Posted on 12/07/2022 12:11:15 AM PST by Jonty30
The day may be coming when we can bring asteroids back to earth to process. I understand the usefulness of the metals in these asteroids and I understand the benefits of grinding them to a powder to get the water and gases released from them.
My question are there any uses for the rock that will be left over?
If broken into suitable sizes they can be thrown at Qtards and bloggers.
Conduct a few open-ended conversations with someone with an understanding of Basic Economics, Metallurgy, and Space Flight.
The Logistics and Economics of mining asteroid material and either processing it in situ (for use in the construction of orbital platforms and manned colonies, the production of rocket fuel, etc.) or bringing it to Earth for Earth-based exploitation are complicated, to say the least.
Regards,
It’s the amount of heavy metals in them that make them potentially valuable, if the cost of mining them in the first place can be brought down. Earth has lots of heavy metals in its interior, having been delivered by asteroid impacts in its early history when it was still molten, and have mostly sunken below the crust. But they are still relatively rare on the surface, the surviving amounts having struck the earth only after the crust solidified. So asteroids are a far more pure source of heavy metals than what can be mined on earth.
I know the difficuties of. Each asteroids can be billions of tons and even a push from the upper orbits will be almost as bad as it crashes into thecearth.
But im interested in the rock itself and its usefulness to us.
The answer is that, having extracted and concentrated all the useful stuff right where you found it, the waste rock is used as reaction mass to drive the good material from the asteroid orbit to Earth, or more likely the Moon.
I hadn’t thought of soil. I was thinking of using it as part of cement and wondering if it could be used that way.
I do know that it wouldn’t change the Mars by much. If we took the entire asteroud belt and Pluto, we would change the mass of Mars by less than 5%.
Several points.
1.On-orbit, you have unlimited solar energy: just set up a
big mirror and concentrate the light, making a solar furnace.
2. ‘Waste’ just means you lack the affordable power to crack the remaining value out of the rock.
3. The primary value of asteroid mining is for feeding space infrastructure...
Exactly. The big cost is ∆v.
Likely all kinds of useful virus and other microbial spores encased in protective asteroid material that might have been dormant for billions of years.
ref:
Andromeda Strain (Crichton,1969)
Hey, the elections are all over and the bad guys won. You can stop talking about queue-ah-nahn.
People used to pay good money for holy relics.
In the same vein, you could probably soak gullible rich folks into paying for an asteroid stone gravel driveway.
Except that the cost of bringing water to mix with the asteroid tailings would exceed the value of the leftover rock.
Certain things are very valuable in space.
Oxygen. Water. Food (calories). Radiation barriers. Delta V.
What we take for granted on Earth, that's the truly valuable stuff.
AOC could use them for a new brain.
Oxygen. Water. Food (calories). Radiation barriers. Delta V.
What we take for granted on Earth, that's the truly valuable stuff.
Exactly.
Well said.
Another important point: Once you have "made" things in space, distributing them back to earth is relatively cheap.
Energy can be "beamed" back.
My question are there any uses for the rock that will be left over?
Yes, set it on a trajectory to wipe wishington dc off the map.
Absolutely true!
I recall reading some NASA engineer remarking that, if future lunar colonists discovered concrete on the Moon, they'd be delighted - and would then proceed to mine it in order to extract the water from it!
Regards,
If you add enough mass to the Earth, you will inevitably alter the rotation speed and the orbit around the Sun.
False!
Ferrying 100 kg from, say, the asteroid Vesta (rich in metals) to Earth would be just as expensive, energetically, as transporting 100 kg from the Earth to Vesta. (With the exception of advantages gained by aerobraking - providing "free" reduction in velocity - upon re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.)
My question is: Why bother ferrying it to Earth at all? All the really cool economies will be based in space, after all!
Regards,
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