4 ms·

He3? The trips will be cheap. Moon will be extended weekend trips. $10/kg to LEO. I.e. $1M for 100ton ship - compact nuclear reactor, small living quarters, 70

by trhway 9mo ago

He3? The trips will be cheap. Moon will be extended weekend trips. $10/kg to LEO. I.e. $1M for 100ton ship - compact nuclear reactor, small living quarters, 70 tons ejection mass for ionic drive - that is possible today - gets you to Mars in a few months. And in modern attention economy there is another extremely valuable resource to mine - attention of millions. At least initially the trips by IG/TikTok influencers (would be like Jack London posting TikToks as he goes instead of writing books later) will generate tremendous revenue paving the interplanetary ways for us, mere mortals. >Gold is way too cheap (and much easier to get on earth, even if the current mines are exhausted) With that logic Manilla Galeons wouldn't have happened :) Edit: just looked up prices of iridium, rhodium - $6K-$10K/ounce. So just 10kg - $2M+ . Thus it looks like there is a lot of economic sense for asteroid mining once we get to cheaply launch into LEO 100+ ton items like nuclear powered ships.

lukan 9mo ago
And all of this ... for gold? (even filtering sea water for it here on earth sounds a lot cheaper)
wileydragonfly 9mo ago
Been hearing about the miracle of He3 for decades. Neither one of us gets off this planet alive.
- trhway 9mo ago
  I’ll get, at least for short time :) If nothing comes better, in 20-30 years retired I’ll build something like that Denmark amateur rocket. It is cheap even today, and the tech and blueprints will be widespread and available like say drones and homemade planes today. Optimistically though I think by that time ticket to Moon on SpaceX cattle class will be $100K.
  - lukan 9mo ago
    Hey I feel your space enthusiasm and would really like to be in space at least once and preferable to the moon, but I don't see how it can be economical for mining for earth. Space mining makes sense to build things in space for further space colonisation, but I guess we will have to invent other reasons to justify it. (For me exploring space and working towards becoming a multi planet species is justification enough)
    - trhway 9mo ago
      it is like for example situation with energy production 30 years ago when solar was expensive and coal was cheap. Yet the solar have been becoming more and more cheap while coal becoming more and more expensive. The same will be with a lot of mining - the cost of it on earth, including environmental costs, will be rising while space mining costs will be falling. It will take time before space mined iron would make economical sense, where is space mining things like previously mentioned iridium, etc. looks to already have economical sense, or very close to it, even today.
      - lukan 9mo ago
        Space iron? Earth's crust is full of it, it will never make economical sense to bring it from space. You could use the energy needed for a rocket start to melt and seperate it from allmost any rock here on earth way easier. Some very rare elements or tritium maybe, but this is is a big maybe.
        trhway 9mo ago
        One of the points of space economy is that rocket needs to leave earth only once. After that the equipment would just be mining and sending stuff back using pretty unlimited solar and nuclear energy thus the amortized cost of the mined material would be going down to pretty much 0 which in the long run may work even for iron. Nobody these days surprised that producing stuff in China and delivering it 10000km is cheaper than producing locally. The same thing will be with mining as the cost structure - absence of environmental, regulatory and political costs in particular and much cheaper energy (solar and nuclear) - is much better in the space than on earth. Also scale - you can easily find asteroids where you can have a mining operation 10x or even 100x the largest earth operation - and scale drives cost down. The earth based operations will just lose the competition. >You could use the energy needed for a rocket start to melt and seperate it from allmost any rock here on earth way easier. good luck getting permit :)

by trhway 9mo ago

lukan 9mo ago

And all of this ... for gold? (even filtering sea water for it here on earth sounds a lot cheaper)

wileydragonfly 9mo ago

Been hearing about the miracle of He3 for decades. Neither one of us gets off this planet alive.

trhway 9mo ago
I’ll get, at least for short time :) If nothing comes better, in 20-30 years retired I’ll build something like that Denmark amateur rocket. It is cheap even today, and the tech and blueprints will be widespread and available like say drones and homemade planes today. Optimistically though I think by that time ticket to Moon on SpaceX cattle class will be $100K.
- lukan 9mo ago
  Hey I feel your space enthusiasm and would really like to be in space at least once and preferable to the moon, but I don't see how it can be economical for mining for earth. Space mining makes sense to build things in space for further space colonisation, but I guess we will have to invent other reasons to justify it. (For me exploring space and working towards becoming a multi planet species is justification enough)
  - trhway 9mo ago
    it is like for example situation with energy production 30 years ago when solar was expensive and coal was cheap. Yet the solar have been becoming more and more cheap while coal becoming more and more expensive. The same will be with a lot of mining - the cost of it on earth, including environmental costs, will be rising while space mining costs will be falling. It will take time before space mined iron would make economical sense, where is space mining things like previously mentioned iridium, etc. looks to already have economical sense, or very close to it, even today.
    - lukan 9mo ago
      Space iron? Earth's crust is full of it, it will never make economical sense to bring it from space. You could use the energy needed for a rocket start to melt and seperate it from allmost any rock here on earth way easier. Some very rare elements or tritium maybe, but this is is a big maybe.
      - trhway 9mo ago
        One of the points of space economy is that rocket needs to leave earth only once. After that the equipment would just be mining and sending stuff back using pretty unlimited solar and nuclear energy thus the amortized cost of the mined material would be going down to pretty much 0 which in the long run may work even for iron. Nobody these days surprised that producing stuff in China and delivering it 10000km is cheaper than producing locally. The same thing will be with mining as the cost structure - absence of environmental, regulatory and political costs in particular and much cheaper energy (solar and nuclear) - is much better in the space than on earth. Also scale - you can easily find asteroids where you can have a mining operation 10x or even 100x the largest earth operation - and scale drives cost down. The earth based operations will just lose the competition. >You could use the energy needed for a rocket start to melt and seperate it from allmost any rock here on earth way easier. good luck getting permit :)