ok, maybe i was brash and i have to admit i was totally wrong.
From a long-term architectural point of view, the ability to test resource extraction processes and
enable commercial resource production ideas to be applied to the captured NEA would pave the way for
use of asteroidal materials in human deep-space expeditions, greatly reducing required up-mass from
Earth, and thus the cost, of such missions. A 500-t, carbonaceous C-type asteroid may contain up to
200 t of volatiles (~100 t water and ~100 t carbon-rich compounds), 90 t of metals (approximately 83 t
of iron, 6 t of nickel, and 1 t of cobalt), and 200 t of silicate residue (similar to the average lunar surface
material)
quoted from that paper.
it is totally worth it to spend $2.6 billion to retrieve 83 tons of iron.
TastesLikeChicken. you got me dude. i had nothing to do and i came back to post where i said i would not post anymore.
Think i said it's impossible? Nope. Practically it is, because it's not gonna happen. There isn't any money in it.
But it seems you just wanted to take the piss and didn't actually re-read what was posted before. It's not economically feasible, asteroids that are close to us have nothing awesome in them, and we haven't developed (not "theorised" .. developed) the technology yet.
Sure there's stuff out there worth a fortune or two. But it's not iron for sure. Nor gold.
And mind you, this speculating doesn't even take into account all the shit that's goning to go wrong - like dust accumulating in near orbit from processing ore. Or disruption of the toposphere, pollution, and all other environmental problems associated with launching into orbit.
Carl Sagan was, first of all, a realist. please don't insult his memory by hurr-durr we are going into space. Space mining is going to happen, eventually. because it's easier to get metals from space than to bring them into orbit, and if we want to build stuff in orbit that's where we'll get our stuff from.
But not only the idea that we should go mine asteroids to bring stuff back to earth is
bad, but to think it's gonna happen with our current technology and civilisation, and to make money out of it, it's ridiculous. And to top it off, it's not the brainchild of some serious research organisation, but of James "Titanic" Cameron and his bunch of investors friends. LOL.
This is the same reason why i hate michio kaku - he says things that are theorethically possible (*if* a certain number of yet uncertain, and frankly quite hapzardous theories are proven true) as if they are going to happen next wednesday at eight. Travel Between parallel Universes!! It's Real!!
Asteroid mining has the same appeal and problems as Mecha; if you have the technology to build a gundam-sized mech, you can - with the same technology level - build a tank that's 10x times more powerful. With the technological effort to develop space mining, we can mine more iron, gold, tellurium, and other bullshit here on earth.
It's just that getting stuff from earth where there's air and gravity, to space, is f* complicated, and complicated = expensive.
Now you may go back and see how all these were written before. I'm not trying to win an argument on "i like space mining" or "i don't like space mining". I even said myslef that there's stuff out there that is so precious it doesn't even have a monetary worth yet. Metallic hydrogen. alien lifeforms. concentrated neutron matter. holy smokes batman you don't need to be a genius to know this stuff. just Wikipedia and Celestia and a few too many hours of free time.
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There's another recent thread here on AT i called bs on; take a look (about some 19yo girl who invented a new space engine), maybe you want to hate there too.
yeah i'm editing; don't wanna resurrect this thread, but wanted the satisfaction of trolling my awesomeness.
people that disagree with me: TastesLikeChicken
people that agree with me: Neil DeGrasse-Tyson
i win
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZw5Vz_imPM&feature=player_embedded