13 ms·

Where in the galaxy will we mine lithium?

69 points by jelliclesfarm 5y ago

candiddevmike 5y ago
Ilus, of course
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  Gonya be rich, ke?
nootropicat 5y ago
Once the question turns into star systems instead of asteroids, the answer is: lift hydrogen out of stars and transmute it into lithium as needed. Resources are heterogeneous only for civilizations significantly below level of 2 on the Kardashev's scale. Above it's all just matter-energy.
PaulHoule 5y ago
If you like to think about interstellar travel, one interesting option is that somebody (something?) could develop the ability to live independently of stars based on fusion. In this scenario you wouldn't have to move very fast, 10,000 years to get to the nearest star is about right, but you might lose all interest in dry inner solar system planets like the Earth (compared to something like Pluto which is closer to 50% water) before you get there. If you could find lithium you could breed tritium and run a D + T fuel cycle, which creates a massive flux of neutrons (maybe need Pb or Be for multiplication) and will let you breed extra T that you can let decay to He3. D + He3 is a good candidate for a fuel for "fast" interstellar travel that might make the crossing in 50 years. Alternately if you can make D + D work you can certainly live between the stars and you can still harvest some bred T and He3 for "mobile" applications.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Once you are out of a gravity well as a civ, why would you bother with them economically aside from tourism? Unless we get antigravity, or loop launch / space elevator / space hook sized planetoids (I think Mars is the practical limit of space elevators last I looked). Red dwarfs appear ideal. Very long lived, and there do seem to be planets and asteroid material in them. A globular cluster of mostly red dwarfs would be an ideal long-term place for an "interstellar" civ. The stars drift as close as 1/3 light year. Look at what some of the projected mineral yields of asteroids are. And comets can probably get you other element mixes as needed. Yes, I think Lithium will be be available artificially with some form of fusion. Or you capture solar wind material perhaps.
  - hakuseki 5y ago
    Gravity wells are where most of the resources are. For example, Earth outmasses the asteroid belt by a factor of over 1,000.
    - chasil 5y ago
      There is a core of a failed planet in the asteroid belt. That will be a rich source of iron and precious metals. https://globalnews.ca/news/7429663/metal-asteroid-16-psyche-quadrillion/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7429663/metal-asteroid-16-psyche-...
    - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
      Is the factor just a 1000x? That would actually be an argument in favor of asteroids. All you need for space habs for construction (well, maybe not all the organic matter) is in asteroids. Maybe all we need material-wise is probably in the larger asteroids that we are trying to track for collision detection. Here, let's cut the difference: MOONs! Why bother with planets if their moons have all the resources and none of the lifting issues. I guess our moon is pretty resource poor since it formed from Earth's crust. But then again, have we surveyed what's under the surface?
- countvonbalzac 5y ago
  But do humans really want to live on pluto? We evolved to live in nature, surrounded by plants and animals. I just don't see people wanting to live on a cold rock.
  - cryptoz 5y ago
    raises hand I would love to live on Pluto. I'm sure lots of people would. Anyway, we evolved without Twitter and HN too, but here we are, spending our waking hours online. Many people alive today have never physically even visited 'real' nature and are (probably, mostly) fine without it. I don't think 'we evolved to X and therefore would never want Y" holds much water.
    - justinpowers 5y ago
      Whether it’s acknowledged or not, “real” nature is all around us, everywhere, in a way that Pluto could never mimic unless of course humans magically terraformed it into existence, or some illusion of it. It’s odd how easily we forget the simple things, like having a blue sky and a distant horizon. Or feeling the pull of the earth beneath our feet. Or the myriad of subtle scents in our nose, that immerse us even when we are unaware of them. A little searching online will find you plenty of studies that show how nature, both simple and complex, reduce mental stresses in humans. It seems prudent to at least assume that the environment in which we arose and for which we are adapted, would be not only better suited for the human body but also for its mind. As a starting point for research into the effects of a similar, but still far more “natural”, environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter-over_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter-over_syndrome All that said, I suppose it’s possible that humans born on Pluto might fair better. We probably (hopefully) have very few case studies that could even begin to provide some insight into such a scenario. So who knows…
      - chasil 5y ago
        It seems to me that the amount of energy expended by the sun to maintain earth's environment would be extremely difficult if not impossible to configure for Pluto. Placing a magnetic shield in front of Mars to protect its atmosphere from the solar wind seems far more practical.
- Meandering 5y ago
  Moving the entire solar system is my favorite solution so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU
Shadonototra 5y ago
by the time we are able to move from planet to planet, i don't think we'll need lithium anymore
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  On the one hand, I think it's sensible to assume we'll find something better or more suitable, but in the other hand, we're dealing with fundamental physics, not consumer preference or any sort of abstraction away from function. To produce food, we will need carbon. Structural materials will likely be steel or iron alloys. Energy storage works best with lithium for practical engineering reasons, and it's highly unlikely some other element will replace it. The advantage of basic, high availability elements is you can pick up the raw material and process it almost anywhere. The distribution of elements is predictable, so unless you have a huge supply of unobtainium, it's better to use things you can scrounge on the way to or where you're going. In a multi-species interstellar civilization, it's also reasonable to think that other starfaring technology will share similarity with your own - having a stockpile of lithium might mean you have a basic trade good.
  - baking 5y ago
    Isn't phosphorus the true essential trade good? Necessary for life as we know it, but rare outside the solar system.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Probably - I think asteroid mining will give us the best picture of what's valuable in an interstellar context. If we figure out warp drive or wormholes for effectively ftl travel, the notion of value changes significantly. Wouldn't it be terrifying if we had the galaxy all to ourselves?
- adastra22 5y ago
  Lithium is pretty useful in various fusion applications, which are likely to fuel the interplanetary economy.
throwaway4220 5y ago
Article has spoilers for expanse, Star Trek discovery, for all mankind
neals 5y ago
So what does lithium have that other elements don't, to be so populair with the battery crowd?
- zekica 5y ago
  It is very reactive (as it is in the first column of the periodic table - Alkali metal). Other group of very reactive elements are in the second-last column such as Fluorine but they can't be as easily used in batteries for other reasons. Lithium is also very light - 0.534 g/cm³ compared to copper with 8.96 g/cm³.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  One free electron, in a nice stable element that makes molecules easy to handle at room temperature.
- klodolph 5y ago
  I see a couple comments here that don't understand why Lithium is a good choice. Batteries push electrons around a circuit. This is powered by a redox reaction, with half of the reaction occurring on each terminal. One half of the reaction produces electrons, the other half consumes electrons, and these electrons travel from where they are produced (the oxidation half-reaction) to where they are consumed (the reduction half-reaction). However, one half reaction simply produced electrons forever, it would accumulate a positive charge. So something inside the battery has to also move charge around to balance things out. This thing that moves should have a positive charge, and move in the same direction as the electrons, except through the battery instead of through the circuit. Your electron moves from the battery anode (-) through the circuit to the battery cathode (+), and something else with a positive charge also moves from the battery anode (-) to the battery cathode (+), except it moves through the battery instead of moving through the circuit. In other words, a positive ion. Lithium is the smallest positive ion you can normally work with. You'd think hydrogen would be smaller, but it actually forms a hydronium ion in aqueous solution. Hydrogen fuel cells are a lot like batteries that use hydrogen + oxygen, but the chemistry of hydrogen fuel cells make them not suitable as batteries, and hydrogen is hard to store. I'm sure I'm getting some of this wrong, I did study some very basic electrochemistry in college, so I would encourage people interested in electrochemistry to read more about it or even do simple experiments at home (it's surprisingly easy).
coolhoody 5y ago
I love articles like these for their optimism — as they imply we will not be mining it in the metaverse for schrute bucks, or scouting new vegas for bottle caps.
wardedVibe 5y ago
If we're talking about mining lithium from elsewhere in the solar system or even galaxy, I'm willing to be that fusing hydrogen and helium to get there is a much more energy efficient route. Maybe this is something you do where you don't need as dense a form of energy, but still. It's only the 3rd element. Rare earth metal mining in the asteroid belt is the one most likely to be necessary.
maydup-nem 5y ago
isn't it supposed to be in shale outcrops all over the ocean floor?
otikik 5y ago
If we get access to portals or wormholes, this might come in handy: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04749 https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04749
alx__ 5y ago
Sorta unrelated to the article. But it linked to a NASA blog post on how the moon was formed. There's an embedded YouTube video from 2006 that has a computer simulation on how the moon was formed. Was NOT expecting a (drum'n'bass) banger of a track on that video when the protomoon hits the protoearth. Shazam couldn't properly identify. I love old internet posts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sr-MriOCzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sr-MriOCzw
- herodoturtle 5y ago
  Haha that second paragraph was great. Says at the end of the video “Music - Kyo Ichinose” but I didn’t have much luck hunting down the actual track.
  - alx__ 5y ago
    Oh good eye! I see now his recent stuff, but nothing from that era. Probably a score created just for it. Additional lol. Found a NYT link to the animation again, but it's in a obsolete format. (Requires Real Player)
- CPLX 5y ago
  The 90's man. You had to be there.
formerkrogemp 5y ago
Is it Earth? I think we mine all of our lithium on Earth right now.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
spindle 5y ago
I've always been amazed (despite being someone who's not easily amazed by Science Facts) that helium and lithium (and, less amazingly, hydrogen) were produced in large quantities in the early universe, long before there were stars. So I'm envisioning a market for boutique "Big Bang" lithium, guaranteed not to have been produced in a star. It makes your engine run so much more smoothly.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Gourmet batteries, for the discerning audiophile, er... automophile.
elzbardico 5y ago
We will probably come up with alternative chemistries. NiFe while not portable, is great for stationary applications. I would prefer to have a bank of NiFe batteries at home than a tesla wall. And probably my insurance company would think the same.
bullen 5y ago
1. Electricity is not an energy source, you need to burn something else to create it. 2. Wind, Solar, Nuclear and Hydro can not be built with electricity at scale, you need coal, oil and gas to melt steel and burn lime stone for concrete. 3. You cannot make food with electricity at scale; tractors, trucks and fertilizers need hydrocarbons. 4. The tree is the best solar panel and battery in one, it created all coal, oil and gas on the planet. Only snag is that it takes a couple of hundred thousand years for the trees to become coal, oil and gas! 5. Going into space is a completely meaningless exercise until we can establish that we can colonize another planet self-sustainably. We are very far away from making that happen because it would need trees and an atmosphere which take more time to terraform than we have hydrocarbons left on Earth to still reach Mars f.ex at scale (enough people to bootstrap the new planet) when it's fully terraformed. These combined make it pretty clear that the only realistic option is to consume less energy. Stop driving. Stop flying. Live in a smaller space. Work from home. Consume less of everything and try to produce something meaningful with what you allready have! Find a purpose in quality, instead of quantity. Please use arguments instead of only the down button? Just because you don't like the truth doesn't make it less true.
- afpx 5y ago
  Not sure an argument needs to be made? I googled 3 of your 5 statements and they didn't appear true. Plus, you don't seem to take future breakthroughs into account. Technology progresses exponentially.
  - bullen 5y ago
    Tech. optimism is predatory on the generations that follow if they turn out to not happen. And I don't know how many cameras on the back of your iPhone before you realize it still only takes 2D photos? I think you need to understand the "at scale" I added everywhere. All the solutions you googled are by companies that can make it work in a prototype... but when they try to replace dead trees they all fail...
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  if 100% of hydrocarbons are used to make things vs. power things then they would last a lot longer than otherwise.
danans 5y ago
The answer is The Salton Sea of course https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/can-salton-sea-geothermal-field-prevent-coming-lithium-shortage https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/can-salton-sea-g...
CyanLite2 5y ago
Wouldn't it be easier just to smash hydrogen atoms into helium atoms to produce Lithium? Nuclear fusion seems much more achievable than interstellar space travel.
Meandering 5y ago
We'll figure out fluorine before space mining is even viable. They will probably have a fluorine-based battery on the market within the next decade.
rurban 5y ago
Chile, Bolivia are the easiest to mine. It really is trivial, and incredibly cheap. See https://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2018/02/20/how-does-lithium-mining-work/ https://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2018/02/20/how-does-lithium-mi...
eternityforest 5y ago
Hopefully nowhere, because we will have moved on to organics we can synthesize or high density metal-air fuel cells or something. And if not, I'm sure the entire dystopian horror that a space colony would be will have wireless charging everywhere... maybe they can just beam power everywhere in their mostly indoor world.
kkfx 5y ago
A small note, just to descend from the dream to reality: lithium is already expensive. Mining lithium in space means making it more expensive than gold. Even if we can source a hyper-abundant source of lithium just on the Moon it's price would be so expensive that's useless. Not only, the quantity we can mine will be ridiculously small. Space mining might be an option in 200y IF we are able to find ways to escape Earth gravitation with cheap and easy manners, otherwise is just a dream game of some who dream a "private space" to start a new "Alaska-like Gold Rush". Such dreams must be annihilated from the start for the sake of humanity. Just the dream of private Moon/Mars colonies should be allowed only when single individuals can form a small society, buy a transport means, start a colony independently under their own State's laws. Otherwise those colonies will NOT be colonies like the west rush in the USA but dictatorship where the private holder can do essentially anything shielded by the fact that State's laws we have are valid only on Earth. That must not be happen. Beside that: we can't even really know how much minerals in general we have in the Earth crust. We have estimation, reasoned, tried a bit, but nothing really certain so before working on something we should have been framed the scalability up front or live them as experiment.
foreigner 5y ago
Space mining is fun to speculate about, but surely it's going to be more practical to just reuse the Lithium we already have on earth? When we "use" Lithium in batteries, etc... we're just converting it to a less chemically convenient form - it's still the same element (barring nuclear processes).

69 points by jelliclesfarm 5y ago

candiddevmike 5y ago

Ilus, of course

Beltalowda 5y ago
Gonya be rich, ke?

nootropicat 5y ago

Once the question turns into star systems instead of asteroids, the answer is: lift hydrogen out of stars and transmute it into lithium as needed. Resources are heterogeneous only for civilizations significantly below level of 2 on the Kardashev's scale. Above it's all just matter-energy.

PaulHoule 5y ago

If you like to think about interstellar travel, one interesting option is that somebody (something?) could develop the ability to live independently of stars based on fusion. In this scenario you wouldn't have to move very fast, 10,000 years to get to the nearest star is about right, but you might lose all interest in dry inner solar system planets like the Earth (compared to something like Pluto which is closer to 50% water) before you get there. If you could find lithium you could breed tritium and run a D + T fuel cycle, which creates a massive flux of neutrons (maybe need Pb or Be for multiplication) and will let you breed extra T that you can let decay to He3. D + He3 is a good candidate for a fuel for "fast" interstellar travel that might make the crossing in 50 years. Alternately if you can make D + D work you can certainly live between the stars and you can still harvest some bred T and He3 for "mobile" applications.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Once you are out of a gravity well as a civ, why would you bother with them economically aside from tourism? Unless we get antigravity, or loop launch / space elevator / space hook sized planetoids (I think Mars is the practical limit of space elevators last I looked). Red dwarfs appear ideal. Very long lived, and there do seem to be planets and asteroid material in them. A globular cluster of mostly red dwarfs would be an ideal long-term place for an "interstellar" civ. The stars drift as close as 1/3 light year. Look at what some of the projected mineral yields of asteroids are. And comets can probably get you other element mixes as needed. Yes, I think Lithium will be be available artificially with some form of fusion. Or you capture solar wind material perhaps.
- hakuseki 5y ago
  Gravity wells are where most of the resources are. For example, Earth outmasses the asteroid belt by a factor of over 1,000.
  - chasil 5y ago
    There is a core of a failed planet in the asteroid belt. That will be a rich source of iron and precious metals. https://globalnews.ca/news/7429663/metal-asteroid-16-psyche-quadrillion/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7429663/metal-asteroid-16-psyche-...
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    Is the factor just a 1000x? That would actually be an argument in favor of asteroids. All you need for space habs for construction (well, maybe not all the organic matter) is in asteroids. Maybe all we need material-wise is probably in the larger asteroids that we are trying to track for collision detection. Here, let's cut the difference: MOONs! Why bother with planets if their moons have all the resources and none of the lifting issues. I guess our moon is pretty resource poor since it formed from Earth's crust. But then again, have we surveyed what's under the surface?
countvonbalzac 5y ago
But do humans really want to live on pluto? We evolved to live in nature, surrounded by plants and animals. I just don't see people wanting to live on a cold rock.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  raises hand I would love to live on Pluto. I'm sure lots of people would. Anyway, we evolved without Twitter and HN too, but here we are, spending our waking hours online. Many people alive today have never physically even visited 'real' nature and are (probably, mostly) fine without it. I don't think 'we evolved to X and therefore would never want Y" holds much water.
  - justinpowers 5y ago
    Whether it’s acknowledged or not, “real” nature is all around us, everywhere, in a way that Pluto could never mimic unless of course humans magically terraformed it into existence, or some illusion of it. It’s odd how easily we forget the simple things, like having a blue sky and a distant horizon. Or feeling the pull of the earth beneath our feet. Or the myriad of subtle scents in our nose, that immerse us even when we are unaware of them. A little searching online will find you plenty of studies that show how nature, both simple and complex, reduce mental stresses in humans. It seems prudent to at least assume that the environment in which we arose and for which we are adapted, would be not only better suited for the human body but also for its mind. As a starting point for research into the effects of a similar, but still far more “natural”, environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter-over_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter-over_syndrome All that said, I suppose it’s possible that humans born on Pluto might fair better. We probably (hopefully) have very few case studies that could even begin to provide some insight into such a scenario. So who knows…
    - chasil 5y ago
      It seems to me that the amount of energy expended by the sun to maintain earth's environment would be extremely difficult if not impossible to configure for Pluto. Placing a magnetic shield in front of Mars to protect its atmosphere from the solar wind seems far more practical.
Meandering 5y ago
Moving the entire solar system is my favorite solution so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU

Shadonototra 5y ago

by the time we are able to move from planet to planet, i don't think we'll need lithium anymore

robbedpeter 5y ago
On the one hand, I think it's sensible to assume we'll find something better or more suitable, but in the other hand, we're dealing with fundamental physics, not consumer preference or any sort of abstraction away from function. To produce food, we will need carbon. Structural materials will likely be steel or iron alloys. Energy storage works best with lithium for practical engineering reasons, and it's highly unlikely some other element will replace it. The advantage of basic, high availability elements is you can pick up the raw material and process it almost anywhere. The distribution of elements is predictable, so unless you have a huge supply of unobtainium, it's better to use things you can scrounge on the way to or where you're going. In a multi-species interstellar civilization, it's also reasonable to think that other starfaring technology will share similarity with your own - having a stockpile of lithium might mean you have a basic trade good.
- baking 5y ago
  Isn't phosphorus the true essential trade good? Necessary for life as we know it, but rare outside the solar system.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Probably - I think asteroid mining will give us the best picture of what's valuable in an interstellar context. If we figure out warp drive or wormholes for effectively ftl travel, the notion of value changes significantly. Wouldn't it be terrifying if we had the galaxy all to ourselves?
adastra22 5y ago
Lithium is pretty useful in various fusion applications, which are likely to fuel the interplanetary economy.

throwaway4220 5y ago

Article has spoilers for expanse, Star Trek discovery, for all mankind

neals 5y ago

So what does lithium have that other elements don't, to be so populair with the battery crowd?

zekica 5y ago
It is very reactive (as it is in the first column of the periodic table - Alkali metal). Other group of very reactive elements are in the second-last column such as Fluorine but they can't be as easily used in batteries for other reasons. Lithium is also very light - 0.534 g/cm³ compared to copper with 8.96 g/cm³.
dotancohen 5y ago
One free electron, in a nice stable element that makes molecules easy to handle at room temperature.
klodolph 5y ago
I see a couple comments here that don't understand why Lithium is a good choice. Batteries push electrons around a circuit. This is powered by a redox reaction, with half of the reaction occurring on each terminal. One half of the reaction produces electrons, the other half consumes electrons, and these electrons travel from where they are produced (the oxidation half-reaction) to where they are consumed (the reduction half-reaction). However, one half reaction simply produced electrons forever, it would accumulate a positive charge. So something inside the battery has to also move charge around to balance things out. This thing that moves should have a positive charge, and move in the same direction as the electrons, except through the battery instead of through the circuit. Your electron moves from the battery anode (-) through the circuit to the battery cathode (+), and something else with a positive charge also moves from the battery anode (-) to the battery cathode (+), except it moves through the battery instead of moving through the circuit. In other words, a positive ion. Lithium is the smallest positive ion you can normally work with. You'd think hydrogen would be smaller, but it actually forms a hydronium ion in aqueous solution. Hydrogen fuel cells are a lot like batteries that use hydrogen + oxygen, but the chemistry of hydrogen fuel cells make them not suitable as batteries, and hydrogen is hard to store. I'm sure I'm getting some of this wrong, I did study some very basic electrochemistry in college, so I would encourage people interested in electrochemistry to read more about it or even do simple experiments at home (it's surprisingly easy).

coolhoody 5y ago

I love articles like these for their optimism — as they imply we will not be mining it in the metaverse for schrute bucks, or scouting new vegas for bottle caps.

wardedVibe 5y ago

If we're talking about mining lithium from elsewhere in the solar system or even galaxy, I'm willing to be that fusing hydrogen and helium to get there is a much more energy efficient route. Maybe this is something you do where you don't need as dense a form of energy, but still. It's only the 3rd element. Rare earth metal mining in the asteroid belt is the one most likely to be necessary.

maydup-nem 5y ago

isn't it supposed to be in shale outcrops all over the ocean floor?

otikik 5y ago

If we get access to portals or wormholes, this might come in handy: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04749 https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04749

alx__ 5y ago

Sorta unrelated to the article. But it linked to a NASA blog post on how the moon was formed. There's an embedded YouTube video from 2006 that has a computer simulation on how the moon was formed. Was NOT expecting a (drum'n'bass) banger of a track on that video when the protomoon hits the protoearth. Shazam couldn't properly identify. I love old internet posts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sr-MriOCzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sr-MriOCzw

herodoturtle 5y ago
Haha that second paragraph was great. Says at the end of the video “Music - Kyo Ichinose” but I didn’t have much luck hunting down the actual track.
- alx__ 5y ago
  Oh good eye! I see now his recent stuff, but nothing from that era. Probably a score created just for it. Additional lol. Found a NYT link to the animation again, but it's in a obsolete format. (Requires Real Player)
CPLX 5y ago
The 90's man. You had to be there.

formerkrogemp 5y ago

Is it Earth? I think we mine all of our lithium on Earth right now.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

spindle 5y ago

I've always been amazed (despite being someone who's not easily amazed by Science Facts) that helium and lithium (and, less amazingly, hydrogen) were produced in large quantities in the early universe, long before there were stars. So I'm envisioning a market for boutique "Big Bang" lithium, guaranteed not to have been produced in a star. It makes your engine run so much more smoothly.

elzbardico 5y ago
Gourmet batteries, for the discerning audiophile, er... automophile.

elzbardico 5y ago

We will probably come up with alternative chemistries. NiFe while not portable, is great for stationary applications. I would prefer to have a bank of NiFe batteries at home than a tesla wall. And probably my insurance company would think the same.

bullen 5y ago

1. Electricity is not an energy source, you need to burn something else to create it. 2. Wind, Solar, Nuclear and Hydro can not be built with electricity at scale, you need coal, oil and gas to melt steel and burn lime stone for concrete. 3. You cannot make food with electricity at scale; tractors, trucks and fertilizers need hydrocarbons. 4. The tree is the best solar panel and battery in one, it created all coal, oil and gas on the planet. Only snag is that it takes a couple of hundred thousand years for the trees to become coal, oil and gas! 5. Going into space is a completely meaningless exercise until we can establish that we can colonize another planet self-sustainably. We are very far away from making that happen because it would need trees and an atmosphere which take more time to terraform than we have hydrocarbons left on Earth to still reach Mars f.ex at scale (enough people to bootstrap the new planet) when it's fully terraformed. These combined make it pretty clear that the only realistic option is to consume less energy. Stop driving. Stop flying. Live in a smaller space. Work from home. Consume less of everything and try to produce something meaningful with what you allready have! Find a purpose in quality, instead of quantity. Please use arguments instead of only the down button? Just because you don't like the truth doesn't make it less true.

afpx 5y ago
Not sure an argument needs to be made? I googled 3 of your 5 statements and they didn't appear true. Plus, you don't seem to take future breakthroughs into account. Technology progresses exponentially.
- bullen 5y ago
  Tech. optimism is predatory on the generations that follow if they turn out to not happen. And I don't know how many cameras on the back of your iPhone before you realize it still only takes 2D photos? I think you need to understand the "at scale" I added everywhere. All the solutions you googled are by companies that can make it work in a prototype... but when they try to replace dead trees they all fail...
throwaway98797 5y ago
if 100% of hydrocarbons are used to make things vs. power things then they would last a lot longer than otherwise.

danans 5y ago

The answer is The Salton Sea of course https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/can-salton-sea-geothermal-field-prevent-coming-lithium-shortage https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/can-salton-sea-g...

CyanLite2 5y ago

Wouldn't it be easier just to smash hydrogen atoms into helium atoms to produce Lithium? Nuclear fusion seems much more achievable than interstellar space travel.

Meandering 5y ago

We'll figure out fluorine before space mining is even viable. They will probably have a fluorine-based battery on the market within the next decade.

rurban 5y ago

Chile, Bolivia are the easiest to mine. It really is trivial, and incredibly cheap. See https://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2018/02/20/how-does-lithium-mining-work/ https://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2018/02/20/how-does-lithium-mi...

eternityforest 5y ago

Hopefully nowhere, because we will have moved on to organics we can synthesize or high density metal-air fuel cells or something. And if not, I'm sure the entire dystopian horror that a space colony would be will have wireless charging everywhere... maybe they can just beam power everywhere in their mostly indoor world.

kkfx 5y ago

A small note, just to descend from the dream to reality: lithium is already expensive. Mining lithium in space means making it more expensive than gold. Even if we can source a hyper-abundant source of lithium just on the Moon it's price would be so expensive that's useless. Not only, the quantity we can mine will be ridiculously small. Space mining might be an option in 200y IF we are able to find ways to escape Earth gravitation with cheap and easy manners, otherwise is just a dream game of some who dream a "private space" to start a new "Alaska-like Gold Rush". Such dreams must be annihilated from the start for the sake of humanity. Just the dream of private Moon/Mars colonies should be allowed only when single individuals can form a small society, buy a transport means, start a colony independently under their own State's laws. Otherwise those colonies will NOT be colonies like the west rush in the USA but dictatorship where the private holder can do essentially anything shielded by the fact that State's laws we have are valid only on Earth. That must not be happen. Beside that: we can't even really know how much minerals in general we have in the Earth crust. We have estimation, reasoned, tried a bit, but nothing really certain so before working on something we should have been framed the scalability up front or live them as experiment.

foreigner 5y ago

Space mining is fun to speculate about, but surely it's going to be more practical to just reuse the Lithium we already have on earth? When we "use" Lithium in batteries, etc... we're just converting it to a less chemically convenient form - it's still the same element (barring nuclear processes).