/sci/ - Science & Math

And all that because conservatives refuse to use any alternatives.

Fuck the ocean. I want space.

>>2113319

You cannot into space. Nobody makes a spaceship a normal person can afford. But for the price of a nice car, you can into the ocean. Pic related

>>2113319

The ocean is almost the same...kind of. You can live there, but you need special living environments and personal suits to go outside. Water is kind of like an atmosphere, and there is a lot to discover still.

For the fellow spacefags:

Platinium deposits in the ocean floor will enable the use of superconducting magnetic sails to carry large amounts of cargo to pretty much all over the NEO objects. Not to mention that if industry is to grow and fully exploit the stuff that's underground we'll need ENERGY, fuckshitloads of it, which has to be obtained, and since we're facing an energy crisis (Which could be solved if nuclear was used, but you rarely can fight useless paranoia) we're probably going to have to simultaneously Asimov Array the Moon.

That being said, asteroids have more purity than underwater deposits. Not the these are easier to reach.

>>2113323

That's where the Open Space Movement and the nanotech revolution come along.

2025 to 2050. Mark my fucking words.

>>2113340

Precisely. When you consider ambitious plans or expansion into space, you must ask where the wealth and exotic metals will come from.

Which naturally shifts your gaze to the sea. A source which remains almost totally unexploited because the technological challenges to getting down there and extracting ore have kept us out until now.

Think of it as an unlockable store of wealth that we're gaining access to right when we need it the most. And think of exploring the sea as a tutorial stage for exploring space.

If we can do it here, we can do it out there.

How about reverse sea exploration?
Like, we put the ocean on the dry ground?

>>2113340

Precisely. When you consider ambitious plans for expansion into space, you must ask where the wealth and exotic metals will come from.

Which naturally shifts your gaze to the sea. A source which remains almost totally unexploited because the technological challenges to getting down there and extracting ore have kept us out until now.

Think of it as an unlockable store of wealth that we're gaining access to right when we need it the most. And think of exploring the sea as a tutorial stage for exploring space.

If we can do it here, we can do it out there.

Did anyone else think of rifters? It's like trans-humanism, but underwater.

>>2113362

The sea and space are impossible to regulate. Fuck imagine all the corporations unleashed upon hundreds of millions of tonnes of Rare Earths. Jesus Christ this century will be awesome. A lot of death and hard work, but fuck, it's more exciting that way.

It's fun because everyone always dreams of exotic faraway places and when they get there they run back screaming, half the time.

>>2113375
What the hell are you smoking?

>implying cthulhu won't be waiting for us down there

>>2113382

Fur.

>>2113309
China does not have a monopoly on Rare Earth Metals.

There is more than enough such resources located in western nations to suit our needs for a long time.

The only problem is that China is able to undercut everyone's prices on account of having no concept of worker rights or environmental protection. So everyone buys from China because they're the cheapest source available.

Thanks to their embargo, they're shooting themselves in the foot and making it possible for mining of rare earth metals to begin again in the US and elsewhere.

>>2113386
Ok....

>>2113388

Singularitarian's response: We'll just have AI robots in 2020.

>>2113309
Mad scientist I want you to be my brother in law, even if my sister is already engaged. Do you?...

>>2113396
AHAHAHAHAHA!!!! No.

>>2113388

>>Thanks to their embargo, they're shooting themselves in the foot and making it possible for mining of rare earth metals to begin again in the US and elsewhere.

They wouldn't have enacted the embargo if it were that simple for us to get rare earths elsewhere.

It takes decades to get a mining operation approved and set up on land. We're actually planning on buying from Canada and (I believe?) Australia in the meanwhile. But deep sea mining is particularly attractive because beyond a certain distance from shore, the legal barriers to mining decrease to almost nothing. There are environmental restrictions but because the equipment used in deep sea mining is unusually clean (subs are battery/fuel cell/nuclear powered) there hasn't been much resistance to the proposition.

So yes, while the Chinese monopoly is not absolute, it's close enough that we'll need a deep sea mining program to rival theirs if we hope to make up for the loss of their exports.

ITT: Optimists

>>2113396
>We will have A.I. by 2020

AHAHAHAHAHA!!!! No.

>>2113396
grad student working in robotics and AI here

no.

Oh look it's this thread again. I liked it more when you were trying to hype up the need for tacticool underwater sea planes.

Faggot

>>2113338
>>2113338
>scientists found that oceanic trenches that was "impossible for organisms to live in" actually bloom with life
>self-sufficient food pyramids built on geothermical/chemical energy of blacksmokers instead of solar
>scientists found photosynthetic higher animals
>the majority of vertebrate species is oceanic fish
>sediments of precious minerals and vespene gas waiting for additional pylons
>scientists found hyper-alophilous ecosystems with fully-anaerobic multi-cellular animals
>,,,,
>The ocean is almost the same
don't think so Tim

>>2113415

>> I liked it more when you were trying to hype up the need for tacticool underwater sea planes. Faggot

I like you more when you weren't calling me faggot. :C

>>2113406
You're making the mistake of assuming the US doesn't already have such mines approved and set up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine

Some management cock-ups and China undercutting prices put them out of business in 2002.

>Current plans are for full mining operations to resume by the second half of 2011

>>2113444

>>You're making the mistake of assuming the US doesn't already have such mines approved and set up.

You're making the mistake of thinking that a few domestic mines can compensate for the abrupt halt of Chinese rare earth exports.

Pic for that other guy: Badass fighter sub

Fools, its not like they dig up rare earths. Rare earths are found in small quantities in the ore of any material in the same chemical group, the problem is separating them, its expensive, difficult, and dirty. So only the chinese want to do it.

>>2113456

>> Rare earths are found in small quantities in the ore of any material in the same chemical group

Or in large, comparatively pure nodules on the sea floor. Pic related. The richest deposits are solid stalagmite looking things near vents, but these nodules are scattered for miles around them.

Looking at the recent years of contraction in curiosity of human general population, I'm afraid it will simply be another frontier where one or two men go before...

...humanity steps back, frightened of the loss of a few lives.

>mfw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksbn9ClHOss
This

In the 1970s the focus was all on sifting. Valuable metals can be found throughout the ocean floor in trace quantities. The idea was to develop sifting machines on caterpillar tracks . The problem was it took a great deal of energy and time to produce any valuable quantity of metals.

Since then the focus has shifted to vents. Valuable metals exist in much higher concentrations there and are often completely exposed, and thus easy to get to. There are cases where the richest deposits are under the volcanic crust, but methods for cracking the crust and getting at those deposits can of course be developed.

All interest now is on the richest few sites in the ocean. Nautilus Minerals has a headstart, and is, I think, currently planning on exploiting a massive deposit of gold, platinum and other metals surrounding an undersea volcano in Papau, New Guinea.

Sure is sea quest in here

>>2113396
>>2113409
>>2113412

Which I obviously know, that's why I said "Singularitarian's response"

Oh, btw, they found another new species recently. They're calling it a "squid worm".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/24/squid-worm

Weird shit. It seems to use locomotive strategies from both. If a compnay specializing in biomimetic robots like Festo were to imitate this in the design of a new ROV it could be considerably nimbler than existing models.

>>2113309
You know OP, ever wonder where we got our rare earth metals from when China was embargoed by the US? The USA!

We already know were to go and how to get our rare earth metals. The only reason we allowed China to take over the market was because 1. cheaper from china and 2. environmentalists where whining A LOT about our rare earth mines.

The US rare earth mines are now being restarted and it's all thanks to China.

Though I suspect their anxiety about over exploitation of their rare earth mines are actually REAL and that they are actually scared about not having enough for themselves.

>>2113580

>>You know OP, ever wonder where we got our rare earth metals from when China was embargoed by the US? The USA!

Yes! At higher prices and in smaller quantities!

>>The US rare earth mines are now being restarted and it's all thanks to China.

Guess how long that will take?

>>2113453
They can! Because they already did during the Cold War!

>>2113546
is it some sort of polychaetus annelid?

it looks like one

>>2113601
more costly rare earth metals > no rare earth metals

What part of this don't you understand? They're restarting the mines due to embargoes, not because they think they can mine it cheaper the Chinese.

>>2113608

>>They can! Because they already did during the Cold War!

Having *some* rare earth metal mines operational |= having a number operational which can match the supply we were getting from China

It's true, we've had to fall back on domestic supplies in the past. But guess what? As a result, there were severe shortages. This happens with all metals during war time. It's why we changed the composition of our coins during WW2, because they contained metals needed for munitions.

this is cool and all but I prefer space

kthxbai

>>2113615

>>more costly rare earth metals > no rare earth metals. What part of this don't you understand?

What? You think I disagree with that statement? What position are you arguing with?

Of course, obviously having more costly rare earth metals is preferable to having none. How could you think I believe otherwise? I was making no statement to the contrary, none whatsoever. Please, don't misunderstand me this time around.

Here is the statement I am making: The domestic supply of rare earths falls way, way short of what we were getting from the Chinese before the embargos and will continue to for decades until we can get more mines online.

I am not saying this is a good thing. I am not saying it's preferable. I don't grasp how you could get that from what I said. I am saying it's a fact, and that if the Chinese are looking to mine the sea floor, we'd be wise to follow suit, as it's where the bulk of valuable minerals will come from in the mid to long term, until such time as we can mine asteroids.

>>2113323
>go into ocean
>pressure too great to get anywhere exciting
>see fish
>my face when

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/47f2faf7f0b2d

>>2113662

>pressure too great to get anywhere exciting

We've already been to the deepest part (6.8 miles deep) once, using 1960s tech. Most of the ocean floor is about a third as deep as that. And most of the places we want to mine are less than a mile deep. The technology exists to do this and it's well understood.

>see fish

That doesn't look like a fish. It doesn't look like any sort of organism. Weird shit lurks down there.

And hey, seeing even one fish would make you cum buckets if it was in Europa's ocean. Why are you unexcited to find much wilder shit in our own ocean?

Fuck the ocean.

We need to bring Asteroids from the belt to langrange points around Earth, motherfucking carve out space habitats inside them and spin them for artifical gravity.

Humans need to go to space. A large enough rock can fuck everything up. Or gamma ray bursts. Or Aliens. Shit we need to colonise the galaxy.

>>2113876

>>We need to bring Asteroids from the belt to langrange points around Earth, motherfucking carve out space habitats inside them and spin them for artifical gravity.

You can't. You decided not to mine the ocean or exploit tides/hydrothermal vents for power. As a result you're still too low on the kardashev scale to expand meaningfully into space.

gg.

>>Humans need to go to space. A large enough rock can fuck everything up. Or gamma ray bursts. Or Aliens. Shit we need to colonise the galaxy.

Most realistic large scale disasters are survivable if you live undersea. It's not the ideal defense but it's more manageable at this time.

oh hai /sci/

>>2113926
oh hai big daddy

>>2113914

Launching a ship, accelerating it, and bringing back a whole asteroid doesn't require that much energy. Also hydrothermal power? How do you expect to bring it to the ship? Batteries or masers or what?

In space, it really isn't much of a situation, even photovoltaics can provide enough power for a small MPD to get a ship to a NEO asteroid, then from the asteroid's resources build solar sails and bring the asteroid to a closer orbit, turn the sails to solar panels and use them to electromagnetically accelerate payloads of high-purity Rare Earths in large metallic "space boats" that have nothing but a few thrusters and a bunch of stuff printed in situ with proper blueprints, and that's it.

Alternatively, instead of delivering resources, you simply cannibalize the asteroid using the light that reaches the panels to build more solar panels and build more factories that build factories that build solar panels, in an ever-accelerating curve to turn the whole trinary of 216 Kleopatra to a mini-scale Asimov Array, a floating one instead of a surface one, and send the power to every nation of Earth using orbiting aluminium fresnel lenses (Which can also be built with the materials from the asteroid) to distribute microwave lasers all over the world.

Problem fucking solved.

yeah OP. I'm just as pumped as you are. I think it's weird that people think space is the final frontier when we still need to kick the oceans ass. Hell, its just been laying there sinking our ships and mocking our efforts to cross it. Something we have only managed to get good at in the last three hundred years. I see a future of giant aquatic cities. Of course, people will still prefer land because of the greater risk of drowning but perhaps the difference in safety between land water can be negligible one day. At this point we can boldly look to the stars as we will have knowledge to make safer and more dependable space faring technology than what we currently have. I say we shift nasa's focus to the sea.

>>2113849
>Why are you unexcited to find much wilder shit in our own ocean?

It's not extra-terrestrial life and its existence thus does not change our entire perception of the cosmos.

>>2113949
Take down that picture, you disgrace the Cosmic Prophet with your heresy.

>>2113946
How about perfecting ocean travel and extracting geothermal energy from the ocean floor? I'm thinking of a massive pump/elevator reaching from the surface to mariana trench style depths.

>>2113946

>>Launching a ship, accelerating it, and bringing back a whole asteroid doesn't require that much energy

lol

>>Also hydrothermal power? How do you expect to bring it to the ship? Batteries or masers or what?

Antimatter. It'll never be useful for traditional power generation as it doesn't occur naturally in local space in any real quantities. It's useful only for energy storage. Like hydrogen fuel. You exploit things like fissible ore, sunlight, wind, geothermal, hydrothermal and so on to produce energy dense fuels for things like spaceflight.

>>In space, it really isn't much of a situation, even photovoltaics can provide enough power for a small MPD to get a ship to a NEO asteroid, then from the asteroid's resources build solar sails and bring the asteroid to a closer orbit

If the asteroid is very very far away it's possible to alter it's trajectory meaningfully over a long time using methods like that. But if it's very close and already in a stable orbit around the sun, not so much.

>>Alternatively, instead of delivering resources, you simply cannibalize the asteroid using the light that reaches the panels to build more solar panels

We don't have self replicating machines yet. Of any size. Let alone ones that can do anything other than self replicate. The technology the rest of your post requires is centuries away.

>>2113958

>>It's not extra-terrestrial life and its existence thus does not change our entire perception of the cosmos.

Remember the fossilized Mars microbe? Whoop de fuckin' doo. A microbe on Mars. Religious people rationalized their way around it (the Catholic church recently announced their willingness to baptize aliens) it was on talk shows for a few weeks, then people forgot about it.

>>2113961
>He doesn't understand the relationship between "heresy" and scientific thought!
>He refuses to shift his opinion and has turned Sagan into an infallible god!
>His attitude is why human beings will never reach their potential through science!!!

>>2113967

lol at your oversimplifications

>implying antimatter will ever be manufactured or contained in usable quantities for anything, ever

>implying a significant asteroid delta v will be achieved with current technology

>>2113967

>Antimatter. It'll never be useful for traditional power generation as it doesn't occur naturally in local space in any real quantities. It's useful only for energy storage. Like hydrogen fuel. You exploit things like fissible ore, sunlight, wind, geothermal, hydrothermal and so on to produce energy dense fuels for things like spaceflight.

Trapping *any considerable amount of* antimatter, cooling it, stabilizing it with its pair, magnetically locking it: No. Especially not launching it from the ground. Not within this century probably.

And I doubt hydrothermal has such power densities.

>If the asteroid is very very far away it's possible to alter it's trajectory meaningfully over a long time using methods like that. But if it's very close and already in a stable orbit around the sun, not so much.

Not really, if it's closer it just means it gets more light so more thrust for the sails lol, and it would take a shorter amount of time to pull it into a closer orbit around Earth.

>We don't have self replicating machines yet. Of any size. Let alone ones that can do anything other than self replicate. The technology the rest of your post requires is centuries away.

I don't mean Von Neumanns, just a fully human-run thing would be feasible, with human-run robots too here and there. The self-replication would be handled by humans. Molecular nanotechnology will give us molecular assemblers within this century, most likely between 2040 and 2050, so it's not that far away. The methods I described involve sending humans to run human-scale factories. With molecular nano it's just a bunch of guys with a machine the size of a drawer, a computer, and you're all set. It works better in space, molecular assembly in space would be glorious, and enable megastructures never imagined, all in situ obviously, but for anything oceanic the structure would have to be assembled on the surface, then moved down, or inside a pressurized environment.

>>2113986

>implying antimatter will ever be manufactured or contained in usable quantities for anything, ever

Okay, I guess we're never going to other stars. No skin off my nose. Coffee's the space guy, not me.

>>And I doubt hydrothermal has such power densities.

I...what....I don't even. The idea is the slow accumulation of stored energy. You don't need hydrothermal to have terribly high output if you can store the energy it produces as a fuel. You just build a ton of them and then wait.

>>Not really, if it's closer it just means it gets more light so more thrust for the sails lol, and it would take a shorter amount of time to pull it into a closer orbit around Earth.

How are you going to use solar sails to move an asteroid *closer* to the sun? Think about that for a moment.

>>Molecular nanotechnology will give us molecular assemblers within this century, most likely between 2040 and 2050, so it's not that far away, based on my speculation

FTFY.

>>but for anything oceanic the structure would have to be assembled on the surface, then moved down, or inside a pressurized environment.

Actually, there's another method: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorock

I'm up for this. As long as we eventually make it into space.

i am facepalming SO HARD at the generalizations in this thread. goddammit.

i study hydrothermal systems. ask me stuff about em if you want to know more specifics. i will say this: THE PERCENTAGE OF RARE METALS IN VENT CHIMNEYS IS VERY VERY SMALL. they're mostly iron and manganese compounds, held together by anhydrite (calcium sulfate). very few modern sulfide mounds would even be big enough to produce any amount of metals, and certainly not enough to offset the cost of recovery/refining. seriously....you're not going to get enough gold/platinum, etc to defray costs.

side note....i met a geologist involved with the Palau hydrothermal mining endeavor. they're DECADES away from actually mining because they need to map/collect data on the deposit, then ANALYZE those data BEFORE they even begin to think about mining.

also, this is why we're creating marine sanctuaries around existing vent sites.....you're not going to get to touch them anyways. got one on the Juan de Fuca Ridge already.

>>2114026

>Okay, I guess we're never going to other stars. No skin off my nose. Coffee's the space guy, not me.

it can be done, but mostly in space, and small quantities at first. Also antimatter should not be launched from Earth to Orbit unless you have a really safe way of doing it. Which we won't have in this century, probably.

>I...what....I don't even. The idea is the slow accumulation of stored energy. You don't need hydrothermal to have terribly high output if you can store the energy it produces as a fuel. You just build a ton of them and then wait.

Fine, but then, orbital solar will beat in in power density, especially if you decide to do Mercury.

Think about it. You trade acid rain, CO2, destroyed forests, damaged oceanic ecosystems, and a bunch of sticks protruding from the ocean floor, all for a scar of jet-black nano on the Moon's surface.

>How are you going to use solar sails to move an asteroid *closer* to the sun? Think about that for a moment.

Solar sails don't work that way. (see cont)

>FTFY.

I wouldn't be saying this if I had read up on the subject.

>>2116114

>I wouldn't be saying this if I had read up on the subject

had not*

About the solar sails: A photosail is never stationary, after leaving Earth it's in orbit around the Sun. I used to think like you that a photosail could only move outwards, away from the Sun, but since it's in orbit, it can be handled:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/solarsail2.htm

See that, and click on change orbit. By angling the sail you can move a photosail to a higher orbit or a lower one.

>i study hydrothermal systems. ask me stuff about em if you want to know more specifics. i will say this: THE PERCENTAGE OF RARE METALS IN VENT CHIMNEYS IS VERY VERY SMALL. they're mostly iron and manganese compounds, held together by anhydrite (calcium sulfate). very few modern sulfide mounds would even be big enough to produce any amount of metals, and certainly not enough to offset the cost of recovery/refining. seriously....you're not going to get enough gold/platinum, etc to defray costs.

This is what I was arguing. Purity is not high enough.

Unlike asteroids, which are large chunks and often have huge volumes where it's just a single, uninterrupted material, for miles and miles and miles, 99.9% purity.

>>2116128

Bump for everybody to see.

>>2116128
Hmmm, that's a very interesting way to use solar sails. The only question is if it can change the orbit of the asteroids fast enough. It's not going to be very useful if it takes 50 years or more to get the asteroid to move to the orbit we want.

In any case, it's quite absurd to compare deep sea and asteroid mining. The metal would be more valuable in orbit, since we do not need to pay the energy cost of bringing it up.

>>2116224

I can calculate that.

In the meantime, enjoy what I just made in blender.

>>2116224

For an asteroid with Eros' mass, using a configuration like in my pic, where each sail is 250 meters wide and five kilometers long, the whole thing would experience an acceleration or deceleration (Depending on where you want to move it) of 0.0000000000000139 meters per second squared.

Make bigger sails.

>>2116224
>50 years
Taking the short-time view on things, are we?

>>2116481

Or the economic view. If it can't be moved within a decade closer to Earth, then it's useless.

Let me determine what other sail sizes would impart some acceleration...

>>2116483

A sail 2,500km wide (Circular) pulling 433 Eros would produce 0.00000000684 m/s² of acceleration. Obviously the solar sail way is fucked unless you use laser-pumped sails, and that isn't completely in the realm of imagination.

>>2113978
>Remember the fossilized Mars microbe?

I remember a lot of discussion about such a microbe but I do not remember any proof that it was in fact a microbe.

Try again, you dipshit.

>>2116483
>>2116491
If the acceleration is a simply comparable to the surface area of the sails(too sleepy to check on this), then you'd have to make sails a million times wider(for 10E12 times larger surface area) to get the acceleration up to scratch.

>>2116498

Yeah, but it gets harder when you have to pack up and deploy millions upon millions of square meters of aluminized self-deploying Carbon nanotube mesh wire.

>>2116492
Quite, it was a meteorite of suspected Martian origin that landed here that kinda looked like it had fossilized traces of microbes in it. From what I remember there were quite a number disputes that it had been contaminated by life from Earth. Also it was near the end of the financial year for Nasa at the time, so yeah, I wouldn't take it too seriously.

>>2116504
We're gonna need some xeelee sunflowers to make this plausible for any kind of massive asteroid.

>>2116524

Or just, I dunno, build the sails with local materials.

Just land on a carbonaceous asteroid with a molecular assembler and you're done.

>>2116540
I'm not talking about resources here but about what a nightmare it would be to manage a sail that size. Xeelee construction material had the distinct advantage that while it was almost two-demnsional, it could still be made rigid on its own and it could incorporate sophisticated technology into itself.

Making and deploying a sail ten million kilometers wide and high would truly be a nightmare. The slightest of unsymmetric dynamics would shred the whole thing into pieces. Even with constant communication and a sophisticate AI or an expert system, the fucking thing is over thirty LIGHT-SECONDS WIDE! So any corrections that the system made to correct instabilities would either be too late to do enough good or come after the fact, possibly making the situation even worse.

I'm not saying moving asteroids is bad or impossibru. I'm just saying the you most probably need to use a different approach for problems of a different scale.

>>2116569

Point taken.

Bring in the microwave lasers.

>>2116580
But even with a complete asimov array, how much of a boost to acceleration can it give?

30% ?
500% ?
10000% ?

Even then, the acceleration would be meager, not to mention the effort would require leaving any and all other lightcraft without the boost.

No, what it will probably require is a combination of propulsion technologies, from solar-powered railguns to ion thrusters to sails. One possibility might also be combination of different tether-propulsion systems, from momentum-transference to electromagnetic sail.

>>2116590

Magsails would produce much more thrust. Good idea!

And the ion drive thing is widely accepted as the default way to move asteroids, by extracting the regolith and ionizing it and accelerating it. It would give mild thrust, so operations could be completed in a few years with accelerations of about 0.05 Earth gravities or 0.01, or even 0.1 in the best cases, perhaps even higher if you're willing to fill the asteroid with MPD's and VASIMR's.

Then there's the cost of the resources which would be jettisoned out of the asteroid's mass, forever lost. But who gives a fuck.

>>2113949
>national aeronautics and space administration
>underwater
>aeronautics and space
>underwater
>aero
>water

What the fuck are you smoking?

>>2113990
>the self replication would be handled by the humans
ooh la la!

>>2116569
Holy fuck, that's 7x the diameter of the Sun! We're not even capable of building that shit, are we?