/sci/ - Science & Math

>MFW If I can get it up I'll have to keep slight artificial scarcity much like diamonds in order to make it profitable and wipe out all other mining competitors with my unbeatable prices

>yfw it would take socialism to make it work

>>3622796
>>3622821

>yfw you realise that is already happening on earth with oil
>if they were to just saturate the market with all the available oil right now it would be worthless

>>3622825

>>3622825
No it wouldn't, it just be like capitalism in AMERIKA.

>>3622796
I know, we need to be in atleast 100 trillion dollar debt before this becomes viable.

>LETS GO SHOPPING

they then can just impose a tariff on your wealth, say the import tax from outer space to earth. Or some slogan like "buy Earthican". I don't know man, you might have 10 000 ton of gold but if you can't bring it down to Earth, then it'd be useless. Well, that idea of colonize Mars suddenly look pretty attractive right about now, eh? Oh, thanks for mana, I didn't have a chance to say it, I think you were banned right there and you took some time off /sci/.

>>3622855

directed at >>3622821

>>3622855
No problemo.

>>3622796
>MFW the amount of material within an asteroid is so large, that it would not be economically viable to mine, because as soon as the materials within the asteroid were introduced into the economy, it would become worthless
That's really not how it works.

>>3622855
If they do that, you just have to import some material to them at high velocities. Then send a bill to the survivors.

Also: I just got microtrolled by captcha!

>>3622896
Incidentally, this is the real reason we have no space industry: first crab out of the bucket can throw grenades into the bucket with impunity.

Hence: any smart crab will grab onto any that starts trying to climb out, and hold it the fuck down.

>>3622921
ah another case of the unexceptional holding back scientific progress.

>>3622921
Interesting metaphor.

Getting it to Earth would be difficult. You don't want it burning up in the atmosphere so you need to send it down in small packages coated with a cheap/quick/dirty heat shield. You'll likely also need inflatable rafts to keep it afloat once it hits the water. Parachutes too.

If there is a tariff imposed on you, you drop a few rocks on a city to make an example, if you're feeling mean. If you're feeling cooperative, then you make a deal with whatever nation will have you (little ones like Kiribati would be perfect) to back their currency with your massive mineral wealth. They'll jump at the chance (even though the value of said currency will be devalued) and you strike a deal to have them import your minerals. In the end, both of you get ludicrously wealthy.

>>3622986
I was thinking of sending back materials molded in a helicopter rotor shape to slow the descent, having it impact in a desert.

>>3623039
I'd imagine the ocean is the only acceptable place to drop things. Scientific progress aside, you'd have to be a madman to think that its descent system (whatever it is) will work 100% of the time.

To those ends, you only make reasonably-sized drops and only do it in the ocean. In the ocean FAR away from any islands or places of interest... just in case your calculations for re-entry were off.

I'd imagine that it'd be a mandatory safety requirement.

>>3623059

well, once we have enough material and tech, we can do it in stages, first send whatever stuff down to some station near earth, build a space elevator/bucket systems, like moving chunks of stuff in a huge industrial chain down to earth, dump content out, then move it back up. This shall be done so.

>>3622896
yeah man, I love the idea.
>>3622921
great metaphor, loving it, stealing it.

>>3622796
>>3622796

Free market will fix it

>>3623089
Space elevators don't do much for landing stuff from outside of orbit. Matching orbits is expensive and tricky. Aerobraking is simple and cheap.

I never could figure out why anyone thought it would be a good idea to rig a space elevator for two-way traffic. It would be way safer, cheaper, and much higher output if it was an up-only system, and it's not like getting down is anywhere near as hard as getting up.

Just destroy the government and free market will fix it.

>>3623138
That's what she said.


Also, good ideas in this thread!

>mfw exponential technological growth makes labor obsolete and communism is inevitable.

>>3623138
never heard of counter-weighting?

>>3623138

I have no idea that it would be so complicated. My thought was that there might be some permanent station up somewhere outside orbit where sent package from far away would be slowed down then matched up with the elevator. But yeah, getting the stuff down would be infinitely easier than moving thing out of earth surface.

It wouldnt be totally worthless. It would probably be worth a lot. Its just for every unit of resource you sell the value over all decreases. It would never reach zero. Or ever get close to reaching zero.

Dont beat yourself up OP

>Become Engineer
>Build custom probe
>Launch probe into space
>Send probe out to find an asteroid
>Have probe mine asteroid and fly back to earth
>Collect asteroid minerals
>Profit

pic related

The easiest way to accomplish this is to finally, fucking FINALLY, create nano-tech that can do 99% of the work for us.

Energy is the prime mover nowadays, in pretty much every arena or endeavor, including space flight.

Asteroids don't contain much in the way of usable energy--they don't really contain anything that we don't have down here in massive quantities. Need gold, iron, ice? sure, asteroids might help. But we don't need those things. All the usable stuff in asteroids would be *very* usable on a future colony world, like Mars or the Moon.

As humanity uses more and more resources asteroid mining is not only going to become economically viable, but necessary.

>>3623201
>Become Engineer
>Build custom probe
>Launch probe into space
>Send probe out to find an asteroid
>Have probe cover asteroid with a solar sail and small jets
>Collect asteroid
>Profit

>>3622796
Yeah, because we certainly haven't built any gigantic structures without asteroid mining.

Also the amount of cost to transport a large amount of mass to and from asteroid would offset the increased supply

>>3623231
Most of the shit we use is completely reusable/renewable. Stop being Al Gore.

>>3623245
Stop being an earthbound faggot and look to th stars, oour future and glory is there.

>>3623250
wrong, a cold death in the vast vast vast vast vast space beyond anything useful is what awaits us.

>>3623242
which is why you park the thing in orbit, and use a space elevator to ferry the resources. But, once again, you can't do this with just big robots and cosmonauts and shit. we need nano-technology, advanced 3d printers, compact nuclear reactors, etc.

>>3623250
Hey, I want to fly to fucking Ursa Major as much as the next anon, but the idea of humanity expending every resource on the planet is silly.

>>3623254
Why?

>>3623254
>implying there absolutely no way to adapt to cold death

>>3623207

Whoa thats really cool.

>>3623183
You can't be serious. The energy harvest of lowering loads would be negligible compared to the propellant cost of synchronizing orbit, let alone the risk of damage to the elevator and outgoing spacecraft.

>>3623265
You're being a self-defeatist, brosef. Think for a few seconds and you can solve every one of those problems on your own, with rudimentary physics an' shit.

>>3623256
>we need magico-technology, advanced 3d magickers, compact magic reactors, etc.

>>3623261
If you go transhumanist on me I will beat you to death with a tire iron

>>3623277
None of the things he mentioned are magic.

>>3623279
lol. ya got me. but by that time, I doubt the idea or physical reality of 'human' will exist any longer.

>>3623277
>advanced 3d magicers
Don't know much about the other ones but for this you are very wrong.

>>3623284
By what time?

>>3623284
Well whatever you seek to become will it be immune to tire irons? you better hope it is.

>>3623277
That nano-tech is going to happen isn't in question. It's happening. We just don't know yet what the real breakthrough will be. Bio? Digital?

3d printes are obviously real, but we need to go beyond the whole "use powder, rinse, repeat" idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw

Nuclear reactors are already pretty compact. We can do better, though.

>>3623287
15 billion years or so?
>>3623290
lol

You guys know there are huge deposits of valuable rare earth metals, gold, platinum, copper and manganese in the ocean right? We've just begun deep sea mining, something that was science fiction for a very long time. I'm not sure I see the utility in going to asteroids to get what we can already get from the ocean.

For the specific purpose of building megastructures in space and mining ore for use on colony worlds like the moon and mars sure, but there's no business case for sending the ore back to Earth when we have the entire ocean floor practically untouched, a landmass larger than all the continents put together which hasn't been exploited for minerals until this generation. It will meet our needs for many centuries to come.

>>3623276
You're not thinking at all.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that when you make your first space elevator, it would be incredibly stupid and counterproductive to build it with load-lowering capability in mind.

Not to rub it in or anything but we've also begun subsea farming. Lots of edible biomass in the ocean and now we're cultivating it in a way that's not destructive and will multiply its food output many times over. Just throwin' that out there.

>>3623321

Hello Friend.

>>3623344

What up, nig.

>>3623333

fuck this bring back memory. My family did a project of this, grow huge fish in a fish farm about 2 km off shore. Fucking late tropical storm, break everything, suddenly all money was lost, when everybody within 10km of the region got abnormally big and meatly fish. Bankrup us, I could have finished my degree, then moved on to do grad work, fuck.

>>3623321
>>3623333
Dammit Mad you always ruin my space fun with your well reasoned arguments.

>>3623356
>>3623333

Not to ignore your family's loss, but can this problem be overcame?

It seems like we should be able to make things sturdy enough. Perhaps these technical problems can be overcome with more practice. After all enormous off-shore farms are kind of a new thing arent they?

>>3623356

Sorry to hear that. At least their vision has come to pass. With this method the ocean's output can be increased to feed a growing population, even as we abandon trawling. It will do for aquaculture what Norman Borlaug's methods did for agriculture.

Hope people are okay with having fishburgers instead of beef. Future generations will be eating a lot more seafood than beef or poultry.

>>3623321
>we have the entire ocean floor practically untouched, a landmass larger than all the continents put together
The ocean floor is mostly boring, undifferentiated basalt. It's "ore" about the same as granite is "ore", only less so. Almost all of the useful ore formation processes only happen on the continental plates.

People who figure the ocean is the future because it's so big are about as clueless as people who figure China is the future because it has such a big population.

>>3623333
if the sea is sooooo great:

>transport sea into space
>everyone lives in space
>except black people

>>3623357

>Dammit Mad you always ruin my space fun with your well reasoned arguments.

Hehe. We're gonna do both, but not for the usual reasons. You can promise mass export of valuable ores back to Earth but the return on investment is so distant that only the most gullible investors will fall for it. That's fine though, remember that Columbus' expedition to the Americas was funded on the promise of gold, silk and dye trade. Once the hardware is built it doesn't matter who paid for it or why, a robust space based civilization will be able to grow from it.

Pic related, one love.

>>3623372
>except black people
just like anime!

>>3623370
if everyone's living in pineapple's under the sea, though, we won't need all these heavy ores and shit. all our physics will turn into sea-physics.

>>3623321
>no business case for sending the ore back to Earth
Let's just nevermind that in space (out of Earth orbit), you're completely disconnected from the biosphere and can strip-mine and pollute all you like.

Endless energy and material resources, zero-g construction convenience, hard vacuum on tap, no weather... it's the perfect industrial environment.

>>3623370

>The ocean floor is mostly boring, undifferentiated basalt. It's "ore" about the same as granite is "ore", only less so. Almost all of the useful ore formation processes only happen on the continental plates.

This is true, but you've neglected to mention that while there are vast stretches of abyssal plain between sites of interest, those sites are nonetheless numerous as shown in this map: >>3623321

It shows 800 billion in rare earths, and trillions in gold, platinum, copper and manganese.

>People who figure the ocean is the future because it's so big are about as clueless as people who figure China is the future because it has such a big population.

It's not just about size. It's the fact that it's laid unexploited since the formation of the planet. The resource density down there is beyond anything you'll find on land because it's remained untouched for all this time. It's like we live right next door to an alien planet that we've just now developed the technology to settle and industrialize. :D

>>3623395
>it's the perfect industrial environment.

We just have to figure out how to get sweatshops up there now.

I dont know why you guys find the idea of immense stretches of abysmal plains unattractive. Sounds awesome.

>>3623397
>it's laid unexploited since the formation of the planet

Most things have. We've been digging shit out of the soil for about 200 years.

4.5 billion - 200 = ???

>>3623395

>Endless energy and material resources, zero-g construction convenience, hard vacuum on tap, no weather... it's the perfect industrial environment.

I recognize the validity of your points, and only ask that you also recognize that weather does not impact mining thousands of feet down and that because internal combustion engines don't work underwater anyway all vehicles and robots used for subsea industry are cleaner by far than their terrestrial counterparts even when charged from the current grid mixture.

It's not deliberate, but rather by virtue of the technologies used, that living and working in the sea is vastly cleaner than doing the same on land.

>>3623417
You almost offset all those 'benefits' with the pressure-protection measures you have to take.

>>3623364

nah, imagine 30cm diameter plastic tube molded and welded together to make the frame, the thickness was about 2cm, and still under normal sea condition wave you can see the thing bend like rubber. I watched over that for a couple of days, well, thieves and such. It sounds like a cliche but then and there I realize how small we/human standing in the sea. And how powerful the sea really was, and that wasn't even in tough weather. The storm came, broke the frame at the joints, ripped the net open, the net wasn't even small, synthetic nylon I don't remember the exact info but it was tough. In one go, 8 months of work was lost, couple of families saving was wiped out, mine happened to be the most. Nah if any thing, sturdier material will only make matter worse. My solution is to make it more flexible. The joint is the weakest point of the frame, making a flexible frame and joint can probably helps somewhat. If I remember correctly there have been talked about enclosure which you can sink the whole thing down when the weather get rough.

>>3623369

I love fish more than meat, but there is still problem for this though. You need lots of food to keep these guys happy, when they're hungy, the bigger will fight the smaller and try to eat them. Big fishes takes lots of food. And they can be pretty picky. But fish is awesome, all the alpha and beta omega acid you can handle.

>>3623416

>Most things have. We've been digging shit out of the soil for about 200 years.

Yes, and we extract ore deposits much faster than they can form, so pointing out that 200 is a small number compared to the age of the earth is a nonsequitor.

My point was that we've already exploited every landmass on Earth for ores, and while we're not about to run out, *specific* ores (rare earths and precious metals) are concentrated in dense contiguous deposits on the ocean floor due to subsea volcanic activity whereas on land they are peppered evenly throughout the crust in much smaller deposits requiring more labor and energy to harvest the same quantities.

Subsea mining makes sense, if it didn't then it wouldn't be done but it does and it is. That may pose problems for your case to mine asteroids, but hey, tough luck fignuts. Ocean first, then space.

>>3623432
We don't need rare minerals. We need energy.

That's not a real panda

>>3623430

>You almost offset all those 'benefits' with the pressure-protection measures you have to take.

You don't have to take any such precautions for most undersea dwellings because they are what's called "ambient pressure". That means the interior air is at the same or slightly greater pressure than the outside water so there's essentially no pressure differential. They can be made from something as flimsy as plastic provided it's held in shape (against a few tons of buoyancy) by a steel exoskeleton.

Pic related, prototype Atlantica Expeditions habitat, mostly kevlar.

>>3623445
We're not talking about dwellings. We're talking about mining.

>>3623451
yeah, this.

>>3623436

>We don't need rare minerals. We need energy.

Tidal turbines in the gulf stream equals uninterrupted clean energy. And because they're out of sight out of mind you can make them ridiculously huge, like this one.

You might also like OTEC, another uninterrupted clean energy source which exploits the thermal differential between the surface of the ocean and the lower reaches.

>>3623431

> Nah if any thing, sturdier material will only make matter worse. My solution is to make it more flexible.

Oh I see, thats interesting.

Also, Salmon is awesome. I love eating Salmon

>>3623462
Or you could stop being infants and just build more nuclear power plants.

>>3623417
>because internal combustion engines don't work underwater anyway all vehicles and robots used for subsea industry are cleaner by far than their terrestrial counterparts even when charged from the current grid mixture.
Uh huh... so when you're using far more energy to dig up more of these lower-grade ores from less accessible locations, it's more ecologically sound because you are forced to burn oil in a generator ship and transport it down by cable to charge batteries, instead of directly powering your equipment with internal combustion engines?

Interesting theory...

>>3623451

>We're not talking about dwellings. We're talking about mining.

Then why did you bring up pressure? Deep sea equipment uses parts that don't require surface pressure to function.

Siemens operates a subsea power grid complete with transformer stations that keep the only pressure sensitive components in compact sealed vessels. It's not a serious design challenge anymore. Modern materials are where they need to be for things like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9PbkwSYxpE

>>3623436

more iPad, iPod, iMat, iPhone, iEverything takes rare earth minerals. Well, we could recycle the stuff but it kind of more economical to mine it right now.


>>3623395
>>3623436
>>3623451


Well, there are problems both with undersea mining and space exploration, but I think undersea is slightly easier since you can sink massive stuff down easily vs. lift huge stuff up off the ground out of orbit. Energywise, undersea is still better. And yeah, like Mad Scientist once said, if you start living in the sea, you are forced to keep it clean or you can sue the fuck out of whoever polluting it.

>>3623475

>Uh huh... so when you're using far more energy to dig up more of these lower-grade ores

Lower grade ores? Citation please.

>from less accessible locations

It's just as far down, but instead of digging, you can sink a robot.

>it's more ecologically sound because you are forced to burn oil in a generator ship and transport it down by cable to charge batteries, instead of directly powering your equipment with internal combustion engines?

Yes, because a generator which runs at a single speed for which it is optimized wastes less energy than an ICE which operates over a wide range of rpms. It's how the Volt's range extender works and why it's more fuel efficient than the engine in an ordinary car. It's also how diesel electric locomotives work.

>>3623480
But robots aren't, as you've pointed out numerous times. Humans are certainly not as sturdily-built as this equipment. They will require accommodations specific to the environment.

How does this effect the cost of sea floor mining?

>>3623431

A rigid frame is fine if the structure is geodesic, and the solution to storm stress is to put it deeper, beyond the reach of storm influence.

>>3623492

>But robots aren't, as you've pointed out numerous times. Humans are certainly not as sturdily-built as this equipment. They will require accommodations specific to the environment. How does this effect the cost of sea floor mining?

Well it's not ideal but I imagine China will accomplish this by putting human beings in relatively cramped housing. There are only a few things humans can do down there that would enhance productivity of the robotic operations enough to be worth the cost of the habitats, so until mining the ocean floor becomes more widespread I expect it'll be done exclusively by robots. Humans mainly come into the picture when you need to start manning defenses against potential saboteurs.

>>3623501

well, you don't really build a geodesic frame to do fish farming, well not on the kind of budget we were on anyways, what we did was making a couple of huge circles out of plastic tube, link them together to make a sort of cylinder. The tube is the kind city uses for water main these days. Those come in standard length, so there has to be molding and welding involved. We should have gotten the fishes out before the storm hit, but it survived a 3 or 4 tropical storms or depression earlier couple with the fact that the storm moving in way too fast, that last ones proved to be slightly too strong.


On energy, we aren't in any of shortage right now. We are in shortage of energy for existing technology ie. oil. As far as other energy concern, we could use ethanol (not from corn, that's a massive scam, there are other stuff such as wasted wood, grass), natural gas among others like nuclear. The problem is hyping up mean more money for trader, seller, middlemen. They have to keep it at high enough level to maximize profit, but not too high that other form of energy will be developed and take over oil.

>>3623491
First of all, the Volt's gas-only fuel efficiency advantage over a well-built gasoline-only car of similar size, greater utility, and far lower cost (and far greener manufacturing) is negligible. It would be somewhat inferior, if not for the regenerative braking.

The superior efficiency of a constant-speed engine is not enough to overcome the conversion losses of mechanical-to-electric and back again, let alone the losses of storing in and recovering from a battery.

Besides that, you are assuming, ridiculously, that only the same amount of mechanical work has to be done.

This is just a plain dumb line of argument. Working underwater isn't automagically cleaner just because a slightly dirty option for a relatively minor part of the operation is unavailable.

>>3623519

well, usually the solution is to work in crew/shift, say crew of 10, 4 weeks on 2 weeks off. Something like current oil rig, only more peaceful and slightly more dangerous, still with enough foresight, danger can be dealt with and mitigated.

China, I'm not too sure, life is pretty cheap over there. I just hope the cost of training and equipment is high enough that they will do a good job thinking/planning it well instead hiring any beating heart to manned the machine.

>>3623596

>The superior efficiency of a constant-speed engine is not enough to overcome the conversion losses of mechanical-to-electric and back again, let alone the losses of storing in and recovering from a battery.

Charging lithium batteries from a gas turbine does in fact work out to be cleaner per mile driven (or kilowatt used, or whatever measure you choose to employ) than using an internal combustion engine for the same task. Here is the MIT study explaining why this is the case. Feel free to point out where they got their math wrong:

http://web.mit.edu/evt/summary_wtw.pdf

>Besides that, you are assuming, ridiculously, that only the same amount of mechanical work has to be done. This is just a plain dumb line of argument. Working underwater isn't automagically cleaner just because a slightly dirty option for a relatively minor part of the operation is unavailable.

It's cleaner for a number of reasons. The fact that only vehicles and machines with no localized emissions can be used prevents one form of pollution associated with industrial activities on land. There's also the fact that all permanent artificial subsea structures quickly become artificial reefs which increase the local fish, crustacean and cephalopod populations. Additionally, to place permanent installations on the seafloor, no landscaping or foundation laying needs to be done which means no destruction of the environment around the worksite like you see in this picture. Buildings and machinery can be literally sunk into place as if out of the sky, and weigh only what we want them to via ballast manipulation.

As an undersea colonist, I've understandably put a lot of thought into this topic.

Why would all the materials in the asteroid instantly be available to the whole economy? It takes time and substantial capital to extract and refine resources. Having access to an asteroid doesn't automatically mean you have access to technology that makes them dissolve into finished products.

>>3623596

hmmm, he made a good point here. I don't know how Volt works to comment on but convert thermal to electrical, then chemical, then mechanical sounds pretty bad in term of efficiency to me. Unless of course, nuclear reactor.

>>3623628

>hmmm, he made a good point here.

See: >>3623617

>>3623628

>Unless of course, nuclear reactor.

Actually, subsea reactors are in the works. It'll be slow going from a regulatory standpoint thanks to Fukushima, but they're still on for production as of this date.

http://en.dcnsgroup.com/energy/civil-nuclear-engineering/flexblue/

>>3623631
>>3623641

interesting. yes, I agree with you on the huge point source polution is easier to deal with than little polution points that run all over the places. I have a little problem with the series of conversion of energy (as >>3623596 pointed out, convert from thermal-gas, to electrical, to chemical-battery, then to useful mechanical. That seems to be quite a bit of loss. If one can put a nuclear in a submerged station (maybe we'll call it Hugh Hamture), then it'd cut down on polution but still you still lose quite a bit of efficiency during conversion.

Economics. Rich people bullshit holding back humanity and starving millions to death to get richer since centuries.
But a science.

>>3623641
what are the thermal pollution specs on such a project? I'd assume there would be quite a bit

>>3623137

>>3623234
>become probe
>malfuction
>asteroid crashes into earth

Why are you caring about this thing called 'economy', when all you should be caring are actual results. The economy is useful to optimize things, and you're just optimizing something into a de-facto free goods. It may destroy some industry, but who cares when you're making something better. You shouldn't care for current means to getting something, instead you should care only about the thing that you're getting. Having the world turn into a post-scarcity society would only be beneficial to humans (for certain values of 'beneficial'), and thus there's no problem with it. In this way, it should also mean that if some automated manufacturing destroys manufacturing-by-humans, then that's also fine. Work isn't a mean in itself.
It also reminds me of people who view work as a mean in itself and waste their life away working and never enjoying the products of their work. Having a job isn't a need, it's only a mean to an end, and if the end can be achieved in a more efficient manner, then it should.

If there was actually some energy source you could tap by going into space, then you'd have your space travel.
Materials aren't enough.

>>3623279
Why so? I place no particular value in the substrate I'm implemented in. I would even place higher value in different substrates than what is 'natural' now.

>>3623284
Which is itself a fine goal.