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As it turns out, they don't have a real plan to mine asteroids. It is just a big hairy audacious goal. Their actionable plan is more realistic (cheap telescopy)

by sunir 14y ago

As it turns out, they don't have a real plan to mine asteroids. It is just a big hairy audacious goal. Their actionable plan is more realistic (cheap telescopy). Making a spectacular but unprovable and therefore undeniable goal is an effective way of announcing and positioning your company to the world through public relations. Nothing wrong with that. People love to dream and back the dreamers.

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ktizo 14y ago
I have read through quite a bit of their plans for mining asteroids, such as they have publicly released anyway. Are you suggesting that they are lying for short term gain? Surely that kind of approach would backfire quite badly on them as it would be fairly obvious whether they are bullshitting or not in less than three years.
- ctdonath 14y ago
  Not lying, but perhaps accepting that it is a big hairy audacious goal with commensurate odds. There's good (maybe not great) money in proposing over-the-top megaprojects. A small office of people writing up plans, solving high-level problems, presenting proposals, issuing news releases, soliciting investment, etc. can generate a decent income. Many such project proposals are going on all the time. My favorites: the floating libertarian city/utopia Oceania, the billion-dollar indoor ski result near Atlanta GA, and the 5-mile-span bridge over the Strait Of Gibraltar - all went nowhere, but were inspiring explorations of what could be done if only for want of funding. These are not "lies", just dreams on a scale so large that just proposing them attracts nontrivial income. Kudos to those who try, knowing failure is almost assured. Science fiction has long hypothesized asteroid mining. We are now at the point where we have the engineering capacity to do it, and the economy to take advantage of and benefit from the results; the one thing missing is the moon-landing and/or interstate-highway scale effort required to make it happen. ...and once in a while, such megaprojects succeed. For those with money to spare, facilitating asteroid mining (and maybe a space elevator to help) have a chance to score incredible good for mankind. "Strange how much human progress and accomplishment comes from contemplation of the irrelevant." - Scott Kim
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    Lots of steps with hard problems to solve. How do you find the asteroids? (telescopes, answered) How to get mining equipment up there? How do you mine in zero gravity? How do you get the prize back home? How do you stop it when it gets here? How do you get it down? Each of these has a dozen sub-hard-problems. Like zero-gravity mining: how do you dock with/attach to the rock? How do you get enough energy there to break/smelt/refine? How do you continue to operate in the ever-expanding dust and grit halo mining produces? How do you deal with spares/repairs when the store is a billion feet away? How do you keep your prize once other nations realize "Hey! There's a trillion dollars of metal out there where there are no laws! We could just divert them easier than mining them ourselves!" and on and on. So,

by sunir 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

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ktizo 14y ago

I have read through quite a bit of their plans for mining asteroids, such as they have publicly released anyway. Are you suggesting that they are lying for short term gain? Surely that kind of approach would backfire quite badly on them as it would be fairly obvious whether they are bullshitting or not in less than three years.

ctdonath 14y ago
Not lying, but perhaps accepting that it is a big hairy audacious goal with commensurate odds. There's good (maybe not great) money in proposing over-the-top megaprojects. A small office of people writing up plans, solving high-level problems, presenting proposals, issuing news releases, soliciting investment, etc. can generate a decent income. Many such project proposals are going on all the time. My favorites: the floating libertarian city/utopia Oceania, the billion-dollar indoor ski result near Atlanta GA, and the 5-mile-span bridge over the Strait Of Gibraltar - all went nowhere, but were inspiring explorations of what could be done if only for want of funding. These are not "lies", just dreams on a scale so large that just proposing them attracts nontrivial income. Kudos to those who try, knowing failure is almost assured. Science fiction has long hypothesized asteroid mining. We are now at the point where we have the engineering capacity to do it, and the economy to take advantage of and benefit from the results; the one thing missing is the moon-landing and/or interstate-highway scale effort required to make it happen. ...and once in a while, such megaprojects succeed. For those with money to spare, facilitating asteroid mining (and maybe a space elevator to help) have a chance to score incredible good for mankind. "Strange how much human progress and accomplishment comes from contemplation of the irrelevant." - Scott Kim
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Lots of steps with hard problems to solve. How do you find the asteroids? (telescopes, answered) How to get mining equipment up there? How do you mine in zero gravity? How do you get the prize back home? How do you stop it when it gets here? How do you get it down? Each of these has a dozen sub-hard-problems. Like zero-gravity mining: how do you dock with/attach to the rock? How do you get enough energy there to break/smelt/refine? How do you continue to operate in the ever-expanding dust and grit halo mining produces? How do you deal with spares/repairs when the store is a billion feet away? How do you keep your prize once other nations realize "Hey! There's a trillion dollars of metal out there where there are no laws! We could just divert them easier than mining them ourselves!" and on and on. So,