4 ms·

If true and feasible with technology soon... Cool for a couple of reasons: - Asteroid tracking... Resource companies will track nearly all asteroids within re

If true and feasible with technology soon... Cool for a couple of reasons: - Asteroid tracking... Resource companies will track nearly all asteroids within reach and help provide awareness of threats. - Robots! The technology advancement/innovation for bots and long range communications would be intense. - Space exploration will be a boon if resources are involved (as we all know every game is about asteroid mining in the future). - May bring back some sort of life form (It may end up taking over like Cloverfield then Cameron can later make a movie about it and Carmack the game). Possible problems: - We get really good at manipulating asteroids routes (some sort of harvesters that bring them closer to us to mine) and it becomes weaponized.

bdunbar 15y ago
Also cool - Replacing terrestrial mines with asteroid mines. - Bring an asteroid to L5. Mine. When done you have a place to live. and it becomes weaponized. Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon. We need to get used to this idea now.
- pacaro 15y ago
  Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon Especially including the earth-bound minerals, is there a better way to get large heavy objects onto the surface of a planet that a "Kinetic Lance" (Peter F. Hamilton) or "Rod" (Neal Stephenson)?
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    This is a solved problem. Wrap your cargo in a capsule. Add parachutes.
    - Tuna-Fish 15y ago
      Most of the stuff that we land on planets is designed to be as light as possible. The proceeds from asteroid mining are going to be mighty heavy. I doubt manufacturing enough parachutes would make any sense. Then again, those aren't really necessary. Just build the goods to capsules that have aerodynamics and maximum mass so that they'll slow down to a reasonable terminal velocity in atmosphere, and there's no reason you cannot just drop them on some area with a solid enough ground. (And no inhabitants).
      - jacques_chester 15y ago
        Peter F Hamilton addressed this in one of his novels; one of the Commonwealth Saga books I think. Essentially, his imagined industry uses solar energy to melt ores; these are then formed into a metallic foam and shaped into a stable aerodynamic shape (a sort of blunt wedge). They are then deorbited to land far out to sea. Because it's metallic foam, it has a high drag-to-weight ratio (hence lower terminal velocity) and it floats. Some of the ore is lost to ablation during re-entry, but ... so what? There's plenty more where it came from.
        rosser 15y ago
        It wasn't the Commonwealth Saga, it was the Night's Dawn series, and I was wondering if someone else would mention it. It's pretty resource-intensive, but we're talking about freaking asteroid mining, so the woo-woo SF aspects of it suddenly feel a little more plausible.
  - warfangle 15y ago
    Why send the raw minerals down to earth? Many items could probably benefit from zero-gravity manufacturing facilities. Then you air-drop the finished products.
    - bdunbar 15y ago
      If we can ship iron to Cleavland cheaper than we can ship it from the Iron Range then we can stop strip-mining the countryside. Which - whoops - puts guys out of work in favor of robots and technicians who operate them. I think that's another HN thread however. Of course ... you _could_ make tractors and cars in space, but that's somehow mind-boggling to me.
      - warfangle 15y ago
        We'd have flying cars finally ;) granted, they'd only fly 'til they landed for the first time...
        bdunbar 15y ago
        And bring new meaning to the term 'drop shipping'.
  - paulsutter 15y ago
    Getting goods down is the easy part. Use a rail gun to send the materials towards earth, then use aerobraking and controlled re-entry to get things back to the ground (Wikipedia has excellent explanations of these). Unmanned cargo doesn't mind high G forces, high temperatures, or long transit times. And material losses due to ablation are probably acceptable given the excessive amount of materials available.
mturmon 15y ago
Asteroid tracking is already being done: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ You can get a free app for your iPhone that tells you the next few close approaches.

bdunbar 15y ago

Also cool - Replacing terrestrial mines with asteroid mines. - Bring an asteroid to L5. Mine. When done you have a place to live. and it becomes weaponized. Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon. We need to get used to this idea now.

pacaro 15y ago
Anything moving fast enough is a potential weapon Especially including the earth-bound minerals, is there a better way to get large heavy objects onto the surface of a planet that a "Kinetic Lance" (Peter F. Hamilton) or "Rod" (Neal Stephenson)?
- bdunbar 15y ago
  This is a solved problem. Wrap your cargo in a capsule. Add parachutes.
  - Tuna-Fish 15y ago
    Most of the stuff that we land on planets is designed to be as light as possible. The proceeds from asteroid mining are going to be mighty heavy. I doubt manufacturing enough parachutes would make any sense. Then again, those aren't really necessary. Just build the goods to capsules that have aerodynamics and maximum mass so that they'll slow down to a reasonable terminal velocity in atmosphere, and there's no reason you cannot just drop them on some area with a solid enough ground. (And no inhabitants).
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      Peter F Hamilton addressed this in one of his novels; one of the Commonwealth Saga books I think. Essentially, his imagined industry uses solar energy to melt ores; these are then formed into a metallic foam and shaped into a stable aerodynamic shape (a sort of blunt wedge). They are then deorbited to land far out to sea. Because it's metallic foam, it has a high drag-to-weight ratio (hence lower terminal velocity) and it floats. Some of the ore is lost to ablation during re-entry, but ... so what? There's plenty more where it came from.
      - rosser 15y ago
        It wasn't the Commonwealth Saga, it was the Night's Dawn series, and I was wondering if someone else would mention it. It's pretty resource-intensive, but we're talking about freaking asteroid mining, so the woo-woo SF aspects of it suddenly feel a little more plausible.
- warfangle 15y ago
  Why send the raw minerals down to earth? Many items could probably benefit from zero-gravity manufacturing facilities. Then you air-drop the finished products.
  - bdunbar 15y ago
    If we can ship iron to Cleavland cheaper than we can ship it from the Iron Range then we can stop strip-mining the countryside. Which - whoops - puts guys out of work in favor of robots and technicians who operate them. I think that's another HN thread however. Of course ... you _could_ make tractors and cars in space, but that's somehow mind-boggling to me.
    - warfangle 15y ago
      We'd have flying cars finally ;) granted, they'd only fly 'til they landed for the first time...
      - bdunbar 15y ago
        And bring new meaning to the term 'drop shipping'.
- paulsutter 15y ago
  Getting goods down is the easy part. Use a rail gun to send the materials towards earth, then use aerobraking and controlled re-entry to get things back to the ground (Wikipedia has excellent explanations of these). Unmanned cargo doesn't mind high G forces, high temperatures, or long transit times. And material losses due to ablation are probably acceptable given the excessive amount of materials available.

mturmon 15y ago

Asteroid tracking is already being done: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ You can get a free app for your iPhone that tells you the next few close approaches.