Posted on 04/24/2012 5:20:08 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Billionaire-backed space startup Planetary Resources has officially unveiled its business plan to much fanfare and with few surprises. The company’s principals--which include X-Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis, Space Adventures co-founder Eric Anderson, and former NASA Flight Director Chris Lewicki--today pledged that Planetary Resources would make the abundant resources of space available here on Earth, and introduced a couple of the company’s own spacecraft that will make such space prospecting possible. The rush for space resources is officially on.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
It is that facility (and others?) placed where, when, and how productive it (they) will be able to be that the whole enterprise must rely on.
Twenty years into the future? At least, I would imagine - and with a world bankrupt and on the verge of world war again, it begins to look like 'pie in the sky.'
A cover story for what?
I smell the CIA and another Glomar Challenger stunt.
What would be cheaper, building robots to scour the heavens for water laden asteroids, or building a robotic moon-base to convert the water (supposedly a lot of it, per expert-conjecture) on the moon to rocket fuel?
They seem to be advocating bringing stuff back to Earth. Seems to me it would take as much energy to bring it to the surface (without it all burning up) as it would to blast it off.
Its always easier and cheaper coming down. Coming down is unpowered just for starters. The space shuttle is nothing but a glider.
As long as they are not circling Uranus, you’ll be ok.
But maybe someday you can grow up.
Is a glider practical for an economically significant mass of minerals?
And find it easier to disparage the person that pointed it out than to provide proof.
K. I'm fairly clear on the maturity issues now.
/johnny
And find it easier to disparage the person that pointed it out than to provide proof.
K. I'm fairly clear on the maturity issues now.
/johnny
Considering the fact that it doesn’t require fuel, I can’t think of a more economic means. After all, why would you need to do it any other way?
Also there’s the fact that we’ve been thinking of this stuff in terms of government which is always wildly overpriced.
Based on what we know now there is nothing on the asteroids that isn’t also on Earth in pretty good quantities.
I suppose hoopla is necessary o get anything done but the cold hard fact is that space exploration is basic research - you shouldn’t expect an economic return but may be worth it for it’s own sake.
Platinum is significant in small masses. So are some of the rare earths.
Water would be stupid to return, except as fuel to be used to slow a spacecraft, as would some others, unless they had been worked into valuable end items.
Meter long carbon nano-tubes might be a case for value returning.
But the bottom line is that we don't know until we get there and do it.
What use is a baby? What is the economic return? Maybe a lot, or maybe none.
Same here. Folks will fail, we will learn, and we'll move forward.
/johnny
What I’m saying is you can bring a ton of space shuttle and a few rock down that way. Can you bring 100 tons down in a glider?
See my post #34.
The shuttle weighs 165,000 lbs and can carry another 65,000 in payload. Its 30 year old government tech. I trust private industry to come up with something that far exceeds the shuttle abilities.
That is true, on the face of it, but the concentrations are very different. There are asteroids that are solid nickle-iron with a few % of other stuff.
You don't find that kind of ore on earth. Earth mixes stuff up pretty well.
And there has been economic return from space. Billions of dollars worth. Already. Without tapping any minerals.
/johnny
At current platinum prices ($1500+ per oz) I’m getting over a billion and a half dollars for a shuttle bay full of platinum which is one of the common metals in space. (Obviously that’s processed price in a shuttle that wouldn’t be used)
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