Moon mining: want to invest in the final frontier?

Reuters ^ | 21 NOV 2001 23:30 | Jeremy Smith

[CommiesOut]

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[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Bump and a bookmark.

[operation clinton cleanup]

It seems like the EARTH FIRST!ers would be jumping all over this.

[malarski]

The real key to lunar mining, Taylor said, was to reduce the cost of sending a craft into space so that its operators could afford to have a vehicle which went up partially empty into space and came back partially empty.

I guess it is probably better than if it went up empty into space and came back empty.

[jmp702]

"We aren't going to have little men with tin hats holding picks in their hands," he said. "All this exploitation of asteroid material will be robotic and remote."

Ahh, come on, have a heart.

[CommiesOut]

All you need is enough dumb investors. It can go on empty both ways min. 10 years.
If you have balls you tell them: "Empty = fuel savings"!
Then you move to Patagonia.

[patriciaruth]

Are you familiar with Space Studies Institute and Gerard O'Neill, whose untimely death in 1992 set back the private push into mining the moon for materials to build solar energy satellites to beam energy to Earth from space?
O'Neill was the inventor of the mass driver, and coined the term "The High Frontier."

[operation clinton cleanup]

Didnt the tin man want a brain?

[Rushian]

Even if you did it on the dark side of the Moon, I'll guarantee you the e-wakkos would be all over it. And that would be no more silly than their concern about ANWR.

[jmp702]

The tinsman forgot to give me a heart...:)

Click here.

[nunya bidness]

I'm a rockthrower from way back.

[JoeSchem]

The real key to lunar mining, Taylor said, was to reduce the cost of sending a craft into space so that its operators could afford to have a vehicle which went up partially empty into space and came back partially empty.

Alternatively, we could send a robotically-operated minifactory to the Moon which would manufacture projectile shell casings for shipping metals back to Earth. The shells would be fired from the Moon, using oxygen compression. Such pressurized guns have been tested on Earth with velocities that equal lunar escape velocity.

This was the technology I used in my story, Incident at Clavius Gulch.

[redrock]

Me too!!!

But.....it really wouldn't be beyond the ability of private business to do this....

But would the government allow it to happen???

After all...if PRIVATE individuals start moving into space...could the government still CONTROL them???

(After all...to them losing voters is a 'bad thing')

redrock

[Cincinatus' Wife]

To back up their claims, they cite a famous sale of Russian lunar samples held at a New York Sotheby's auction in 1993, where a pebble of moon rock weighing less than one carat fetched an astounding $442,000, or $2,200 a milligram. According to Applied Space Resources (ASR), a moon mission costing less than $100 million could return a quantity of lunar material with enough demand in the marketplace to make the return on investment attractive to financial backers.

But if they returned a large quantity, it wouldn't be so rare and valuable, would it?

[monocle]

In the late 60's and early 70's deep sea mining was the next frontier and I am still waiting.

[Stingray]

"The treaty stipulated that any wealth obtained from the moon by any space-faring nation was to be distributed to all the people of the world."

The "have-nots" trying to run the lives of the "haves" again.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The "have-nots" trying to run the lives of the "haves" again.

A good working definition of the U.N. in general.

[CommiesOut]

Two Chinese women walk past a billboard featuring a picture of the space shuttle, on a Beijing street Friday, Nov. 23, 2001. China on Thursday announced that it would send men into space by 2005, and that plans for a manned mission to the moon are under way. The billboard promotes a Beijing newspaper called Star Daily. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)

[brityank]

In the late 60's and early 70's deep sea mining was the next frontier and I am still waiting.

You missed it.

Too much government involvement to make it profitable. ;^)