to the family on Earth). (PS: this of course assumes that's there's anything to do on Mars, it's not clear to me what the Mars colonists would actually do there all day, except constructing the actual colony - but what then?).
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Wages on rigs are not just higher than average, they are in fact eye-wateringly high
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Only on the European ones. The UAE ones use cheap labor for everything not needing engineering masters.
    - Arrath 5y ago
      As well they should be considering the isolation, usually severe conditions, back-breaking work, and all the potential danger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha

erellsworth 5y ago

We have people right here on earth mining in actual third-world countries. It's not hard to imagine that phenomenon being exported to asteroid mining. In fact, it seems quite likely.