Billionaires say they will save humanity by mining asteroids

[Phil]

A base on the moon is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard.

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[@ruantec]

I will wait until asteroids become more available so i can get them at a cheaper price.

Spoiler:

On a more serious note... what the hell are they smoking?

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[Radix865]

Originally Posted by Smilley

OK. Moon base. Nowadays, every kilogram of equipment for stuff like the ISS costs tens of thousands of dollars to haul up. Multiply that by ~100 tons of building material and equipment to build an airtight, self-contained moonbase, and at least another 100 tons for mining and fuel refining equipment, then multiply that by the distance between Earth and Moon, in relation to Earth and ISS.
Not to mention workforce, air, food and water supply. And that's just for building the base. You need it either to be fully self-contained (yeah, like that would work) or use steady resupply runs.
After that, you have to build up a massive fleet of cargo space-freighters. With current technology, the closest asteroid is years of travel away. So, at one delivery a month and, say, two years of travel (one way), you'd need 48 ships, with crew and supplies for four years, to keep a steady flow of ore.
Not to mention you need to go through the same ordeal of building the mining colony you've had with the moonbase, only this time you can't make short-term adjustments. Remember, a ship you start now will only arrive in two years.
With all this, I wonder when they'll reach break-even on this investment...

There are a lot of asteroids which have paths that are closer than that of the moon, there are also a lot of material already floating around earth, good time to put that crap into use... Also, it is mostly believed that mining would be automated, with some kind of robots to minimize materials needed to ship up there. And I never said it was gonna happen tomorrow, read my first post... I clearly said "I doubt we'll see this in our lifetime".

Originally Posted by Phil

A base on the moon is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard.

Why exactly? It's a potential source of energy... And building large ships in space or on the moon would be cheaper than making one down here and then pull it up there so we'll need either a real space station or a moon base for travelling long distances. Space stations are in constant danger of the space rubble while moon base at least could be built mostly underground, keeping it safe from radiation too, not to mention having at least some gravity.

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[Mad]

All of a sudden i feel like playing SPAZ

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[Fadingz]

I will save humanity by playing asteroid!

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[Phil]

Originally Posted by Radix865

Why exactly? It's a potential source of energy... And building large ships in space or on the moon would be cheaper than making one down here and then pull it up there so we'll need either a real space station or a moon base for travelling long distances. Space stations are in constant danger of the space rubble while moon base at least could be built mostly underground, keeping it safe from radiation too, not to mention having at least some gravity.

Infrastructure? It would cost trillions upon trillions of dollars. There is no oxygen on the moon. 90% of our machines require oxygen to run. Where will they get it? What about radiation? The moon has no atmosphere. Conditions on the surface will be beyond harsh.

For the record, the Apollo Project cost around 115 Billion in today's dollars. 115 billion vs 100 Trillion. Which is cheaper?

What's worse is validity. What would you achieve by dumping 100 times the earths GDP into a project that has absolutely no relevance or clear advantage over bases that are stationed on earth.

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[Radix865]

Originally Posted by Phil

Infrastructure? It would cost trillions upon trillions of dollars. There is no oxygen on the moon. 90% of our machines require oxygen to run. Where will they get it? What about radiation? The moon has no atmosphere. Conditions on the surface will be beyond harsh.

For the record, the Apollo Project cost around 115 Billion in today's dollars. 115 billion vs 100 Trillion. Which is cheaper?

What's worse is validity. What would you achieve by dumping 100 times the earths GDP into a project that has absolutely no relevance or clear advantage over bases that are stationed on earth.

Like I said, moonbase could be built underground, most radiation in space does not pierce materials very well, the united space station for example has very thin walls to protect it... And oxygen can be created through numerous processes, which are studied and improved as we speak. Oxygen can also be easily created from water, which is now believed to exist in moon poles, craters and beneath it's surface.

And advantages of the moonbase, 1/6th of gravity meaning you could build much bigger ships on the moon and still be able to lift off and land without even having to worry about atmospheric entry, which is at the moment the most dangerous part of space travel... If we're ever gonna move to space travel further than the moon, we need some kind of base outside earth's atmosphere, moon just sounds pretty perfect for that.

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[Phil]

All valid points, but it hinges on technoligies that have not been invented yet. Thus enormous cost.

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[Radix865]

Originally Posted by Phil

All valid points, but it hinges on technoligies that have not been invented yet. Thus enormous cost.

And thus, I'll say this for the third time, I doubt we'll see it happen during our lifetime...

Though I just read that they're planning on sending a first unmanned prototype mining robot to space in just two years. Just wondering that they have trouble making a robot simply move around in mars and now they're planning on making one that is supposed to do one of the most hardest jobs on earth on asteroids. Quite a jump in requirements there...

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[snickothemule]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...hey-can-do-it/

Fantastic read about the proposed new endeavour. The whole approach to the scope of the project being done in small increments, to help our understanding and improve tech is fantastic. My favourite thing though was the overall approach, not to turn a quick profit, but to get mankind into the stars. Really into the stars.

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[Phil]

I bet itll happen alot faster if they commercialize space

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[Noja87]

I want to see the first human colony before i die

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