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This article assumes that we'll solve any possible resource problems through ingenious innovations, but that no possible innovation will ever make asteroid mini

• bluGill 5y ago
  We can calculate the amount of energy needed to get there and back with 100% efficient rockets, even then the numbers don't work out. It is much cheaper to get minerals on earth and recycle them. Maybe for something like platinum it would work out, but only if we can detect from earth where astroid of nearly pure platinum is. I doubt such exists, most astroids have similar composition to earth: sand and iron, things we won't run out of.
  • akvadrako 5y ago
    That doesnt make sense. Rockets that go slow take much less fuel, especially when starting and ending in zero gravity. And if you move the manufacturing to a space station or small moon, you could move trillions worth of material for thousands in fuel.
  • Veen 5y ago
    Does that calculation change if the goal is not to bring minerals back to earth, but to mine them and use them in situ to build habitats and the like? I imagine a bunch of sand and iron and ice would be quite useful in those circumstances
    • GravitasFailure 5y ago
      Exactly. I highly doubt raw iron or other common metals will ever make sense to import from space, but there will almost definitely be a market for materials to be used in space or manufactured in microgravity that can't be done on Earth.
    • bluGill 5y ago
      Maybe, but habitats that far out probably never work because the sun is so weak.
      • gremlinsinc 5y ago
        why is the sun required for habitats.. plants can grow in artificial sunlight.... generational ships could spend entire decades in pockets with no sun... all you need is the right raw materials, access to water and food, and fuel source to keep the uv lights working and the heater and oxygen pumping...
        • bluGill 5y ago
          The energy source is the hard part. The sun will work for millions more years. Will fusion reactors work that long without some random failure of some part? Would you bet your life on it?
          • woleium 5y ago
            mirrors work forever in space
      • akvadrako 5y ago
        You don't need the sun when you have nuclear fusion.
        • woleium 5y ago
          or mirrors
    • afinlayson 5y ago
      Isn't it cheaper to mine resources in space for space travel then to eject them from earths orbit. If we found an astroid that had water that'd be worth it to bring it to a space dock or to any habitat that doesn't have water (planet, spaceship, satellite). I do agree the idea of bringing them back to Earth makes no sense, and the technology necessary to do that will probably make it not necessary thru other breakthroughs. But if you believe that Earth isn't the only location for humans to live we won't want to bring ML (Mega Liters) of water to future habitats, we want to either find it, or manufacture it.
  • akvadrako 5y ago
    Asteroids are quite varied in composition; it doesn't matter what most are.
  • tzs 5y ago
    Energy costs are small if you aren't in a hurry. See [1], and for more detail [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo... [2] http://www.dept.aoe.vt.edu/~sdross/papers/LoMarsden-Feature.pdf http://www.dept.aoe.vt.edu/~sdross/papers/LoMarsden-Feature....
  • ehvatum 5y ago
    A mine to the Earth’s core would be exceedingly rich. Such a mine would be impractical, given the large amount of planet to be bored through. A large amount of space is more easily traversed. Core material from shattered proto-planets exist in the asteroid belt, unsurrounded by planet. It’s as if some heavenly hammer cracked the thick egg crust imprisoning a cosmic platinate egg, and left that creamy yolk of gooooold for us. To you as a jeweler in New York City, this is perhaps irrelevant. You’re neither digging to the center of the planet nor are you flying in space. But people do fly in space. They might need metal and lots of it, some day.
  • dave333 5y ago
    There are slow low energy ways to get around the solar system by using the Lagrange points in the orbits of various planets/moons. Large amounts of refined minerals could be distributed this way assuming a solar powered refinery on a large asteroid or even just parked in space.
  • sliken 5y ago
    This ignores the potential to build stuff in space, which would create a market for metals, like say aluminum. Sure aluminum is cheap on earth, but the delivery fees to space are $$$$. This article also seems to have a basic misunderstanding how travel in space works. You spend energy to accelerate/deaccelerate in space, you don't pay per meter like you do in the atmosphere. So once in the asteroid belt you can reach any other point in the asteroid belt with very little fuel, if you are patient.
• notahacker 5y ago
  > This article assumes that we'll solve any possible resource problems through ingenious innovations, but that no possible innovation will ever make asteroid mining economically feasible The base assumption for asteroid mining is that substances like carbon, iron and nickel that asteroids are composed of become so difficult to obtain on Earth that return trips of a few tens or hundreds of million miles including atmospheric reentry are worthwhile to obtain it. Space travel becoming cheaper alone doesn't make it economically viable, unless you assume our ability to mine and transport stuff cheaply on earth goes backwards.
  • mechanical_bear 5y ago
    No one said anything about re-entry. Assuming this level of development, we would also have production capabilities in space.
    • notahacker 5y ago
      I'm not sure that multiplying the complexity (do future humans have non-trivial quantities of stuff that needs producing closer to a particular asteroid than planets with the same minerals in much greater quantities? Why?) is much of a counter argument to the basic intuition that it's only economically viable to mine comparatively tiny quantities of commodities in massively dispersed locations far away from human production centres if it's for some reason difficult to get it closer to home.
• ianai 5y ago
  Indeed the snark and arrogance are so off putting I quit early too. It’s hard to imagine HN benefits from that tone of conversation.