Posted on 06/13/2020 8:38:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
My mind is made up. I’m staying down here, even if I were younger.
45 years in aerospace.
This will NEVER be cost effective.
Cue “Picks and Lasers.”
SpaceX did another launch and landing this morning of its Starlink satellites along with three rideshares. They are averaging about one launch every ten days.
Oye, Beltalowda!
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
Countless asteroids are already sitting on the moon for harvesting... Just mine it
That is ridiculous, think about it.
Show me the cost vs. the potential return.
Paging Tod Hoffman. Paging Tod Hoffman.
Maybe we should increase our mining position West of the Rocky Mountains, before we start playing “Star Trek”.
This seems like an expensive commercial endeavor.
You said NEVER. That gives me a lot of time to respond.
And thanks for giving me the opportunity to cite Clarke.
“space is back” /sure
because one article says a bunch of stuff we’ve yet to do as of right now.
i’m glad we can get people back up to the space station, its a step in thenright direction. and i am glad people ‘have plans’ to start doing stuff further out.
but its a little hyped at this particular point.
A couple of thoughts. When has government ceded control of anything? When has the military voluntarily ceded strategic high ground?
The Expanse ping!
Space is Complicated!
I think that asteroid mining is a threat to civilization. Consider how fragile is the asteroid belt. These space rocks are in precise orbits for millions of years. Before that it was literally a shooting gallery in here.
There were asteroids raining down on the earth surface. From the tunguska event to the Chicxulub impact. Wait till they start blasting gold out of these space rocks. Moving these objects out of their orbits, changing their mass. They run into each other and create a chain reaction that we wont be able to predict.
Everything else will perish in a tectonic cataclysm. What survives that will face a firestorm literally raining fire from space as the crust blasted out into the sky reenters all over the planet surface. Then comes a few million years long ice age.
It makes me sad because i really like the idea of mining asteroids for their resources. But the concern trolls that wring their hands about global warming would do better to be concerned about this really bad idea.
Earth First!
We’ll mine the other planets later!
To the knee jerk naysayers I recommend Live Free or Die by John Ringo. We can do this on our own, we don’t need advanced aliens to help us. Think big and you just might accomplish big things.
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