Space mining: is it worth it?

Well Sup Forums, like the title says what do you think, is it feasible or not?

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Is the britbong still here who I was arguing with in the last thread? Our arguing got cut cold, it's your turn m8

Mining minerals from space would add copious amounts of resources to our supply; accelerating our progress as a species. Rare minerals such as gold and platinum will become cheaper, in turn making technology cheaper to develop and produce.

This is pretty much what I think too. And to add insult to injury, we have currently movies that have bigger budgets than what we are using on space exploration. Why is that?

At present, it costs more to move stuff out in to orbit and back than whatever minerals of value there are to mine in space.

>is it worth it?

Abso-fucking-lutely. The asteroid belt rocks are made up of the same shit that built Earth, so there would be tons of precious metals that we could mine. It's gonna be a new age California gold rush.

>is it feasible?

Yes, but there are many obvious dangers. The good news is that there's a lot of really smart people being funded by a lot of super rich fuckers who want to be the first out there.

We have a hotel mogul who has developed pods that can be on their own, or connect to other pods to build structures, that people can live in out of space. On a planet, in orbit, or whatev. Then with Trump, we have an incoming president that is going to take the reins off of NASA so to speak.

Right now about 90% of what NASA does is point shit BACK at Earth. It's mostly defense stuff, very little exploration. Trump plans to change this and let them be the explorers they were founded to be. And the other thing Trump plans to allow is MORE working with the private sector, which will be fantastic. By allowing these greedy billionaires in, it only speeds everything up.

>Society collapsing on earth
>Dude why don't we just like mine in space and get like infinite resources man
Delusional space fag. Make sure to sign up for Mars colonization so you faggots can go die as far as way possible

Society isn't collapsing for the 20%.

Transportation, mining and upkeep costs of the whole operation would be so expensive that the price for gold and other shit would still be high as fuck.

>By allowing these greedy billionaires in, it only speeds everything up.

So much this, since money seems to be the best motivator for these kinds of projects, space exploration should've been open for business a long time ago

So lets use resources and time and effort for gibmedat programs instead? How would you save society then?

Still, only a money issue

more of a technology issue.

Improving tech takes investments and effort does it not?

We just need to stop being such pussies and stop spending years thinking about every minute detail. 100 manned space flights a year on janky ass vessels is better than one every 2 years.

We won't be launching missions to mine, or explore, from Earth.

We will have a hub outside of Earth's atmosphere to reduce the amount of fuel needed. Leaving Earth's thick atmosphere is hard.

As soon as we have the hub, it'll all take off from there.

you got to throw many billions at it and it will take many many years/decades until you see some return in investment.

not a smart move tyrone. safety first.

Oh yeah. Absolutely feasible. Maybe 50 years or so. Check the news about this one asteroid. It's worth more than all humanities wealth. We still have a ton a materials here but eventually we'll develop the tech to make it work. We'll do shit like put Ceres in lowish earth orbit and spin it to add gravity on the inside and mine it

It's just a matter of time really. We'll find a gold or platinum astroid and bam

In the future it's going to be necessary. We have a finite amount of resources on this rock. For now it isn't really practical to be bringing it here, I'd assume. Other than some super rare materials that may be useful.

I think the benefit of space mining/refining will be for space infrastructure itself. I'm very excited to see what sort of neat processes people come up with on how to actually refine/process raw materials in zero/low g and a vacuum.

NASA has been coasting since the late seventies barely doing shit to be honest. The new rocket system is trash. Elton musk will build rockets that size in 2 years 1/3 the cost and reusable

With Amazon and musk plus Google getting into the space game we have a new space race

Like 100lb per pound in low earth orbit will be here in 5 years or less shit

Im not saying that its cheap or easy, but my original question was that is it worth all the trouble?

Currently its expensive to leave earth in the first place, but then again it was expensive to buy a car in 1890

Will Trump give NASA the budget that it needs so they can go after this discovery?

We won't have to. You could spin Ceres up to the point where you could dig tunnels and up would down because of the centrifugal force creating like .23 gs Max

The expanse explains it. Ceres structure is one of rocks that are melted together so they would hold together under that force on the surface.

It's interesting stuff. The books say .3 gs but some nerd at mit said .23 gs Max

>We'll find a gold or platinum astroid and bam
and BAM what?
I don't think it would help the economy or Humanity at all.

Meet falcon heavy
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy
3-6 months away 500$ Leo by 2019
Will be reusable

You think finding a shit ton of precious metals like gold isn't good for humanity....

They use gold for other things than jewelry kraut bro. It's extremely useful. Imagine gold being a plentiful as let's say aluminum

>is it worth all the trouble?
Lets say the US gets their Golden Asteroid or any other rare earth mineral from space, will they be able to sell it for a profit on the market?

why should for example Germany buy your expensive space mineral if they can get it from china for way less?
if you sell it not for profit you're not making any money and its a loss.

>Imagine gold being a plentiful as let's say aluminum
How wouldn't this totally fuck the gold market and currencies around the globe?

We should be concerned with obsolete satellites in orbit and retrieving those for parts and material.

>go die as far as way possible
Yeah, kinda the point

Why wouldnt USA undercut China?

because the chinks pay their workers like 15 cents per day to dig around extracting minerals.

how expensive would be 1 ton of any mineral from space compared to 1 ton of the same mineral extracted from earth?

There is only limited amount of rare earth minerals on earth, and higher technology pretty much relies on these minerals. For example the US could only use their shiniest toys in a total war for 18 months and then the resources would be gone. Should we wait for some asteroid to hit the earth to get more? Scavenge the steaming shitpile to see if something could be recycled?

Yes..
It would be machine doing the work out there and not gold but platinum and palladium would bring the bred home.

Might as well dump the money into Graphene research and production.
>Graphite is everywhere on earth so dirt cheap
>better than steel
>can be used to produce batterys and electronics

>Currently its expensive to leave earth in the first place

The majority of that cost is just getting materials up there. Think about it if you've got abundant materials to work with.

I've read about that, and that's basically harvesting/extracting raw materials. I'm talking about refining/forging/machining. All will be novel processes developed specifically for space.

Not really.
The only major costs involved in mining asteroids is the costs inherent in launching an unmanned probe with a fuel supply and a thruster with sufficient DeltaV to move the asteroid into near-earth orbit.

This could be mitigated greatly by building a lunar shipyard to construct and re-fuel vessels on their way out to re-direct asteroids.

The lunar soil is rich in the elements needed to manufacture steel and rocket fuel.

and thats already like several double digit billions and thats before even counting in the R&D costs.

sure its probably doable but is it economic and will it lead PROFIT?
if so how long will it take?

Bu bu but muh profit!

Even if it cost a trillion it would be worth it in the long-term. It would take decades to get a return on the investment though.

Power companies already have that problem with starting up a nuclear reactor though, they don't see a return for a long damn time. So it's not like it's unheard of.

Because movies make money and exploration doesnt

Yea. It would be very dangourous initially due to fast particles and decompression and temperature issues. But if it does boom, it would also promote our space capabilities.

Probably not, but fuck it why not

Not feasiable, current space travel is extremely expensive.

The cost would be retarded, but we can do shit for free...if >we own everything thing.

Yes, but the only way to make it cost effective would be to crash the entire asteroid into the earth in one go

Yes yes fuck yes, send me first I'll minecraft that shit harder than a 12 year old on a porn binge

"if", who the fuck knows if we even need gold and other rare earth stuff in the future, what if you're 40 years into your mining operation setup and somebody discovers a way to not depend on the minerals that you want to mine?

thats probably the main risk for any investor.

It's worth it, but you wont become filthy rich. You'll just saturate the market, because that asteroid is just full of some already cheap metals.
And people won't have enough money or desire to but all the resources.

Over 99% of the natural resources in the solar system are not on planet earth. We can stay earthbound and fight over the

True, but the point of getting raw materials out of our gravity well still exists, and always will exist unless we discover something that completely changes propulsion and energy storage. If that happens it's all null and void anyway, since a discovery of that magnitude will fundamentally change humanity itself.

I heard Lockheed is already building Fusion Reactors that fit on a flatbed truck.
lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html

IBM works on graphene chip that’s 10,000 times faster that our current stuff
extremetech.com/extreme/175727-ibm-builds-graphene-chip-thats-10000-times-faster-using-standard-cmos-processes

These technologys should receive even more funding, just imagine a combination of both. Being able to build super fast computers and almost unlimited energy.
I think when these take off then we reach the next step and only then Space Exploration/mining will be possibru.

If the public knew about it, it's already obsolete. The only thing that tells you, is that there are better versions of those already.

>tinfoil babble
if it would exist we would already live in the super future.
do you have any idea how much money Lockheed would make by selling those everywhere?

NOBODY could compete against it

No
Mineral prices have collapsed for over a decade now

Mine rocks on the moon and launch them at this gay earth

Yeah, classified stuff is hoax, anyway. Stupid tinfoil hatters.

>Fusion Reactors that fit on a flatbed truck.

Right. I'll believe it when I see it.

It depends WHAT kind of stuff were talking about, obviously Military stuff gains a lot from staying classified (the moment of suprise etc.)

But a small and portable Fusion Reactor? That shit would start a new age and Humanity would go places.

>I'll believe it when I see it.
This, they've been claiming Fusion is "right around the corner" for like 60 years now

Was pretty widely reported last year irrc, breakout with a prototype is 10 years according to Lockheed

well eventually we get there, question is how long will it take?

If Lockheed fails with their shit then we still have ITER.

at worst its still like 30/40 years away. but i'm sure most of us will live til this day.

I could list research papers that talk about the importance of "weaponizing space". Mining is not a priority at this point. We have vast swathes of unexplored deep ocean right here on this planet. Even if LM successfully built fusion reactor, it won't be used for the sole purpose of chasing after precision space metals.

never said it would be exclusively used for Space stuff, but it would be so useful that it would change our technology level completely in just a couple of years.

question is how long will it take for chinese and russians to step up.

I've read somewhere that Japan is the only one that's capable (other than US) or close. Forget Russia. China maybe in the next 10 years.

>is it worth it?
What do you mean by "it", Peasant?

if ITER turns out to be a success then they will have the tech.

>As signatories to the ITER Agreement, the ITER Members China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States will share of the cost of project construction, operation and decommissioning, and also share in the experimental results and any intellectual property generated by the project.

With Obummer, you'll lose Russia. With the Don, you'll lose EU and China. I guess will have to wait for a president that's cool with all the members. I mean this is science it should be free from politics. The Russian were helping NASA and ESA in recent years for example.

I think so far the ITER project wasn't affected by international politics but it also has not dropped any results.

Everything is still under construction and behind schedule and eats more money than estimated.

>iter.org/newsline/-/2618
Just look at the current state of it.

Space mining is worth it, but not for manufacturing/production on earth. Instead it will be highly valuable for orbital production of spacecraft and space stations.
Which in turn produce materials and products that can only be produced (or reliably produced) in micro-gravity environments. Like say, extremely high-performance computer chips or high-tech materials.

Problem with bringing the Belt's riches down to Earth is the delta-v cost. It's just too much, not to mention dangerous.

>Oops, we dropped a 500m diameter platinum asteroid on top of Beijing, obliterating the city. Sorry China!
Also

>Fusion rockets

Fusion rockets are for pussy ass niggers. Real men use MOTHERFUCKING ORION DRIVES, RIDING A WAVE OF THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS.

>Like say, extremely high-performance computer chips or high-tech materials.
Its called Graphene and we can do it already on earth.

currently there is no Industry that would profit from anything made in space.

Not with current technology and probably not in our lifetime

Yes, at first. But there are much more valuable things than gold up there, too.

And as we streamline, we'll learn ways to lower costs. But those lessons likely will wait until we're up and running.

Worst thing you can do is wait and do nothing because you haven't solved all the potential problems yet. Let me clue you: half the shit you're worried about will never even be a problem and half the shit that's gonna be a problem, you ain't even worried about.

So don't worry so much.

>Orion Drives
THAT'S NOT A DRIVE WHEN IT IS A NUCLEAR WARHEAD DETONATING NEAR THE REAR OF YOUR VESSEL

>long overdue for asteroid impact or other earth shattering extinction event
>human race goes extinct because instead of investing in space exploration fags wanted to house and feed niggers

I would say it's not worth it both for the risk and the fact that an asteroid rich in valuable minerals would crash the market on Earth.

>But there are much more valuable things than gold up there, too.
for example? what exactly would we need right now from there?

>Worst thing you can do is wait and do nothing
And best thing is actually doing the research for more important stuff.

this user gets its were fragile as fuck here on earth the faster we get to space the better our continuity chances

and where should we go?

We need to colonize space ASAP

Fuck profitability, the goverments of the world should spearhead the human spread into the Solar system

One extinction event and it's all over

We have the tech
We have the resources (and can mine more in space)

We just need to go out there and start colonizing and terraforming

Reverse-engineering on Venus is probably more feasible than terraforming Mars since Venus has a better climate once the sulphuric acid has been dealt with compared with the atmosphere-lacking Martian climate

Dead Space scenario when?

>We have the tech
lol no
all those people you send out will die from cancer

Most of the speculation in this thread is just downright wrong. Asteroid mining could be 1-2 years away if we want it to be.

It is already possible to build a space elevator:

youtube.com/watch?v=0qezLhypA0Y

The key idea is the Orbital Ring version of the space elevator, not the geosynchronous tether concept you are familiar with.

See, for example, Paul Birch's writings:

orionsarm.com/fm_store/OrbitalRings-I.pdf

The orbital ring only requires tethers about 300 kilometers long which is technically feasible with common material like steel, but ridiculously straightforward with better and already available material like kevlar.

There are some important questions. First, how much would it cost to do something like this?

We need to send about 160 million kilograms of material into space (See Birch's boot strap estimates in part 2: orionsarm.com/fm_store/OrbitalRings-II.pdf)

We have rockets available at $2000/kg costs to LEO today in "mass production" mode, which is only about 10-20 launches per year. Compared with the couple thousand launches necessary for a space elevator, $2000 is an unreasonably high upper bound for launch costs.

We also need to include the cost of materials. A space elevator is about 98% steel and aluminum, 1% kevlar, and 1% other such as superconducting magnets. Most of the mass (98%) cost around $1/kg, with an average cost per kilogram of no more than about $10 per kilogram.

Summing the above up, we get about $430 billion in launch costs plus another $1-2 billion in material costs.

In other words, we can have a space elevator for less than $450 billion - significantly less than one year worth of DoD spending, one bank bailout, many times less than a variety of pointless wars, etc. This is well within our reach financially in other words.

What do we get in return for this $450 billion investment?

Virtually unlimited value. For example, with a space elevator we can reliably launch our nuclear waste into the sun. We've spent $100 billion building a waste repository in Nevada, but it was ultimately decided not to even use it. Now it costs only a dollar or two per kilogram to get rid of all of the nuclear waste in the world.

Second, we have immediate access to viable asteroid mining industry. Because the cost of delivering payloads to LEO drops to about $1/kilogram, we can not retrieve asteroids with trillions of dollars worth of minerals for mere tens millions of dollars in addition to having an easy viable way of returning those resources back to the surface.

We acquire the ability to deploy profitable solar power in orbit above cloud cover and with the ability to return said power back to the surface with near zero loss by running power transmission cables down the elevator.

Just how profitable?

With increased luminosity in space, enhanced exposure time, and the ability to deliver base loads, solar panels pay for themselves in only 1-2 years while having a 20 year life time.

In other words, if you put $5 trillion of solar panels into space, you get your $5 trillion back by the end of year two and a $5 trillion income stream each year thereafter.

In other words, the US could cut everyone's taxes, both personal and business, income, capital, death, or otherwise, all to 0%, not even cut any benefits or current spending, and pay off the national debt within a decade.

It should already be obvious that the entirety of the political debate spectrum is cointelpro.

Are taxes too high or too low? Irrelevant, we don't actually need taxes.

Is social spending bankrupting us? Irrelevant, we can retire the national debt without cutting spending all while having no tax whatsoever.

What does this have to do with taking the red pill?

We've had the technological ability to undertake such a project for decades.

That means all the squabbling you have heard your entire life, money, debt, spending, taxes, scarcity, whatever, is all bullshit. Not only is it bullshit, anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the world has known that it is all bullshit for all of this time.

In other words, once you come to understand the such a project is and has been technically feasible for decades, you have to reevaluate many things.

Why is there nothing of this in the conspiracy media? They are not really trying to expose or solve any problems. One hundred percent of it is cointelpro. From the Young Turks to Infowars or whatever, they are all completely full of shit because solutions to our problems not only exist, are easy to carry out, but this has been the case for a very long time.

Similarly, you now know that 20%+ annual GDP growth is possible. If Trump gives you 3-4% instead of Obama's 2%, he is simply working with the establishment to try to placate and subvert a rising tide. If we see the easily achievable 20%+ growth rates, it is at least possible that he isn't a subversive. Anything less and you know he is a fraud.

everywhere we can go
>a planet for farming
>a planet for mining
>a planet for comfy living
>multiple planets for back up genetic stock for times of disasters
>a planet for destroying
>a planet for endless crusade reenactments
>a planet for building temples to kek on
the stars are ours son, we can have any amount we want and do what we want on them

No, fuck humanity. It needs to die.

Once you get a near-Earth production facility, you can manufacture spaceships with thicker hulls that protect against radtation.

Lining our spaceships with half a meter of lead is prohibilitively expensive and difficult to launch, but super-easy to build in space.

We need to get out there are start building and expanding

it would take a loooong time to recover the $$$ from the investment, and that's is a nono

basically, it's risky, it's no man's land, and nobody is willing to risk it, especially now that the Jews are asserting global dominance

>Space Mining worth it
no
>spice mining worth it
hell yes

what a fucking idiot

No, there are some things that microgravity lends itself very well to. For example, perfect foam steel, exotic alloys, perfect ball bearings (this would be a big one).
Growing protein crystals, thin-film epitaxy semiconductors, various nanoengineering applications etc.

It's a requirement for long term space travel.

Humanity will have to make the move eventually, for the good of the species.

Muhammad please go

>you'll never see this in your lifetime
Why live?
>the first successful space mining corp can afford to go through these like coffee paper in a decade
Ah, yes, astrology, geology, and astrophysics degrees.

Time to establish the Mars Congressional Republic.

proxima centauri

Sweden, nice trips but I don't trust a Swede within two AUs of Martian government.

>Feasible
Yes, but not for some time.

People are gonna want a success rate as close to 100% as humanly possible before they start. I imagine most of us will be dead before space mining becomes a regular thing, though we might be lucky enough to see a few expeditions.

It's worth it even if it's not worth it.

We are the only race that sees a distant location and says "I want to go there"-- not for profit, not for resources, not out of necessity. But for the sake of exploration itself.

Not any sort of scientist whatsoever but wouldnt mining the moon have disasterous effects on our tides? I dont even want to think about the snowball effect of shit that would occur if it did.