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Space Mining (Topic from the tavern)

Started by Elemental_Elf, April 28, 2012, 12:30:53 PM

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Nomadic

#15
Quote from: Decomentalist
Hopefully your right on the last two issues, but if the goal of all of this is to save on earths resources, then I can't see space travel working with our current technology, maybe I'm overstating when I say "a few centuries" but right now I just can't see it working with how many resources it would take to get to the asteroids in the first place, mine them, and then take them back to earth, and were not even taking into account all of the labor safety issues.

It wouldn't take many resources at all. We've already been to a couple asteroids. Getting to these asteroids requires fewer resources than going to the moon. Also there are no labor safety issues regarding the mining. You don't mine asteroids with people, you use robots. And before you ask, yes robotics is at a point where we could build robots smart enough to do this :)

LD

The issue isn't getting to an asteroid so much as it is weight v. fuel, nomadic. If you add weight... you need to add a great deal more fuel. I would like to see the financials work and I think they *might* be able to work at some point, but it doesn't seem doable right now.

LD

#17
>>See my points on mining for water in my early post for an explanation for how this becomes a viable option. Water extraction in space is one of the key points to making the jump to an interplanetary society (it's one of the main reasons scientists are constantly looking for water outside earth beyond the obvious connection between water and life). If you can get water in space you effectively overcome a majority of the obstacles to regular space travel.

Your comments on water as a potential fuel source seemed to be a demonstration of how the technology isn't there yet. When do you think that would be technologically possible? 10 years- 20- 50? It's not viable now, that's for certain.

QuoteLet's say through some combination of a complete switch to renewable resources, asteroid-mining and the like to help bolster our metal supply, social progress to achieve ZPG, and other measures, we were able to create a sustainable, renewable, stable global society with enough resources for everyone, enough totally renewable supply to meet everyone's needs indefinitely.  This society might take a lot of forms.  But let's be optimistic for the sake of argument, since we're imagining how the world might look.  While we're being utopian let's imagine that the vast majority, if not all, manual labour has been mechanized, possibly with advanced computers doing a good portion of the world's mental labour as well, possibly not.  This would effectively be a post-scarcity society: no need for real jobs, no need for conventional trade as such, no need for war (ideology/religion would be the only things left to fight about, but since the world's economic problems have effectively been solved, ideology loses its claws).  Class divisions are erased and hierarchies dissolve.  Money becomes defunct.  Government withers to a vestige.  With the end of poverty, the great majority of crime disappears.  Instead of spending their time fighting one another and devoting their lives to drudgery, people devote all of their time to creative pursuits, games, sports, science, altruistic pursuits (medicine etc), or simply enjoying themselves.  Competition still exists in an abstract, friendly sense (there will still be star athletes, for example, and there may be limited, localized hierarchies in the vestigial government etc).  This is more or less what Wilde is imagining in "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" and a kind of localized, planterary version of Iain Bank's Culture.  This is, of course, a mid-to-far-future, idealistic society.  It's essentially a communist one, but emphatically not in the coercive authoritarian Stalinist/Maoist sense, but in the classic Marxist sense, which is basically hedonistic, utilitarian, and anti-authoritarian.
That's also not possible. I appreciate the reference though and I'd love to read that!  (No time now, but I hope to be able to sit down and think through these articles :))

As I may have mentioned before- That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis and Brave New World by Huxley are some books that I find fascinating on a similar topic... And Brave New World IS a utopia- I like that society, which sounds similar to Wilde's. But it's not possible to sustain that society- resources are limited (and in a difference from Wilde's society- creativity is constrained, which can lead to atrophy). Even if something like the Singularity were to happen- we live in a finite resource world and even if asteroids are mined- that's still a finite number of resources that will be distributed in an unequal fashion because certain people take risks to extract them, therefore they should be rewarded in kind.

QuoteLess optimistically and far more realistically, if we imagine the ZPG but not the paradigm-changing energy technologies or the mechanized labour, we're in for a more interesting time, but it would still be a way better future than one in which our population continues its rampant expansion.  Capitalism would increasingly do what it's always done to some extent - try to inculcate new desires and thus create new markets, as opposed to simply responding to the needs of the people.
Maybe and maybe not. Captalism has proved to be a remarkably adaptable and remarkably good economic system; still, I'm skeptical if Welfare State Capitalism at least can exist in a zero-population growth world. World government and life in a world like that (well, after about 1 generation in that world) certainly wouldn't look anything like it does today. And yet, I would also foresee rationing similar to rationing in a ++population growth world...the rationing would just happen a generation or two later.

Quote
I'd point to my own country's cost-effective and mostly superb healthcare system and similar systems found elsewhere as the most efficient, sensible, sustainable, and ethical approach to healthcare.   Mostly, individuals aren't involved in billing and reclaim.  The costs are pretty much entirely paid for by income tax.  So the question "how do we continue the program" is the same as asking how a government continues any program paid for by tax, such as defense.  Presumably, even if we hit ZPG, people still have jobs with incomes (again, paradigm-changing technologies aside!), so we'd still pay tax, so healthcare would still be paid for.  With an aging population that healthcare might become more expensive, but since people are far more willing to come in to get checked out early (as opposed to a private system, where if they're poor they may try to avoid going to the doctor), a publicly funded system is still way more efficient.  There's no need to worry about up-front costs and like because the entire system is universal and paid for through the public fund, with the costs thus shared by everyone according to their ability to contribute (progressive taxation).

People still have jobs with incomes, yes. But the pool of potential workers decreases, creating issues that are faced by Japan and European countries. To sustain the same level of benefits for new retiring workers they either need to : a. increase the population of workers (by births or by forcing people to retire at age 70 rather than 62/65) or b. increase productivity of workers (by new tech like computers or longer work days), or c. raise the tax rate to accommodate.

I'd rather not get into a discussion of health care. I understand how you see it as related, but I worry that it will cause this thread to divert to a major tangent. :)

Nomadic

Quote from: Light Dragon
The issue isn't getting to an asteroid so much as it is weight v. fuel, nomadic. If you add weight... you need to add a great deal more fuel. I would like to see the financials work and I think they *might* be able to work at some point, but it doesn't seem doable right now.

Where are you getting these claims from. Again need some sources cited here. Where is it required that we have to launch something so heavy that it uses so much fuel that it wouldn't be possible to do this?

LD

#19
The metals themselves are heavy. And to transport heavy things, you need more fuel... which adds cost. And then you need more fuel to carry the extra fuel. http://science.howstuffworks.com/rocket2.htm

And on payload, for background information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_%28air_and_space_craft%29

LD

#20
Ok. And Ars Techinca seems to have had an in-depth discussion on this issue: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1172636, with people on both sides of the issue. Bottom line is- this isn't economically viable now. Remember, SpaceX took about 7 years (?) to get off the ground, and even though it is "private", the people pushing it through benefit greatly due to tax breaks (like many other industries, admittedly) and subsidies. Without those breaks for this asteroid mining and without resource costs massively higher than they are today- the financials don't work.

Maybe after some technology development, and I see that some people seem to think that "dragging" asteroids may have some viability, but there are a great many technological issues to solve.  If we all want to dream, then yes, it would be interesting. And if private people want to spend their own money, then fine. But until they solve the fuel problem and/or the problem of what to do with properly transferring/exploiting an asteroid that has been dragged back to earth, the money is just going down a black hole. One of those two problems needs to be solved before asteroid mining is viable.

Nomadic

#21
Quote from: Light Dragon
The metals themselves are heavy. And to transport heavy things, you need more fuel... which adds cost. And then you need more fuel to carry the extra fuel. http://science.howstuffworks.com/rocket2.htm

And on payload, for background information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_%28air_and_space_craft%29

I'm not sure if you've fully read up on their plans (I also suspect you're looking at this with the current NASA style model in mind which doesn't work here this is a whole other beast). Step 1 of the actual mining phase involves harvesting water. They don't have to buy the fuel, they mine it. They then use it for resale to people like NASA and SpaceX to make bank and for their own craft for transporting materials to and from Earth. Once again read my first post (the part that talks about water). Also it doesn't take a fraction of the energy to de-orbit that it does to get up into orbit. The reason ships like the Saturn V or the Shuttle require such absolutely massive thrusters is to get into space. Your asteroid operation is already in space and it has access to ridiculous amounts of water for cheaply fueling the trip back (and further launches). As a result you can launch small cheap ships to transport all your supplies.

Case in point here about the amount of fuel required just to get into orbit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#12

Quote
Q. How fast does a Shuttle travel? What is its altitude? How much fuel does it use?
A. Like any other object in low-Earth orbit, a Space Shuttle must reach speeds of about 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour) to remain in orbit. The exact speed depends on the Space Shuttle's orbital altitude, which normally ranges from 190 miles to 330 miles (304 kilometers to 528 kilometers) above sea level, depending on its mission.

Each of the two Solid Rocket Boosters on the Space Shuttle carries more than one million pounds of solid propellant. The Space Shuttle's large External Tank is loaded with more than 500,000 gallons of super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which are mixed and burned together to form the fuel for the orbiter's three main rocket engines.

That's 2 million pounds of solid propellant and 500,000 gallons of LOX/LH just to get the initial boost, the orbiter burns additional fuel from its onboard tank to complete the orbital insertion. The small remainder of fuel left is enough for everything else including its deorbit. Lets also note that the orbiter is like 75 tons empty. It isn't a light thing.

LoA

Quote from: Nomadic
Quote from: Decomentalist
Hopefully your right on the last two issues, but if the goal of all of this is to save on earths resources, then I can't see space travel working with our current technology, maybe I'm overstating when I say "a few centuries" but right now I just can't see it working with how many resources it would take to get to the asteroids in the first place, mine them, and then take them back to earth, and were not even taking into account all of the labor safety issues.

It wouldn't take many resources at all. We've already been to a couple asteroids. Also there are no labor safety issues. You don't mine asteroids with people, you use robots. And before you ask, yes robotics is at a point where we could build robots smart enough to do this :)

Fair enough. Robotics was immediately where my mind went when I was trying to figure out if this is logical or not.

LD

#23
Quote from: Nomadic
Quote from: Light Dragon
The metals themselves are heavy. And to transport heavy things, you need more fuel... which adds cost. And then you need more fuel to carry the extra fuel. http://science.howstuffworks.com/rocket2.htm

And on payload, for background information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_%28air_and_space_craft%29

I'm not sure if you've fully read up on their plans (I also suspect you're looking at this with the current NASA style model in mind which doesn't work here this is a whole other beast).

You are correct. I am mainly approaching this from the NASA style-point of view.

However, Regarding their new plan, I've heard a little and it mostly seems silly. I read your post and I would appreciate a link to explain more of the science. Based on your post (here and above), the plan still seems silly and unlikely, but I am willing to read more.

>>Step 1 of the actual mining phase involves harvesting water. They don't have to buy the fuel, they mine it.

I don't see how water alone would be good enough. They'd have to heat it and have combustion. We don't have 100% hydrogen fuel tanks on rockets now. Why would hydrogen fueled tanks be better in space? You don't have to worry about a gravity well and lift drag (which is where massive amounts of fuel are burned), so it is a BETTER idea than the current NASA modus operandi, so it is a BETTER project to spend money on developing the robotics for and the lift vehicles for, but it's still nowhere near feasible in the near term (under 10 years). Now, if you're saying "yay- in 40 or so years (mid to far range future) we can do this commercially if we build the vehicles now (~2-8 year timeframe [look at development times for the SpaceX rockets, etc.]; and perfect the rock extraction technology with remote control and sensing [it would have to be better than the mars landers and mars rovers] (~2-15 year timeframe), then after the initial success-to scale up to commercial would take an additional few years...not to count travel time to asteroids... 1/2 a year to 3 years??? depending on which ones you deal with"- then you may have a point :)

Nomadic

Water is made up of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen yes? These are the two components of a liquid rocket engine like the ones on the shuttle. To split water into LOX and LH you mainly just need energy (which can be gathered with solar panels). The water itself isn't the propellent it's what is used to make the propellent. And no I'm not saying we're gonna be mining the solar system in a couple years, but to say that it couldn't happen inside a couple hundred is I think not giving enough credit to human ingenuity and tenacity. I would have written these guys completely off except that they are taking realistic steps (starting with a small space telescope program to track asteroids, followed by prospecting, followed by mining water to create the fuel needed, finally ending with full scale mining). This is something that is going to be decades long from conception to realization. However it isn't something that we lack the ability to do within our lifetime. On the final point they seem to be focusing on near Earth asteroids. We're talking about days to weeks to a few months tops to make a trip, not years. The guys off in the asteroid belt are for later.

As to the science well to start I'd probably read through their full site to get an idea of what all they are planning. From there there are a number of resources you can look at regarding the science and technology behind this. This is a great site to start with. NASA of course is another good resource. Regarding engine efficiency you might take a look at articles on Ion propulsion and space refueling. Robotics is probably something else that is going to factor heavily into this venture too.

And to end this all let's be clear, I'm skeptical about this. I hope it works out but I'm still in doubt as to whether it will. However, this isn't doubt from the science, their science as far as I can see is sound. This is doubt more from the corporate side, it requires investors willing to wait years for RoI and a serious commitment. Time will tell if they can pull it off.

Steerpike

#25
Quote from: Light DragonEven if something like the Singularity were to happen- we live in a finite resource world and even if asteroids are mined- that's still a finite number of resources that will be distributed in an unequal fashion because certain people take risks to extract them, therefore they should be rewarded in kind.
This is where the idea of renewable resources on a mass scale come in.  For Banks, we're talking Dyson spheres and the like (more realistically, solar sails, Dyson swarms, etc) coming in.  This is clearly really far-future - obviously not in anyone's lifetime, barring world-altering longevity technology.  But one can imagine hypothetical civilizations where the idea of a monetary/material "reward" is totally nonsensical.  Even if people still have to take risks to get resources (which in a world of semi-sentient or fully sentient machines isn't a necessity at all), those rewards might take the form of status, reputation, heroism, etc, as opposed to material rewards.  When everyone has everything material they conceivably could want or need, the profit motive falls by the wayside.

This is science fiction.  It's not happening anytime soon.  The question is in what direction we want to move towards.

Brave New World is an interesting but screwy example.  The people in BNW are all permanently drugged-up mindwashed automata, whereas those in Banks' utopia are highly free-willed, individualistic badasses.  I'll take Banks' Culture any day.  The closer we can get to that kind of state of being, the better, for my two space-credits!

It's clear that for the short term, at least, we're stuck with hierarchies, money, and the wretched realities of labour, though, at least for awhile.

[spoiler=Filthy Socialist Rant]
Quote from: Light DragonCaptalism has proved to be a remarkably adaptable and remarkably good economic system
This might degenerate into the wrong type of debate, but I'd dispute this.

Capitalism has really only been around for 200 years.  It's done some amazingly, amazingly good things.  It put the final nails in the coffin of the bizarre and horrifically unjust feudal/absolutist system, it industrialized our economy, it led to a much greater quality of life for everyone, it facilitated a tremendous amount of invention, and created an enormous amount of wealth. All tremendously good things.

But capitalism hardly has an untarnished history.  Take the Great Famine in Ireland.  The reason that famine occurred was, in no small measure, because of the dependency on potatoes, which in turn was caused by the small size of plots, which was the result of landlords dividing up their land to maximize profits from rent.  The famine was hideously exacerbated as merchants continued to export food during even the worst years of the famine.  Some historians have shown that for some foodstuffs, exports actually increased.  With mass unemployment and poverty in Ireland, people had no money to buy food, so merchants simply shipped the food to better markets.  25% of the population - a million people - died.  Now one could argue that all sorts of factors conspired to create this bad situation, and that capitalism is hardly the sole culprit - that's totally true, and I'm not trying to lay the famine solely at the feet of capitalism.  But it really, really didn't help.  Profits were put before people, with disastrous results.  Government regulation, intervention (export bans, government projects for employment), and increased workers' rights and wages would have hugely mitigated the catastrophe.

I'm sure the same thing couldn't happen today, but this sort of thing is part of capitalism's history.  It has its strengths, and it's important not to forget them, but it isn't always "remarkably good."[/spoiler]

EDIT: I just realized I'm posting about the Irish potato famine in a thread that's supposed to be about space mining.  Feel free to ignore the above!

Superfluous Crow

This link seems to do a fairly good job at explaining the current plans and aims of Planetary Resources (although I admittedly only skimmed it), with the most important point being that they themselves say that it will be quite a while before they start actually mining asteroids!

I think that putting all this in a capitalist and resource-scarcity framework is a natural reaction for people of this day and age, but also, quite frankly, a wrong way to look at it. Consider that this is a venture backed by the guy who made the two highest-grossing movies ever AND the guy who invented (at least half of) Google. Freakin' Google, people. With the risk of sounding overly optimistic and naive, I don't believe these people do this for the money. They do it because it is a new frontier, both technologically and (exo-)geographically; essentially the perfect thing to get a deep-sea explorer/idealist artist and a computer scientist excited. 

Also, as the article mentioned above, they have no delusions about just going up there and mining rocks. This is a project, and more than anything I believe it is about building up a space infrastructure. Because, well, if we always sit around waiting for the perfect moment we are never going to get anywhere. 

So is it economically viable? Who knows. I'm not sure they care. But the calculations we can make today might not even be viable in 5 year's time. It all depends on the technology, a notoriously fickle historical factor. From what I understand the real cost is reaching escape velocity and reaching outer space/stable orbit, so if we can just minimize the amount of stuff and energy (in whatever form) we need to send up there, I can't see why we shouldn't be able to come up with a viable business scheme eventually. With the infrastructure in place, and with no (human) personnel, fuel, maintenance and materials are the only things we actually need to send skywards and we can probably just send all the mined goodness hurling back to earth through the atmosphere in a protected casing with a minimum of propulsion and padding. These are metals we are talking about, not delicate electronics nor soft humans. (although kinetic bombs are supposedly a legit concept, so maybe we should invest in parachutes)   

PS: do you think James Cameron actually sided with the mining corporation in Avatar?
Currently...
Writing: Broken Verge v. 207
Reading: the Black Sea: a History by Charles King
Watching: Farscape and Arrested Development

Steerpike

Thank you, Crow, for saying exactly what I've been trying to say, but far more eloquently!

Quote from: Superfluous CrowPS: do you think James Cameron actually sided with the mining corporation in Avatar?
Not to mention the shades of Weyland-Yutani present in all this  :P.

Nomadic

Quote from: Steerpike
Thank you, Crow, for saying exactly what I've been trying to say, but far more eloquently!

Quote from: Superfluous CrowPS: do you think James Cameron actually sided with the mining corporation in Avatar?
Not to mention the shades of Weyland-Yutani present in all this  :P.

Heh now that Cameron has lived The Abyss he's recreating Avatar. Next thing we know he'll be building an ocean liner and ramming it into an iceberg... or investing in hunter-killer robots...

LD

#29
Quote
As to the science well to start I'd probably read through their full site to get an idea of what all they are planning. From there there are a number of resources you can look at regarding the science and technology behind this. This is a great site to start with. NASA of course is another good resource. Regarding engine efficiency you might take a look at articles on Ion propulsion and space refueling. Robotics is probably something else that is going to factor heavily into this venture too.

And to end this all let's be clear, I'm skeptical about this. I hope it works out but I'm still in doubt as to whether it will. However, this isn't doubt from the science, their science as far as I can see is sound. This is doubt more from the corporate side, it requires investors willing to wait years for RoI and a serious commitment. Time will tell if they can pull it off.

Thank you. I have read your links and Crows'... although I've seen that atomic rockets site before... I don't trust it. These ideas are about as pie in the sky as the National Space Society questionable dreaming about permanent habitat moon bases for a functioning and self-sustainable society in 30 years, etc. Or the constant discussion about space hotels that have been promised since what, the 1970s? That is not to say they are impossible, just that the technology needs to develop for it to be financially responsible.

What I think we agree on though is that these fellows at least have a plan with logical steps and that they are being realistic to some degree about the timeline and the steps necessary it will take to achieve certain goals...they are dreaming big. What concerns me is if they reach a point where they go and beg governments for money for this task. As long as they spend their own money, that's fine. As I may have stated before, I'm a big believer in exploration, R & D... but I prefer that science takes logical steps. e.g. Worried about pressurization? Explore undersea first to test at what is hopefully a cheaper price!; worried about robotics- develop them first to work on earth at long distances remotely, etc. Essentially, I foresee this taking a lot longer than they plan, or that they fail, so I'm not going to be investing any of my own money :D. That being said, I wish them lots of luck in their development. :) If it does work as they hope, then it will be very interesting.

I was very negative on the end-game of the development because frankly, it's not financially possible now, or in 5 years or even likely in 10. But maybe, just maybe it will be in 20 or 30. It's like when oil companies invest in long-term R&D for deep sea drilling. Eventually there may be a payoff.