Reply to: Mining Asteroids

[TimberWolf]

there is a ton of gold in every 20 cubic miles of seawater. I wonder which is cheaper, asteroid gold or ocean gold. Plus you dont have to go prospecting to find out where the ocean is
heck, I'll tell them that for a small fee

Cameron was down there only a few weeks ago too.

[d000hg]

Strongly recommend Asimov's "The Martian Way" both for its relevance to this story, and to current environmentalism hysteria.

[Diver]

there is a ton of gold in every 20 cubic miles of seawater. I wonder which is cheaper, asteroid gold or ocean gold. Plus you dont have to go prospecting to find out where the ocean is
heck, I'll tell them that for a small fee

Better still, pikey sites are full of gold fillings

[NickFitz]

I don't understand what they are up to. These are bright people but nevertheless what I've heard looks like a barking mad project from an economic point of view. It's better than buying a football club, and maybe it's a form of charity to science, which is laudable.

Meteorites found on Earth seem to be more rocky and irony than goldy and platinumy. And water? Yes, it can be split into fuel using a lot of energy and machinery, and the H and O separated and stored in tanks remotely somehow. And it will probably be locked up in rock and will need autonomous machinery to do the collecting, splitting and storing. All very non trivial stuff. As I say it sounds barking mad economically.

These people are ridiculously rich; it doesn't have to make sense economically (by which I suspect you mean "generating a short- to medium-term return on investment").

When Victorian industrialists built public libraries, museums and art galleries, they didn't do so because it resulted in a line item allowing them to show a profit on the deal. They did it because enormous wealth carried with it a responsibility to give something back for the good of society (and a bit of an ego trip, no doubt).

Similarly, the people behind Planetary Resources don't have to worry about their endeavours turning a profit next year, or next decade, or even next century: they can afford to spend their money helping the human race build for the long-term future.

[EternalOptimist]

there is a ton of gold in every 20 cubic miles of seawater. I wonder which is cheaper, asteroid gold or ocean gold. Plus you dont have to go prospecting to find out where the ocean is
heck, I'll tell them that for a small fee

[sbakoola]

Unless they find something rarer than Gold!

Surely a Wim braincell must be worth something?

Green Gold - Blackadder - BBC - YouTube

At 0:30.

[Diver]

Originally Posted by TimberWolf

Meteorites found on Earth seem to be more rocky and irony than goldy and platinumy. ...

Should we move this thread into technical

[mudskipper]

All the same there are fair concentrations of heavy metals, and long term it might be easier and cheaper to extract them in space - Just use giant mirrors to concentrate sunlight on the rock to turn it to plasma then feed this into a large magnetized region so that different elements would be each be deflected to a particular degree depending on their atomic mass, and collect your gold, platinum, and whatever else takes your fancy.

Sounds like an inter-stellar coin sorting machine.

I always wanted one of those when I was a kid.

[OwlHoot]

Meteorites found on Earth seem to be more rocky and irony than goldy and platinumy. ...

All the same there are fair concentrations of heavy metals, and long term it might be easier and cheaper to extract them in space - Just use giant mirrors to concentrate sunlight on the rock to turn it to plasma then feed this into a large magnetized region so that different elements would be each be deflected to a particular degree depending on their atomic mass, and collect your gold, platinum, and whatever else takes your fancy.

[mudskipper]

Have you read the book "Mining Hemorrhoids. a cottage industry" by MarillionFan

Brings a new meaning to pile driving.

[Old Greg]

Have you read the book "Mining Hemorrhoids. a cottage industry" by MarillionFan

Bridgwater Publishing has just brought out its 50th anniversary edition.

[Diver]

Have you read the book "Mining Hemorrhoids. a cottage industry" by MarillionFan

[TimberWolf]

I don't understand what they are up to. These are bright people but nevertheless what I've heard looks like a barking mad project from an economic point of view. It's better than buying a football club, and maybe it's a form of charity to science, which is laudable.

Meteorites found on Earth seem to be more rocky and irony than goldy and platinumy. And water? Yes, it can be split into fuel using a lot of energy and machinery, and the H and O separated and stored in tanks remotely somehow. And it will probably be locked up in rock and will need autonomous machinery to do the collecting, splitting and storing. All very non trivial stuff. As I say it sounds barking mad economically.

[Old Greg]

Do I get a ining laser?

[NotAllThere]

Scarcity makes useful/pretty things expensive - but the value of something comes from what you can do with it. If space mining can generate a decent roi, then there will be more of it, and we'll be able to get off this planet before a dinosaur killer asteroid makes global warming irrelevant for a few tens of thousands of years..