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If it's a bogus argument then mount a counterargument. The question is simple: what is worth mining in space? So far we have... "maybe platinum." Maybe! Aside

If it's a bogus argument then mount a counterargument. The question is simple: what is worth mining in space? So far we have... "maybe platinum." Maybe! Aside from the conspicuous absence of math, "maybe platinum" isn't remotely important enough a factor in earthbound mining to justify asteroid mining on the basis of preserving earth, obviously.

pfdietz 1y ago
Look at those goalposts shift! I don't need to argue things are practically mineable in space to rebut the point. I just need to argue if they aren't practically mineable, energy consumption isn't a reason. I have already given you the counterargument. > we have maybe platinum Those making the energy argument need to rebut every possibility. The "it takes to much energy to ship back" is ludicrously wrong for platinum. The argument destroyed, why would we need to say more? It takes as little as 0.1 km/s delta V to get onto an Earth-intersecting orbit from known NEOs. The energy of a mass moving at 100 m/s is 5x10^3 J/kg, or 1.4e-3 kWh. If a kWh costs $1 in space, this would be a fraction of a cent per kilogram. This delta-V is so small that the energy cost of sending back base metals would be affordable. Hell, the energy cost of shipping gravel from space would be affordable! Other costs, probably not, but that's not the claim we're addressing.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  You maybe forgot what thread you're in. Scroll up to the first comment I replied to to remind yourself of where the goalposts are. In fact in my very first comment I mentioned there "can't be many!," and indeed there are not. We have "maybe platinum if we can just drop it into the atmosphere with no reentry vehicles or if we can autonomously build reentry vehicles using material we find in space." So far that's the best answer, so thanks for providing it. You may also find in your scrolling that I did not say "it takes too much energy to ship back." I said "What resources are on asteroids that justify the energy expenditure to get from space and back?" Obviously getting down is not the expensive part. We've all heard of gravity. Getting the equipment up that is needed to get stuff down is. This is also due to gravity. I'm afraid you misread my first comment and responded as if I thought it was energy expensive to drop stuff onto earth.
Teever 1y ago
What's worth mining in space? Everything that we can mine in space. That seems glib but I'll elaborate. By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes. So how do we do it? We don't need to start sending fleets and fleets of crafts into space which is energetically expensive and time consuming, what we need to do is develop self-replicating mining equipment that we can send to turn the things we want to mine into more things that can mine for us. We won't achieve full self-replication immediately but we can definitely send machines that can do partial self-replication at first and work on improving the ratio of material sent to material returned. What do we send back? titanium, platinum, aluminum, nickel, iron, whatever we find there. If platinum was as cheap and plentiful as aluminum was now we would have all sorts of catalytic uses for it that would significantly clean up our Earth based industrial practices. How do we send it back? If we're sending it back from the moon that's easy -- a space elevator or rail gun. If we're sending it back from asteroids inefficient but cheap iron ion thrusters. Use iron from the asteroids as fuel. Bonus points: Send it back covered in ablative material like mined olivine that can react with CO2 in the atmosphere to sequester it, that way the whole process isn't just moving environmentally damaging industrial practices to other solar bodies but we're undoing some of the damage from past human activities.
- modo_mario 1y ago
  Not the person you responded to but my 2cents. You expect to find the vast vast majority of materials for this self replicating mining equipment as well on the same asteroid? For them to put up the huge amounts of energy generation, materials refining and self fabrication for them to do a large amount of tasks and build reentry packages without us sending a lot of stuff into space lest we very easily surpass the impact of mining on earth. We'll have to get very very creative with nickle-iron and silicates to build a small automata civilization on big flyby rocks.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  > By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes. ... but this won't happen unless it's economically advantageous, with all risk, transit, and upfront investment included We already don't have the political will to force single-digit increases in cost of output to reduce environmental damage. Why would we then?
tenthirtyam 1y ago
I recently read "Delta-v" and the sequel "Critical Mass: A Novel" by Daniel Suarez. They're very much fiction but there is a certain amount of science underpinning the arguments and I enjoyed that aspect. And the author even states that he's trying to get across, with solid arguments, why humanity should begin planning asteroid mining ASAP. In brief, the arguments are: Firstly we're now at a point where we have lots of cheap energy available, principally chemical. Depending on many factors it's conceivable that we are in fact at or near peak human energy output (e.g. WW3 or civilization collapse - the next iteration of civilization won't have so much cheap oil to exploit). Secondly LEO is not yet full of junk, meaning that it's trivial to find launch windows to LEO and beyond. That could easily change very much for the worse in a relatively short time (I infer decades from the books). Finally it's unrealistic to expect us to colonize the Moon or Mars using only Earth-mined materials. You can launch a spacecraft to Mars easily, but to launch a small city's amount of construction equipment and raw materials is beyond our capabilities. Conclusion: now is the best time to mine asteroids. We can do all of the processing and much of the construction in LEO (or even better at Earth-Moon or Earth-Sun lagrange points) and then, with relatively low delta-v, we'd actually have a chance of becoming an interplanetary species! But, the novels warn, the window of opportunity will eventually ("soon") close. Well worth the read. Maybe someone else more familiar with the arguments, who has also read these novels, can offer a critique?
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  This is predicated on it being worthwhile to colonize the moon or Mars, no?
  - expenses3 1y ago
    No. The best thing you can do with a lot of mass in LEO is construct solar power stations that beam energy down to Earth in the form of microwaves. This is what the second book, Critical Mass, gets into. Receivers on Earth wouldn't provide as much power as solar, but would be much easier to construct and work 24/7, no matter the weather. This would be highly useful for reducing climate change and increasing climate resilience.

pfdietz 1y ago

Look at those goalposts shift! I don't need to argue things are practically mineable in space to rebut the point. I just need to argue if they aren't practically mineable, energy consumption isn't a reason. I have already given you the counterargument. > we have maybe platinum Those making the energy argument need to rebut every possibility. The "it takes to much energy to ship back" is ludicrously wrong for platinum. The argument destroyed, why would we need to say more? It takes as little as 0.1 km/s delta V to get onto an Earth-intersecting orbit from known NEOs. The energy of a mass moving at 100 m/s is 5x10^3 J/kg, or 1.4e-3 kWh. If a kWh costs $1 in space, this would be a fraction of a cent per kilogram. This delta-V is so small that the energy cost of sending back base metals would be affordable. Hell, the energy cost of shipping gravel from space would be affordable! Other costs, probably not, but that's not the claim we're addressing.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
You maybe forgot what thread you're in. Scroll up to the first comment I replied to to remind yourself of where the goalposts are. In fact in my very first comment I mentioned there "can't be many!," and indeed there are not. We have "maybe platinum if we can just drop it into the atmosphere with no reentry vehicles or if we can autonomously build reentry vehicles using material we find in space." So far that's the best answer, so thanks for providing it. You may also find in your scrolling that I did not say "it takes too much energy to ship back." I said "What resources are on asteroids that justify the energy expenditure to get from space and back?" Obviously getting down is not the expensive part. We've all heard of gravity. Getting the equipment up that is needed to get stuff down is. This is also due to gravity. I'm afraid you misread my first comment and responded as if I thought it was energy expensive to drop stuff onto earth.

Teever 1y ago

What's worth mining in space? Everything that we can mine in space. That seems glib but I'll elaborate. By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes. So how do we do it? We don't need to start sending fleets and fleets of crafts into space which is energetically expensive and time consuming, what we need to do is develop self-replicating mining equipment that we can send to turn the things we want to mine into more things that can mine for us. We won't achieve full self-replication immediately but we can definitely send machines that can do partial self-replication at first and work on improving the ratio of material sent to material returned. What do we send back? titanium, platinum, aluminum, nickel, iron, whatever we find there. If platinum was as cheap and plentiful as aluminum was now we would have all sorts of catalytic uses for it that would significantly clean up our Earth based industrial practices. How do we send it back? If we're sending it back from the moon that's easy -- a space elevator or rail gun. If we're sending it back from asteroids inefficient but cheap iron ion thrusters. Use iron from the asteroids as fuel. Bonus points: Send it back covered in ablative material like mined olivine that can react with CO2 in the atmosphere to sequester it, that way the whole process isn't just moving environmentally damaging industrial practices to other solar bodies but we're undoing some of the damage from past human activities.

modo_mario 1y ago
Not the person you responded to but my 2cents. You expect to find the vast vast majority of materials for this self replicating mining equipment as well on the same asteroid? For them to put up the huge amounts of energy generation, materials refining and self fabrication for them to do a large amount of tasks and build reentry packages without us sending a lot of stuff into space lest we very easily surpass the impact of mining on earth. We'll have to get very very creative with nickle-iron and silicates to build a small automata civilization on big flyby rocks.
sorcerer-mar 1y ago
> By moving mining off planet to the moon and asteroids we eliminate the carbon emissions and environmental damage that occurs from these processes. ... but this won't happen unless it's economically advantageous, with all risk, transit, and upfront investment included We already don't have the political will to force single-digit increases in cost of output to reduce environmental damage. Why would we then?

tenthirtyam 1y ago

I recently read "Delta-v" and the sequel "Critical Mass: A Novel" by Daniel Suarez. They're very much fiction but there is a certain amount of science underpinning the arguments and I enjoyed that aspect. And the author even states that he's trying to get across, with solid arguments, why humanity should begin planning asteroid mining ASAP. In brief, the arguments are: Firstly we're now at a point where we have lots of cheap energy available, principally chemical. Depending on many factors it's conceivable that we are in fact at or near peak human energy output (e.g. WW3 or civilization collapse - the next iteration of civilization won't have so much cheap oil to exploit). Secondly LEO is not yet full of junk, meaning that it's trivial to find launch windows to LEO and beyond. That could easily change very much for the worse in a relatively short time (I infer decades from the books). Finally it's unrealistic to expect us to colonize the Moon or Mars using only Earth-mined materials. You can launch a spacecraft to Mars easily, but to launch a small city's amount of construction equipment and raw materials is beyond our capabilities. Conclusion: now is the best time to mine asteroids. We can do all of the processing and much of the construction in LEO (or even better at Earth-Moon or Earth-Sun lagrange points) and then, with relatively low delta-v, we'd actually have a chance of becoming an interplanetary species! But, the novels warn, the window of opportunity will eventually ("soon") close. Well worth the read. Maybe someone else more familiar with the arguments, who has also read these novels, can offer a critique?

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
This is predicated on it being worthwhile to colonize the moon or Mars, no?
- expenses3 1y ago
  No. The best thing you can do with a lot of mass in LEO is construct solar power stations that beam energy down to Earth in the form of microwaves. This is what the second book, Critical Mass, gets into. Receivers on Earth wouldn't provide as much power as solar, but would be much easier to construct and work 24/7, no matter the weather. This would be highly useful for reducing climate change and increasing climate resilience.