/sci/ - Science & Math

>>1747742
I liek mudkipz

Enjoy your astronomical insurance costs

who are you going to sell it to for 20 trillion dollars?

>>1747747

>>1747751
>2m - 10m
>At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1 mile contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.[1] In fact, all the gold, cobalt[citation needed], iron[citation needed], manganese[citation needed], molybdenum[citation needed], nickel[citation needed], osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium and ruthenium that we now mine from the Earth's crust, and that are essential for our economic and technological development, came originally from the rain of asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled.[2][3] This is because, while asteroids and the Earth congealed from the same starting materials, Earth's massive gravity pulled all such siderophilic (iron loving) elements into the planet's core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago. This left the crust depleted of such valuable elements. Most asteroids, on the other hand, have little gravity and therefore never underwent such differentiation.

a 1 mile wide asteroid is about 2 billion times as big as a 2 meter wide asteroid.

thats like 10,000 dollars, and to get it you have to slow down 30 tons of metal from orbit velocity.

>>1747773
Goddamnit.
Any other ways to transport fairly large asteroids down to the surface without just crashing them?

>>1747779

catch them in a net?

>>1747780
Oh if only.

>>1747742
If only we could somehow not only mine them for materials after landing, but harness the kinetic energy they get while descending as a power source.

>>1747779
Crash them into the moon. They can be as big as you want and it isn't much of a biggie setting up a lunar opperation for 2 trillion.

>>1747780
Put a bunch of hunky men in the drop zone to catch it.

>>1747783
Hmmm. Shame we don't know how.

why not refine them in near earth orbit? more cost effective?

>>1747788
You'd have to find a way to heat them up to fairly high temperatures while having ample working space and living space to do so. It would probably be a few times larger than the ISS, at the very least.

1) Bomb moon
2) Build space elevator linking directly to the moon (geostationary)
3) WE'RE MINING ON THE MOON
­ WE CARRY HARPOONS

>>1747788
Yea it would be more cost effective to have a mobile refinery that was in LEO that could move from asteroid to asteroid

The common mines minerals could be made into capsules to protect the more expensive minerals during re-entry

>>1747779
Pic related. Its a maple seed. Hammer the asteroids into this shape and drop them over Antarctica.

>>1747786
I like this idea.

Get muscular and naked men to catch the falling asteroid!

Fund it!

>>1747795
This sounds potentially awesome.

>>1747785
This.

>it isn't much of a biggie setting up a lunar opperation for 2 trillion.

1. Perfect bulk orbital manufacture of buckyfibre.
2. Produce a fuckshitload of separate ribbons.
3. Steer two resource-heavy asteroids of similar mass to low orbit.
4. Connect the two with extendable ribbons.
5. Set the asteroids spinning at orbital velocity or near it.
6. Lengthen the ribbons gradually until they start to dip deep into the atmosphere.
7. Release the ribbons.
8. The lower asteroid comes down at a relatively slow pace, while the upper reaches a higher orbit.
9. Emphasis on 'relatively', aim for siberia.
10. Glorious workers paradise conquers the world with meteoric resources.

>>1747791
you shitting me? atmospheric friction (so you dip them in the atmosphere, convert spare heat into thrust capacity)

and even so, still more cost effective than floating them to earth. So you need a big refinery, you only need to put it up there ONCE.

a problem have with asteroid mining:

assuming we start mining heavily and bring several asteroids worth of material on earth.
wouldnt the mass of the earth increase but its velocity wouldnt? would earth spiral into the sun?

>>1747807
Haven't you seen Moon?

>>1747821
>atmospheric friction (so you dip them in the atmosphere, convert spare heat into thrust capacity)
How the shit does heat turn into thrust? You would need to refuel that station a few times per day, wouldn't you?

>>1747832
Nope. Will torrent now.
>>1747827
Tonnes of space dust and vaporized asteroid remains rain down on Earth every year. I don't think so.

>>1747795
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG

>>1747833
i don't know, but then how does this 'parachute them down' shit work? lol

superheated rock can be used to ... er ... heat steam powered generators? or even use some of the superheated rock as thruster, just gotta move it about a bit.

leave the engineering for the gays ffs.

>>1747833
Not that guy, but:
>How the shit does heat turn into thrust?
I could imagine boring pits into the groundside face and filling them with cometary ice which, when heated, will boil, producing steam and thus, thrust. Or you could refine the concept and use the heat to crack the water so you could fuel a powerful O+H-engine with it.

Not saying it would work all that well, just putting up some ideas.

>>1747844
>I could imagine boring pits into the groundside face and filling them with cometary ice which, when heated, will boil, producing steam and thus, thrust. Or you could refine the concept and use the heat to crack the water so you could fuel a powerful O+H-engine with it.

That sounds complex, but....
TOTALLY AWESOME AT THE SAME TIME

>>1747827
The inertia of an asteroid is so much smaller than the inertia of the Earth that there would be little effect. Also since we'd have the asteroid orbiting the Earth before dropping it, the momentum vector of the asteroid relative to the sun would be very close to that of the Earth's, so landing the asteroid would increase the Earth's momentum somewhat.

>>1747742
It would drive swamp the market and cut profits.

>>1747837
isnt there a difference between between tons of spacedust and millions of tonnes?
a years production of steel on earth right now is 1219.7 million metric tonnes. asteroid mining would match that, if not be greater. thats a fuckton of more weight over a few decades.

>>1747837
>Tonnes of space dust and vaporized asteroid remains rain down on Earth every year. I don't think so.

this may blow your mind, but actually about 100 tons of dust and larger particles collides with the earth per day.

>>1747742
Why would you even think of landing the thing on the earth instead of just mining it in space after pulling it into geo-sync orbit?

>>1747851
Fuck iron/steel.
The main money is in the rare elements such as platinum and rhodium.

>>1747854
Actually I was expecting something like that; I wasn't sure so I did a conservative estimate though.

>>1747855
I would imagine that mining in space is harder and more expensive than on Earth.

>>1747856
Only as long as they have uses. Iron, because of its stability, might be very valuable in the long run. Not sure if pun intended.

>>1747861
But the Earth has shittons of Iron to mine... Right?
I'm not sure if most of it is in just the core or not.

>>1747844
>leave the engineering for the gays

WIN

How are you going to bring that massive an asteroid to earth from the asteroid belt for less than a trillion dollars?

>>1747866
it only takes a few little pushes

>>1747869
No, it takes an incredibly fucking big push with more energy than you can imagine.

>>1747866

we don't even need to get one from the asteroid belt, there are plenty of closer ones we can use first.

>>1747786
This is why women aren't allowed to be engineers.

>>1747866
Where the shit did I say asteroid belt?

>>1747872
o rly?

what, when they're already in space and not subject to huge gravitational forces? and you can use slingshot effect? and time isn't so important?

i think you need to read some more books

>>1747872
>more energy than you can imagine
>hollywood got a lot to answer for

>>1747883
>>1747872
Why not shoot asteroids toward Earth/Mars with mass drivers?

Value of the metals and minerals are determined by their rarity. Finding a way to have them in abundance will fuck that up to a fraction of their original price and threaten to make the whole operation not cost effective.

>>1747742
>20 trillion dollars
>doesn't understand SUPPLY/demand

>>1747897
Dude. We're running OUT of some of these. It's quite hard to find some of these metals on Earth. This would just lower the price a little along with securing our mineral consumption for the future.

>>1747897

thats why you fix the prices. see: de beers.

Y'know, this is a good idea for more than just resource reasons. We can also make sure that Earth is safe in the event of a potential dangerous impact. Incoming meteor/asteroid? Fuck that! We harvest the bitch!

Personally, my vote as to how we do it, though, is for increased research into the Woodward effect. If we can master the effect and build large enough, powerful enough generators, we could clear landing zone and reduce the effective weight of the asteroid to near-zero.

Then, we just bring it down and gravity does the rest.

Frankly, though, a sphere of metal one mile in diameter is going to weigh a fuckton. I'm not sure how we could build a structure of any sort that would keep it from just boring a hole clean down into Earth's crust.

>>1747895
because you'd need a thousand asteroids worth of material to build a big enough railgun :D

But seriously, I can't see why not, that's the way Hexamon did it with Thistledown.

>>1747910
I'm not talking about absolutely massive railguns, I'm talking about maybe a stretch 200m long and 40m wide.
Well, that still is a bit big.

>>1747883
I think you need to read more books... or maybe different books. Asteroids in the asteroid belt are in a much larger orbit than the earth. You have no idea what you're talking about in using a slingshot trajectory. The asteroid needs to be given a lower-energy orbit. Using a slingshot tragectory requires moving the asteroid to another planet with a velocity close to the velocity of the planet. You just have no idea what you're talking about or the amounts of energy that would be required to confer that much velocity change to something that massive.

>>1747902
We're running out of everything, that's what determines the price. As long as we're not out, it will likely remain more cost effective to mine it on Earth. Which will be a very long time considering we've barely explored our real minable wealth accurately and have only gone for the easy catches up to now.

>>1747906
Only works for some sectors, if it is important enough in that it facilitates nations to have advanced technology, then be sure they'll crack the market open by starting some competition.

>>1747915
work up slowly doesn't need huge acceleration

Is anyone else here concerned about having millions of tons of rock in LEO? Murphy's law pretty much decrees that a gas tank or some hydraulics will explode or something and one will end up landing on a population centre at some point.

My vote goes with the moon, it gives us an excuse to start colonisin' too.

>>1747897
It's not as if the minerals will be spontaneously appearing in existing mines all over the world, it'll be more than likely a single company or consortium owning ALL of these new minerals, they can set the prices of their own as they see fit, they could choose to keep them in line with the current ones if they wanted, giving themselves astronomnical profits or cut them in half and crash the markets, some tricksy economic dealings would have to happen, at least until someone brought down their own asteroid and went into competition.

>>1747915
>Asteroids in the asteroid belt are in a much larger orbit than the earth.
>implying that there isn't a gradient from 0.1mm to 1,000km

>>1747921
It doesn't matter how slowly you work up. The total energy required to change from one orbit to another orbit is the same.

>>1747924
wtf are you talking about? the astroid belt starts a wee bit further out than 1 mm from the sun.

>>1747913
You either didn't read the second line or haven't read Eon by Greg Bear, or its sequels.

In those books, Thistledown is an asteroid starship which has been hollowed out and which uses mass drivers to hurl parts of its mass away to impart thrust.

Also, two hundred meters is minuscule when talking about mass drivers.

>>1747922

>Is anyone else here concerned about having millions of tons of rock in LEO?

Yes.

>>1747925
slowly means not using huge thrusters with fuel you brought with you plus they already have velocity from their orbits you're not kicking them up from scratch

i don't do this more energy than you could possibly imagine shit

>>1747922
>Is anyone else here concerned about having millions of tons of rock in LEO?
>A low Earth orbit (LEO) is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km.

As long as it doesn't exceed the size needed for complete vaporization I'm completely fine with it.
Fuck, I wouldn't give a shit if a 1km asteroid was hanging above.

>>1747915

no I think YOU need to read more books. closer orbits are higher energy and you need to accelerate an asteroid from the asteroid belt to get it to a near-earth orbit. this could be done by passing it near mars because an ideal slingshot adds nearly the orbit velocity of the planet doing the slingshot to the original velocity of the object being slingshotted.

>>1747925
I think his point is that there are ways to do it which mean that you don't have to strap a saturn V to it or somehow launch a fission reactor up there.

You can do it with 100m of mass driver and some solar panels if you're willing to wait long enough, firing chunks of the asteroid off the surface of the asteroid, yes you're getting rid of your profits, but it's still more cost effective.

>>1747922
>Is anyone else here concerned about having millions of tons of rock in LEO
that's a thought

>>1747936
not that guy again, but:
>closer orbits are higher energy and you need to accelerate an asteroid from the asteroid belt to get it to a near-earth orbit
wtf am I reading?

I hope you meant to sat that you need to decelerate them to get them into Earth orbit from the belt. Because that's the way orbital mechanics work in this universe.

>>1747949

no. orbit velocity of earth orbit is about 30 km/s, while orbit velocity at asteroid belt is about 20 km/s. you need to accelerate an asteroid by about 10 km/s to get it into near earth orbit.

dumb cunt.

>>1747936
LOL, no, you fucktard. Closer orbits are not higher energy. If you used Mars to add speed to an asteroid before sending it to earth, it would arrive at earth going far to fast, and end up further past the asteroid belt than where it started. I suggest you read less sci fi and read up on kepler's laws. The asteroid's total energy, potential + kinetic, is in excess of what it needs to be to enter earth orbit.

But whether it's more or less energy is irrelevant. You could use a planetary maneuver around mars to add or subtract energy, but to do so you need to get it to mars with a velocity very close to the velocity of mars, which is the very thing that takes an unimaginable amount of energy.

>>1747959
LOL, you fucking retard. Have you ever heard of gravitational potential?

>>1747959
This is why it's just as well that the US no longer has a space program.

>>1747959
>no, I never learned, why?
your post is why you should have learned

>>1747966
"The purpose of space exploration is to actually go across space, not hang around in space and observe the health effects from doing so!"

>>1747979
uh... wha... huh...?

>>1747988
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5uImXbhQM8

>>1747979
Who is that guy and why does he still have a job?

>>1747992
Robert Zubrin, and are you trolling me on the job thing?

>>1747991
ah, okay, thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=-8bIQLiKi3g&feature=related

Shameless bump

>>1747913

>that still is a bit big

Of course, if we want to ship resources down to earth, we'd probably be better off refining the stuff in orbit, using unfiltered solar as power and cast the shipments into a lander form with an onboard control unit making sure the shit hits the target area instead of a fan.

Kinda like >>1747795 suggested, but using a more shuttle-like form.

This could be refined by using more durable bulk materials as the descender shells and put more refined, less durable cargo inside them.

This could still be economical if a beanstalk is built, since the descender shells would be recycled into usable materials for groundside industries.

And if orbital buckyfiber industry starts blooming, the descenders could be given drogues made of carbon sheets, for safer landings.

>>1748064
I was speaking from a standpoint of having to create the materials and components needed on Earth and then blasting them off toward the Asteroid Belt.

>>1748101
Anotherguy here again, please elaborate.

>>1748135
Well transporting like 100 tonnes worth of construction materials and electromagnets to the asteroid belt isn't exactly feasible/affordable.

sure is mad in here.

Cheaper to mine the asteroid where it is, then send the pieces back to parachute in over Antarctica. Of course then you'd have pollution over long periods of time. Perhaps the desert? Free labor there.

>>1748154
Let's start with the moon. There's a metric shitton of titanium up there (not to mention he3 for making fusion power a possibility back on earth). But we could set up manufacturing on the moon at some point.

>>1748194

GOD DAMN IT IF I SEE ONE MORE PERSON SAYING WE SHOULD MINE THE MOON FOR He3....

It's 1 part per ten million. ONE FUCKING PART.

AND YES, I FUCKING MAD.

>>1748194
What, mass drivers on the moon?
Well.... Hmm....
Son, I am interest

>>1748198

He3 gets there from the sun. Just set up collectors for incoming He3.

>>1748218
>>1748198
It's collected on the moon in the regolith. It's .05 ppm in the permanently shadowed regions and .01 ppm in the sunlit regions. And of course we should fucking mine it. We should be doing it now.

ITT: endless fucking sci-fi

Gold mines operate to extract gold deposits less that a ppm. There's nothing unprecedented about that.

>>1748198
That's still more than on the Earth, we should totally go to the moon and mine some Helium-3 and send it back here. It's not like the moon is that far away anyway.

>>1748194
>>1748207
>mass drivers on the moon
inb4moon_is_a_harsh_mistress

>mine asteroids of rare metals
>metals no longer rare
>price of platinum plummets
>asteroid mining no longer profitable
Sure, what could possibly go wrong here?

>>1748279
>Sure, what could possibly go wrong here?
people actually listening to you and destroying any future the species might have?

>>1748285
If you get all amped over someone talking about how retarded asteroid mining is, wait until I tell you about the history of *religion*, young man.

>>1748279
>open new mine for rare metals
>metals no longer rare
>price of platinum plummets
>mine no longer profitable
It's like people don't think this has ever been dealt with before...

>>1748279
Artificial scarcity, have you heard of it? The housing market is an example.

>>1748285
because one thread on /sci/ is going to change the opinions of a generation of enthusiastic engineers and physicists and is going to dissuade a generation of investors from taking risks for massive profit, even if it could turn out to be only short term.

You might as well try and stop a cat 5 hurricane by doing the bump. The commercial space age is coming.

>>1748279
>platinum suddenly affordable
>market for platinum explodes with plenty of now-feasible projects
>demand for platinum rises

>>1748299
Well, as long as you put your faith in undeniably vague statements that can never be falsified you can certainly rest easy that you are correct, but let me assure you there are people out there that will know you're an idiot.

>>1748303
This is quite true. Platinum is that useful. However, prices should not become higher than before, unless new killer apps are discovered.

>>1748318
Catalysts, motherfucker.

>>1748308
not following you, I wasn't the first guy you posted about, I was just trying to say that you were overreacting a bit by saying that someone on this thread might read something that guy had said and immediately give up on the thought of asteroid mining forever - and idiocy is subjective, brah. There's no need for name calling.

>>market for platinum explodes
Along with the rest of the earth.

1. get a large asteroid
2. excavate a cavity and process the removed materials
3. seal and pressurise the cavity
4. set up habitat/operations inside the asteroid
5. ???
6. PROFIT

>>1748299
Ah, but the populace is made of individuals. While he sounds retarded, there's a chance someone stupid enough to believe him happens to read it.

So now instead of one kook crying over it, you have two retards spouting bullshit.

If either of them manage to live even a month longer, they have a high chance to come into contact with more people in a receptive state.

fuck artificial scarcity, post-scarcity FTW!

looooooool

>>1748341
The only people that benefit from politeness in discussion are those that are incorrect.

>>1748417
You're wrong, cunt.

The parachute would burn up in atmosphere.

>>Well transporting like 100 tonnes worth of construction materials and electromagnets to the asteroid belt isn't exactly feasible/affordable.

Wait, you are talking about putting a 1mile diameter asteroid in orbit around earth and to transport these resources to the surface, but you think getting 100 tonnes of payload to the asteroid belt isn't feasible?

Also people who ignore time are silly. Its called the time-value of money, and its gonna seriously setback the financial feasibility of mining asteroids.

Using the materials to construct orbital colonies and solar power stations to sell electricity to earth is the best way to make any of this feasible imo.

>>1748423
this.

Politesse is something that will always help bring your point across. Think about it, would you be more inclined to listen to someone who appeared to be taking the time to go out of their way to explain things carefully, or someone who immediately called you retarded and left it at that.

Anyway, this is geting off topic, stop being a dick and start talking about SCIENCE!

For example, would it be possible to put a cheap satellite into space which would allow us to remotely detect all feasably mineable asteroids this side of the asteroid belt?

What instruments would we put on it? Could we just do it with radars/ladars? or would we actually have to get "out" there in order to do it.

For that matter, could we create a unit which we could use to find us something and then feasably bring it us back, using Solar power/Ion engines?

Not thinking something massive here, simple as possible, mass produceable, maybe even reusable or at least partially recyclable. Finds a small asteroid, lands on it, digs in, pushes it back towards earth, assists with it landing using parachutes/balloons. GPS tags/beacons. Probably best to land on solid ground because of meteorite weight. American Plains/Siberia/Africa? Have a team with a few big trucks go and break it to pieces and pick it up, bring it home and mine the fuck out of it.

Inurdaes, go back to smoking pot and thinking you can found a technocracy with a bunch of /sci/ducks who don't even really care about the project, raising funds by starting a fucking nanotech company.

>>1748507
I never said 1 mile. That was an EXAMPLE.
>>1748533
I'm stoned off my tits and at least I still know not be a fucking cock for the sake of being a cock.
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