/sci/ - Science & Math

Bump.

>Will it ever be possible or not?
It's already possible.

>And how will we prevent it from destroying our economy?
Easy. It will never be economically feasible so we don't have to do jack shit.

Sage for space cadet.

>>7745413
>>It's already possible.
No.

The rest is not worth an answer. Have a sage.

No

Illuminati aliens are keeping us quarantined on our own planet till we either learn to live in peace or kill ourselves. That's why we're not allowed back on the Moon.

>>7745389
>Will it ever be possible or not?

Yes. Pic related. It's a planned mission to visit an asteroid via the Orion spacecraft.

>In what timeline?

The planned mission is supposed to occur sometime in the next ten years.

And how will we prevent it from destroying our economy?

It won't. Upon discovering the proper methods of mining asteroids and, more importantly, bringing the materials back to Earth, the costs of commodities would decrease.

Which would bring costs of building materials, etc down.

>>7745494

>forgot muh pic

You won't be able to flood the Earth's economy with platinum group metals. Even with a space elevator, it might not be economical.

What you can do is start an economy in space. Which eventually becomes the dominate economy in the Earth Sphere. Since it has access to massive amounts of materials.

Soon it will be Made in Zeon, instead of Made in China, on your iPhone. Earthborn illegal immigration into space will be a major issue.

>>7745506
>What you can do is start an economy in space. Which eventually becomes the dominate economy in the Earth Sphere. Since it has access to massive amounts of materials.

Such economies would not exist in our lifetime.

Or our children's lifetime.

>>7745389
no
never
irrelevant

>>7745531
We must start sometime.

>>7745600

Yes, progress begins with a simple step forward.

>>7745413
>It will never be economically feasible
THIS

>Also to be applied to le Mars colony meme

>will it ever be possible

It's theoretically possible now, just needs funding

>will it destroy the economy

Other factors (automation, fusion power) will likely force a radical restructuring of the economy long before space mining is at "flood the market" levels

>>7745389
Possible certainly.
But within about 8 generations or 500 years, give or take a few. For actual non-scientific mining operations that it. We'll being doing scientific shit all the time in between.

> And how will we prevent it from destroying our economy?

Economies are never destroyed. They merely change. The people who cry the sky is falling are those at the top with the most to lose.

>>7745506
>Even with a space elevator, it might not be economical.

The people doing it won't care about the personal economy of it. It is the people who come after them who use methods everyone else have built who will be doing it for profit.

>>7745413
>It will never be economically feasible
More like it is currently not economically feasible but who knows where we will be in the future if methods for cutting down on the cost of space travel comes down it may reach a point where asteroid mining becomes profitable.

>>7745413
>never be economically feasible
Asteroid: $195 billion
Mission: $10 billion
Profit: $185 billion
Is that not a good profit?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/148329-earth-skimming-da14-asteroid-contains-195-billion-of-minerals-if-we-can-catch-it

http://www.space.com/22764-nasa-asteroid-capture-mission-candidates.html

>>7746087
It would flood the market with cheap raw materials and crash the mining business on earth.

>>7746795
>cheap raw materials and crash the mining business on earth

Don't look now, but the mining business isn't doing that well.

>>7746087
>Profit: $185 billion
LOL, economics fail. What exactly do you think would happen if that much metal and resources came on to the market at once? If gold suddenly became as common as dirt, it would be worth as much as dirt.

The first thing to remember when reading popular press articles is that most of the the writers have squat in the way of meaningful education as well as the IQ of a hamster. If they didn't, they'd have a real job.

>>7746087
>Profit: $185 billion
True. In sci-fantasy-dollars.

>>7747295
>>7747265
They wouldn't mine it all at once. They'd put it into orbit first and mine it over the course of years or decades, (ad hominem:) you idiots.

>>7746795
>and crash the mining business on earth.

1) So?

2) Why wouldn't terrestrial miners simply shift to space mining?

>>7747295
A typical smallish asteroid is about 1 mile in diameter or 1.6 km. Assuming spheroid, that is 4/3 pi r^3 volume, or 2.144 cubic km. If 1% of this amount was, say, gold, that would be .0214 cubic kilometers of gold, or 2.14e+13 cubic centimeters.

21400000000000 cubic cm of gold = about 13,266,516,880,196.49 troy ounces of gold.

Each ounce of gold is worth, today, $1,078.

Therefore, a 1% mass find of gold on a small asteroid could theoretically recover $14,301,305,196,851,816.22 worth of gold.

That's $14.3 quadrillion.

Obviously, the introduction of such a huge amount of material to the earthly market would destroy its value, and a 1% find by mass is an overlarge assumption for ease of calculation. But even a find 1/100 of that (or .0001 by mass) would be $1.4 trillion. And that's simply assuming there are no other minerals of value to be had on a given body.

People who say this would never be economical are stupid.

>>7745413
This.

>>7747506
You really think you'll ever move four BILLION kilograms of material across interplanetary distances for just $10 billion?

I fully expect spaceflight costs to come down, in the future, but I mean, COME ON. You're just not being realistic here.

>>7745389
>Will it ever be possible or not?

Physically, of course it's possible. Economically, no, it's impossible.

Pursuing ore off Earth is at least 1000 times as expensive as pursuing ores on Earth itself. And 99.9999% of all use of metals and non-metals obtained from ores, are used on Earth itself.

Compared to the price of exploiting asteroidal materials, we have no shortages of similar materials on Earth.

And nobody's going to go out and bring back millions of tons of palladium, either. That sort of thing would crash the palladium market which would obviate the exercise in the first place.

Asteroidal mining, when Humans simply refuse to leave the Earth permanently, is just a stupid fantasy. Grow the fuck up.

>>7745506
>What you can do is start an economy in space.

No, since nobody's sending Humans into space on a permanent basis, so that they can live, work and play in space itself. That's totally uneconomical. It will never be economical using the set of economic models that Humans accept. Therefore it will never happen.

----> The End <----

>>7747506
Don't waste your breath, /sci/ is full of contrarians because it's an easy way to look smart. Asteroid mining currently isn't profitable therefore it's easy to sit back and say it will never be profitable based on the fact that it isn't profitable today.

The people who wrote that it would flood the earth with platinum metal groups were proven wrong. This is why Space X and Planetary resource group exist. The one who were complaining were companies that don't have a space program capable of mining in space. Its just a bunch whiny old farts who are afraid of losing their money. Planetary resource group has a satellite ready to go up in 18 months to test this idea.

One of the main profit sources from Asteroid mining is actually water. It's expensive as fuck to shoot water into space but water is extremely useful in addition to being utterly vital to life. The simple fact of the matter is that water is really expensive there and asteroid mining is actually much cheaper than using rockets to do the work.

Now should we ever get space elevators or something like them up and running asteroid mining would be pretty pointless for getting water. But right now what these missions want isn't gold or iron but good old fashioned H2O.

>>7747586
Its H2O because its becoming hard to get water on Earth. Several places on earth are fighting wars for water. Its also to study asteroids with manned missions. NASA is going to sent a drone to an asteroid and study it.

>>7747595
I sincerely doubt that it's being looked into to as a new source of fresh water on earth. It just costs a shitload to shoot water into space. Why not take the water that's already there?

Simply put we have almost limitless water here on earth. We simply have to desalinate it. While that's expensive is hell, is it really more expensive than asteroid mining? I mean come on.

>>7745389

Possible? It's possible right now.

Practical? No, never.

Profitable? No, never.

>>7747603
desalination is more expensive than mining space rocks. Desalination requires tens of billions of dollars to maintain. The recent space X achievement of landing a first stage rocket will make space launches cheaper. The idea of a space elevator is a possible idea, and carbon nanotubes are the material that's needed. They've been tested this material for the past five years.

>>7747627

SpaceX cannot make launches and recoveries cheap enough, and we have no figures on how much i5 is actually costing them to refurbish the first stage.

Space elevators are nonsense because carbon nanotubes are only super strong in unbroken molecular chains. So to make one would require a braid of several million unbroken nanotubes that are 36,000km long, the lent necessary to reach geostationary orbit.

>>7747603
>Why not take the water that's already there?

Because there aren't any people in deep space to use water.

And if existing economic models persist, there will never be any people in deep space.

We've been able to establish people in deep space since the 1960s. The technology already existed. The manufacturing base already existed. The money already existed.

So what's been MISSING all along has been an economic model that permitted space colonization.

And it remains missing. Nobody's going to spend upwards of $500 billion to get some useless PhD holders to Mars. Nobody's going to put truck drivers into space so they can shuttle people from L4/5 to Luna. The price is just too high, and the perils of a space existence are just too great.

If there's a real resource crunch here on Earth, it will be 1000 times cheaper just to commit genocides to get rid of the hooting packs of violent simians that caused the resource shortage. Leaders and elites will always choose the cheaper option. Leaders and elites will always opt to kill off Humans.

>>7747618
>No, never

Why do you even say this? You're one of those people who will be BTFO in history

Can't wait to put your name here

http://www.rinkworks.com/said/predictions.shtml

>>7747632
>carbon nanotubes are only super strong in unbroken molecular chains. So to make one would require a braid of several million unbroken nanotubes that are 36,000km long, the lent necessary to reach geostationary orbit.
That's what NASA want to do. Carbon nanotubes are the only material on earth capable of building a space elevator. This is why they've been holding competitions for the idea.

>>7747665
Yes but making a single molecule that is 36,000km long and electrically neutral and immune to terrorist attacks is practically impossible.

>>7747651
You don't believe that.

Answer this one question: Will Geocentrism ever be proven to be correct?
>Yes, eventually
>No, never.

>>7747643
Do you not realize why it's a profitable endeavor to get a bunch of water where space agencies can use it? If NASA wants to plan a mission to Mars they'll buy that water for a cheaper price than if they shipped it up via rocket. If you wanted to supply the ISS you could and make a profit. Water is heavy and humans need a lot of it. It makes a ton of sense to have it. Part of the reason people aren't IN deep space is because it costs a boatload to ship basic stuff up there.

Take, for instance, hydroponics. If you're going to grow large plants you need at least 2 1/2 gallons of water per plant. A gallon of water weighs about eight pounds, and a pound costs about $10k to send into space on average. So supplying the water for just ONE large plant in a hydroponics or aquaponics system will cost you over $200k! If you scale that up to the amount you'd need to feed even a single person for a year the costs become outright LUDICROUS.

The alternative, of course, is shipping up food made on earth. Except that has the same launch costs and is still incredibly expensive! If you had an aquaponics system set up with fish and plants that could feed astronauts then you wouldn't need to have those continual food shipping costs. You could ship up people and parts instead, meaning more resources for deep space missions.

Now imagine someone just captures an asteroid that's out there and is basically solid water. Even if it costs millions it's STILL way cheaper than it is to ship water up via rocket! Things like a space station that can grow its own food are made possible if you get water from asteroids. So yeah, it's worth every goddamn penny to mine asteroids.

>>7747681
>>7747681
>>7747681
Well its most likely going to be an international effort, like the ISS. If they build one then they can build another space station capable of producing space ships in space. That's what would make it cheaper. 3D printed parts are a thing. Terrorist attack are your least of your worries. The elevator will be locked by the earth rotation. There is a documentary on this. I think its called space elevator. It explains this.

>>7747691
>Do you not realize why it's a profitable endeavor to get a bunch of water where space agencies can use it?

Because you're putting the cart before the horse. Water will only be valuable once an infrastructure already exists. So an initial investment of billions is first required before any profit whatsoever can be made.

The same with food or any other volatile. You're thinking much too far down the road. You're imagining running the bases before you even got up to bat.

>>7747696
There's no point in doing that though. There's nothing up there worth anything to the powers that be.

>>7747702
Cough* space based weapons Cough*.

Also going other planets and testing new tech is always a dick waving contest among world powers. China is very interested in other planets. So is India.

>>7747707
>Cough* space based weapons Cough*.
ICBM's were the ultimate result of the Apollo Program, not rods from god.

>Also going other planets and testing new tech is always a dick waving contest among world powers. China is very interested in other planets. So is India.
With Robots.

>>7747710
The robot missions are scouts for future manned missions.
>rods from god
For all we know they're probably up there already.

>>7747718
No they're not scouts. They're our explorers. There are no planned mars missions. Elon Musk only wants to go there to save us all from Peak Oil.

>>7747568
>le contrarian boogeyman
why don't you try actually defending your argument for a change instead of opting out of the discussion and ranting about how everyone is opposed to your idea 'just because'

>>7747718
>For all we know they're probably up there already.
>>/x/

>>7747723
Because the internet will always have someone who agrees with him?

That's why it's so bad for humanity.

>>7747697
The ISS already exists, so there is a place with demand for water in space.

>>7747760
The ISS uses the sabatier process. this process uses a catalyst that reacts with carbon dioxide and hydrogen - both byproducts of current life-support systems onboard the space station - to produce water and methane. This interaction closes the loop in the oxygen and water regeneration cycle. In other words, it provides a way to produce water without the need to transport it from Earth.

>>7747586
Fucking THIS. Asteroid/planetary mining makes sense for ISRU. It does NOT make sense for bringing materials back to Earth where they can already (more) easily be mined/synthesized already.

>>7747830
And ISRU depends on an infrastructure that costs more than anyone is willing to spend and won't make a profit until everyone is dead.

That's why it's a non-start.

>>7747843
The missions which could achieve the most immediate payoff from ISRU won't be for-profit commercial applications. More likely it'd first see use as a cost-saving measure for exploration/scientific missions, and even then probably only at a limited scale at first (i.e. burying a lunar habitat in regolith for radiation shielding).

>>7747506
I would argue that any materials found in space are worth more in orbit than on the surface.

>>7747857

The profits would take more than the investor's lifetimes to see a return on their initial trillion dollar investment.

It's not economically feasible no matter how much you stretch reality.

>>7747886
>...I'm just going to ignore his post and repeat what I already said
Nice argument.

>>7747904

He didn't say anything new. Just "It has to happen because i believe it has to happen"

>>7747907
He's on the "it'll never happen in any way, shape, or form" side of things.

I somewhat agree with him that asteroid mining will probably never be profitable in a conventional sense, but neither is space exploration in general. By his logic, Apollo and Voyager shouldn't have ever happened either because they didn't turn a profit. My point of view is that ISRU can potentially achieve cost savings for these (net-loss, from a financial standpoint) exploration missions, if nothing else.

>>7747922
Apollo was a wartime project to develop weapons and voyager was just another satellite.

Your narrative of history gets in the way of your ability to reason.

>>7747925
>Apollo was a wartime project to develop weapons
Other way around. It was a spin-off from weapons projects. It really didn't do anything FOR weapons development, but benefited considerably FROM weapons development.

>>7747927
It was originally intended to be the testbed for sending weapons platforms to the orbit of the moon.

Instead it developed the technology for ICBMs, and we never went back again.

Do i need to post kennedy's speech where he spells it out for you?

>>7747931
>It was originally intended to be the testbed for sending weapons platforms to the orbit of the moon.
Fucking christ, take this shit to >>>/x/

>>7747954
Americans were not first on the Moon because we're explorers by nature or because our country is committed to the pursuit of knowledge. We got to the Moon first because the United States was out to beat the Soviet Union, to win the Cold War any way we could. John F. Kennedy made that clear when he complained to top NASA officials in November 1962:

>I'm not that interested in space. I think it's good, I think we ought to know about it, we're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we're talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs and the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat them [the Soviet Union] and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.

Like it or not, war (cold or hot) is the most powerful funding driver in the public arsenal. When a country wages war, money flows like floodwaters. Lofty goals—such as curiosity, discovery, exploration, and science—can get you money for modest-size projects, provided they resonate with the political and cultural views of the moment. But big, expensive activities are inherently long term, and require sustained investment that must survive economic fluctuations and changes in the political winds.

>>7747886
>The profits would take more than the investor's lifetimes to see a return on their initial trillion dollar investment.
>It's not economically feasible no matter how much you stretch reality.
You contradicted yourself. Also stop thinking like an Americlaps. There are a lot of investors who invest in things they would see an ROI in their lifetime but their kids would. The Chinese/Germans are known for these kind of investments. Your line of thinking is the same used on Andrew Carnegie usage of steel to build infrastructure. It was impossible, and its too expensive. People like you aren't very intelligent and I've seen a lot in my time as an engineer. The reason why people won't do it is not money but power and protection of their business. Capitalism is an investor worst enemy.

>>7747972
>Blah blah i'm so special blah blah blah money not important blah blah blah.

You done?

>>7747959
So what makes you think we won't have to "beat China" or whatever to mining an asteroid at some point in the future? The cause is irrelevant, just so long as the incentive exists to continue exploring. And as long as it does, doing anything which will help reduce the cost of such missions (ISRU included) will hold appeal.

>>7747981
China knows it's pointless already. They can get everything they need from the earth for far less than it would cost to get it in space.

Only fly by night companies are even interested in it, because they know delusional space enthusiasts will fund whoever tells them what they want to hear.

>ITT: humans can't do anything

Why is /sci/ so negative like that? Pretty much all threads are "no we will never do that". Hell, last year it was the same shit in the SpaceX threads. Only it's been done now.

>>7747977
He's 100% correct though.

In fact, you wouldn't even be here, to shitpost on /sci/, if it wasn't for that very philosophy having been done by people all through the generations of the past. It is the very foundation of all schools.

>>7747925
>Apollo was a wartime project to develop weapons

Wrong.

Had you have said Titan II, or the Atlas Missile Program, THEN you have something resembling a point.

>Voyager was just another satellite

Both of which opened our eyes to the worlds within our solar system.

Hardly worthy of being "just another satellite".

>>7745413
>>7745801

Possible already?

I'm interested to hear how you propose to harvest asteroid material in a zero gravity vacuum let alone begin to detail how you could then extract the relevant ores and refine them.

In a vacuum. Without gravity. What industrial processes are have been developed already to counter these two huge hurdles. Tell me please.

Then there's the distances involved, we can't even get humans to Mars right now. Not safely. Robotics are not yet advanced enough for us to send an automated platform either.

Currently possible... Please. Put down your crack pipe.

>>7748498
>a zero gravity vacuum
He believes in the zero gravity meme. HAHAHAHA.
Space has a micro gravity environment.

>>7745389
>And how will we prevent it from destroying our economy?

By convincing a bunch of idiots that it's in their best interests to ban it.

>>7745413
Well, when we compare it to our present ability to gather resources terrestrially, then it will never be feasible economically. That much is obvious.

However, if there comes a point where resources are so scarce on earth, or that there's such a high demand for raw materials that our terrestrial supply will be insufficient, then it will happen.

Also keep in mind that these materials may have value to people besides the intrinsic value of the materials themselves. Perhaps a resource poor country will pool resources for a mission to gather raw iron and use it as a stimulus for their industrial sector, especially if tariffs are high enough and the local industry is amiable to invest in such an endeavor.

I know it's a stupid example, but it's just one example that some idiot on an imageboard thought up in a couple minutes. I say that people who say that it's completley infeasible lack imagination.

>>7747464
Startup cost might be to high, and space travel might be to heavily regulated or centralized as to be inaccessible to most who would wish to apply.

There's a big barrier to entry to enter space, especially if you aren't literally the government.

>>7745389
>destroying our economy

Top capitalism meme friend.

An increase in the abundance of resources is a good thing.

>>7748569

So elaborate on how much easier solving these engineering issues are in a micro gravity environment versus a zero gravity environment.