4 ms·

Do you think gravity-assisted rock crushing could be feasible?

• CityOfThrowaway 3y ago
  To use gravity, you only have two options: 1. Knock things down that are already high up and hope they break at the bottom. Or, 2. Haul things up and then knock them down. #1 only works in an extremely limited number of cases and gets exhausted quickly. #2 spends more energy hauling up than it gains.
• dessimus 3y ago
  Yes, drop a large enough rock from, say, orbital height and there might be zero carbon emissions going forward.
  • progne 3y ago
    For a rock to extinguish all life on and in Earth from an orbital drop it would have to be quite large. I suppose Jupiter would be big enough.
    • mkl 3y ago
      Just human life would do, not all life. But just a drop wouldn't have the relative speed of most asteroid impacts.
• salynchnew 3y ago
  "Join my asteroid bombardment startup...." /s
• chinchilla2020 3y ago
  You just invented block cave mining https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog000/node/911 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog000/node/911 It's been in use for a long time and is great for fragmenting large rocks and boulders. It does still need grind after the main fragmentation is done. SAG Mills use the same concept to grind rock to a finer level. Most of the abrasion is rock-on-rock inside the mill.
• oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  As long as it's not a Sisyphean task.