How the hell do we leave Earth?

[Draco_Argentum]

Pretty sure that was his point.

[bourdain89]

Mutual assured destruction is the reason we will never have a nuclear war,any superpower has the power necessary to wipe another superpower off the face of the earth but they wont because that would inevitably result in their own destruction. Nuclear war is not just a bad idea it is the worst idea

[Koumei]

For someone with the Khornate symbol and chant, you're being awfully... optimistic about how happy to end all life some people are. Plenty of times I would have, given the option, flicked that switch and doomed everyone to fiery nuclear death. And I'd consider it a good deed, as it'd end all suffering and leave no-one to mourn the dead.

And that's with *good* intentions. I'm sure I could find someone willing to annihilate humanity for evil reasons or the lulz, even including themselves.

[Parthenon]

I really don't think theres any likelihood of any of us leaving Earth in our lifetimes, even to making a permanent Moon settlement.

In the current world system, theres no economic benefit to being in space. Hick's example of using SPSes isn't as cost effective as just using nuclear power for a good long while. Who gives a fuck if its 100% clean energy if it needs billions to set up. So, it needs to be for colonisation or for Science! In terms of colonisation theres no real need for it until theres so many people that most of the resources are going towards feeding everyone, so it has to be Science! And trying to avoid an extinction level event is stupid since there won't be enough time to react and get a viable population off Earth.

The only large group that can afford to do anything is a large conglomerate or a large country. Since it is for science it has to be a country.

To get a space ship manufacturing system into space I think it needs to take a smaller length of time than one administration of a government or it will fade in importance and get forgotten. So, a space program needs to be approved, designed, created and implemented in four years. Or at the minimum show large constructive benefits in that time on the scale of creating a space shuttle from asteroids.

Since this is pretty much impossible I don't think we're getting off this rock.

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The other option of course is to find some new propulsion system or other method that almost ignores gravity, so that we can get in and out of space cheaply, easily and repeatably.

And unless the Hadron Collider shows us how to ignore momentum or something I don't see that happening anytime soon.

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Or, different option. Lets say that tomorrow we have a thermonuclear war and most of the planet gets fucked over. So, we have to get the fuck off as soon as possible. We have problems:
[*]Most centres of industry will be totalled. This means that not only do we have to design and build colony sized space ships, we also have to rebuild a large number of factories, uranium centrifuges and whatever else we need.
[*]Most of the resources will be going towards survival. This means that all the scientists will be quickly trying to figure out how to farm radioactive soil rather than how to create effective hydroponics, to give but one example.
[*]There is no current manufacturing facilities in space which is basically mandatory for colony sized ships. So we have to create orbiting space docks from... well, nothing.

To put it simply, its difficult enough to make space ships now, its going to be impossible while stuck in an area a tenth of the size with a thousandth of the population with little to no resources while dying slowly of radiation poisoning.

Although it does make me interested in a Civilisation style / RTS computer game set in the current day after a nuclear war where you compete for resources and try to protect engineers to get off planet onto the Moon.

[tzor]

In the current world system, theres no economic benefit to being in space.

In 2004, the world production of iron ore exceeded a billion metric tons. In comparison, a comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron-nickel ore, or two to three times the annual production for 2004.

16 Psyche is the largest M-type asteroid, and does appear to be metallic. 21 Lutetia, an anomalous, probably non-metallic body, will be the first M-type asteroid to be imaged by a spacecraft when the Rosetta space probe visits it on July 10, 2010. Another M-type, 216 Kleopatra, was imaged by radar by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and has a dog bone-like shape.

16 Psyche (pronounced /ˈsaɪkiː/ SYE-kee, or as in Greek: Ψυχή) is one of the ten most massive Main belt asteroids. It is over 200 kilometers in diameter and contains a little less than 1% of the mass of the entire main asteroid belt. It is the most massive of the metallic M-type asteroids.

Psyche is massive enough that its perturbations on other asteroids can be measured, which enables a mass measurement. IRAS data shows Psyche to have a diameter of 253 km.

There is clearly huge profits to be made in space!

[Crissa]

The amount of, say, Titanium and Platinum on the surface of the Moon itself are just massive. We can see deposits larger than North America and richer than anything currently mined on the Earth.

Aside from energy, the solar system is just covered with valuable resources. And they're nearly free to return to Earth; it's just getting the mining equipment there in the first place that costs money. Once you're out of the gravity well, chucking things around is crazy cheap.

-Crissa

[Parthenon]

Yes, there are a lot of natural resources around the solar system. Just like there are a lot of natural resources under the sea. But its so much easier to get stuff from the land that its really not worth it.

Your example of asteroids: the difficulty in
[*]Finding a likely useful asteroid. Not hard, since theres a lot of them about.
[*]Find out whether or not it contains what you want. Probably feasible, even if from a distance by comparing trajectories to its size to work out likely mass and so on. But still not easy.
[*]Get a spaceship to it. Currently would take months.
[*]Match the velocity and land on it. Very difficult and uses up a lot of fuel.
then, either
[*]Move it to somewhere useful. Harder than getting to the asteroid.
[*]Matching the asteroid's velocity to the mining facility. Very difficult and dangerous if it goes wrong.
or
[*]Regularly land and take off supplies and the mined goods.
makes mining asteroid way too difficult and too time consuming to do for a good long while.

Its sort of doable and if you can actually get it done then you have a huge amount of money. But the likelihood of it being necessary within our lifetimes is slim, and until it becomes necessary it won't be cost effective to do so. Basically, companies are unlikely to invest in it until it does become necessary, and at that point it is probably too late to get it done properly.

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The moon is a lot more likely since it is so much closer. But it still ends up in a mess where at the time it is really going to be invested in a lot of the fuel will be gone so be too costly to do properly.

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Basically when saying that there are huge profits to be made in space: the cost of landing a mining facility on Psyche would ruin most countries a few times over and not actually make a profit for decades. If you can't afford the initial outlay then theres no money to be made at all. Huge potential gains isn't the same as actual profit.

[Cynic]

So how many corporations are doing research into, say, quantum physics?

I remember reading about a Toshiba Research center that was making some headway on quantum physics and use for semiconductors.

[Crissa]

[*]Finding a likely useful asteroid. Not hard, since theres a lot of them about.

...And important to find them in general, as these things crash into other stellar objects, and we don't want that to happen to something we're inhabiting. Like the Earth.

[*]Find out whether or not it contains what you want. Probably feasible, even if from a distance by comparing trajectories to its size to work out likely mass and so on. But still not easy.

Very simple. Shoot it, compare its spectrometer reading. This is very expensive on earth, but relatively simple in the space - no plants obscuring your view, no gasses in the way, etc.

[*]Get a spaceship to it. Currently would take months.

Current quote to get an oil rig to a newly discovered, totally rich deposit of oil: Ten years plus.

[*]Match the velocity and land on it. Very difficult and uses up a lot of fuel.

Not really. Orbital mechanics are fairly simple, you figure this stuff out ahead of time. It takes so little fuel to land or match with an asteroid, space probes do this in their off time.

[*]Move it to somewhere useful. Harder than getting to the asteroid.

Again, it's as simple as getting to the asteroid - this time gravitational mechanics. Every size object has gravity. The asteroid is attracted to your spacecraft. Merely position your spacecraft to always fall just out of range of the asteroid you're pulling. It's slow, yes, but it's very, very cheap. One ground crew could manage pulling dozens of asteroids at a time managing various mining probes. Currently, the same person piloting the Pioneer missions is also piloting several other probes. It's just how it's done - in their spare time, even.

[*]Matching the asteroid's velocity to the mining facility. Very difficult and dangerous if it goes wrong.

Not really. It doesn't have that much mass compared to other celestial objects. Yes, docking is difficult with a tumbling object, but we do this on every shuttle mission in the last ten years. And they're screwed if they nick their shield, where a deep space craft or unmanned craft doesn't have that problem.

[*]Regularly land and take off supplies and the mined goods.

...Which, if you thought about it, it silly simple. Earth is bigger than any of these asteroids. You just chuck the ore or whatever finished goods you want at the Earth and let orbital mechanics take care of the rest.

The reason we don't do this is, yes, spacecraft are expensive. But we also can't continue to rip up where we live to get at minute amounts of minerals.

Didn't we have an argument in another thread about how a democratic country is literally murdering hundred of people to scalp a forest and turn it into a series of strip mines?

-Crissa

PS, arguing with me on this topic is probably an endless endeavor. This is what I went to university for. I love this stuff. I'm even able to bite my tongue while tzor's broken syntax mangles it even while he promotes it.

[Ganbare Gincun]

For someone with the Khornate symbol and chant, you're being awfully... optimistic about how happy to end all life some people are. Plenty of times I would have, given the option, flicked that switch and doomed everyone to fiery nuclear death. And I'd consider it a good deed, as it'd end all suffering and leave no-one to mourn the dead.

And that's with *good* intentions. I'm sure I could find someone willing to annihilate humanity for evil reasons or the lulz, even including themselves.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head there. There are plenty of crazy fuckers running around that would be more then happy to scour our world in nuclear fire because of some crazy religious bullshit. Hopefully the squirrels won't make as much of a mess of things as we have.

[Heath Robinson]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head there. There are plenty of crazy fuckers running around that would be more then happy to scour our world in nuclear fire because of some crazy religious bullshit. Hopefully the squirrels won't make as much of a mess of things as we have.

Who says it'll be squirrels? By all rights it should be the Bdelloid Rotifer. They are totally awesome.

[Draco_Argentum]

Mutual assured destruction is the reason we will never have a nuclear war

The only reason we aren't all dead is because this guy correctly ignored a false report from and early warning system. Your optimism is misguided and dangerous. At that time it was Regan pushing the USSR's buttons that had them on high alert and ready to lob nukes. Its up to the US citizens here to vote down policies that increase nuclear tension, the missile defense system being the most recent.

Nuclear war is not and never has been unthinkable. The US still maintains a first strike option, as does Russia.

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[Parthenon]

Okay, cool, I've completely overestimated the difficulty in mining asteroids. I was assuming it was much harder than it is. Thanks for clearing that up Crissa.

But, my basic point still stands: no company or even likely group of companies has enough spare money to invest in doing so, and is very unlikely to do so because of the massive initial cost with no return for years.

Wikipedia says that the largest mining companies only have revenues of over $500 million. Even if the 5 largest mining companies grouped together they'd still only have about $3-4 billion a year revenue to spend on it, which compared to NASA's $17.3 billion current budget isn't really enough to do much with.

I mean, the nearest analogy I can think of is drug companies, and while they have a massive investment with only potential revenue, they also research multiple drugs at once within a known structure. And a lot of drugs still don't make it to market. This would be like making a company from scratch to make one new drug with not enough money and lots of people trying to stop you.

[Meikle641]

And now I'm reminded of works by Ben Bova. In "Sam Gunn Unlimited" he does a proof of concept mining of an asteroid (he called it Pittsburgh) and the ideas and difficulties are expanded upon in his "Asteroid Wars" series.

Personally, I think doing such missions is worthwhile given that we'll be running out of various minerals in the next fifty years or less (some more necessary than others).

[tzor]

Yes, there are a lot of natural resources around the solar system. Just like there are a lot of natural resources under the sea. But its so much easier to get stuff from the land that its really not worth it.

No, actually it’s quite easy. You need a supercomputer to do the math but it’s not all that hard; there are no “highway robbers” in space.

You locate a number of small metallic asteroids; send a slow moving automated vessel to it to rendezvous (I hate how Microsoft sucks at French word derived spelling corrections) and then to altar the course to a slow orbit that would bring it into the L5 processing location. The process might take years but if you have a steady supply you can still be profitable. (You basically start mining before you start working on the processing plant so they arrive when the plant goes online.

[Gelare]

Wikipedia says that the largest mining companies only have revenues of over $500 million. Even if the 5 largest mining companies grouped together they'd still only have about $3-4 billion a year revenue to spend on it, which compared to NASA's $17.3 billion current budget isn't really enough to do much with.

Out of curiosity, can you point me to these statistics? I find it difficult to believe that the biggest mining companies on the planet, producing countless thousands (millions?) of tons of iron and other metals, have less than a third the annual revenue of Gamestop (~$2,000,000,000/year).

[Maxus]

Wikipedia says that the largest mining companies only have revenues of over $500 million. Even if the 5 largest mining companies grouped together they'd still only have about $3-4 billion a year revenue to spend on it, which compared to NASA's $17.3 billion current budget isn't really enough to do much with.

Out of curiosity, can you point me to these statistics? I find it difficult to believe that the biggest mining companies on the planet, producing countless thousands (millions?) of tons of iron and other metals, have less than a third the annual revenue of Gamestop (~$2,000,000,000/year).

I'm struggling with it, but I can imagine how it'd happen. Hematite is stupidly common (as in, the human race will be set for iron for a looooong time). And if you're mining anything other than hematite as iron ore, you're up Shit Creek without a paddle.

I suppose the real money is in processing the raw materials and selling the result. Similar to the farm-to-market chain. The farmer sells the stuff for dirt cheap to the big company, the Company sells it to you or the restaurant for a markup, and if you get food at the restaurant, they're also doing a markup.

Copper is likewise common enough. Other metals...Well, I'd have to hit the books to find out production figures and market values, but I can see how it'd happen.

[Username17]

Over 500 million is a very open ended statement. For example, BHP makes "fifteen point four billion dollars" more than 500 million in profit every year.

-Username17

[Parthenon]

Yeah, "over $500 million" is like saying "hundreds of thousands" to mean millions. So I've looked up the FTSE and Fortune to find the biggest mining companies.

The Fortune is a bit shit. Of the 3 that are in there, one loses $11 billion, one makes $800 million and the other makes $500 million. So lets ignore that.

In the FTSE, the BHP is huge. It does indeed have a profit of more than $15 billion. But the next is much smaller. The next 5 have profits of around $2.5 billion to $5 billion. So, the 5 largest mining companies put together have a profit of about £30 billion.

So yes, if they put all their money together then they would have enough for a reasonable space program.

But if BHP doesn't then the biggest 5 have a profit of about $19 billion. And the money put in will probably be about half at most. So, its a lot more than the $5-6 billion I estimated. But still only about as much as NASAs budget. Which still can't afford a space station by itself.

Hmmm.... its looking a whole lot more feasible to get into space. But still highly dependant on large companies working together and putting all their profits in one basket for several years with a reasonable chance of failure.

So I take back my earlier statement that its not in our lifetime and instead say that not in at least 20 years, with a poor chance of it happening in the 20 years after that.

[Crissa]

You wouldn't want to mine for Iron, as it's the most common metal here and there. But there's other metals we will seriously run out of that are more common up there than down here. Hydrogen, Helium - though that's more like farming than mining - Lithium, Gold, Platinum, Geranium, Iridium... Ugh, just go down the list and many of the heavier, more rare elements are currently fueling state instability and civil wars in Africa, India, and Indonesia. We're just lucky that they are harder to get from the younger continent, South America, else we'd have even more war.

Without people to displace to get your rare minerals, without bandits... You have to realize how many billions of dollars a year we spend on not helping but instead killing people so that businesses can be profitable.

You think mining companies would be as profitable as they are now if they had to actually pay people for being displaced and poisoned?

-Crissa

[Parthenon]

Sorry Crissa, but that last post doesn't seem to have said anything of any use, unless you're just telling Maxus which metals would be useful. I haven't mentioned iron once.

Those billions a year, are they just from mining companies? Or are they from several industries including gas, oil and diamonds? You know, the sort of industries that don't come into consideration with space mining?

And then that last question: if they aren't paying for displacement or poisoning now then those hypothetical costs don't come into the discussion.

If you are saying that it is ethically better to space mine than Earth mine then thats another discussion, but since it has little to no economic value then it doesn't really affect how likely companies are to do so.

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Actually, it does bring up some things that if changed would further pressure mining companies into space mining. If laws were changed so that corporations based in the US or Europe have to pay minimum wage to workers all around the world and keep minimum working conditions then they'd be a lot more likely to space mine.

Or if some factions were supported, trained and given better equipment then they might remove mining from some countries, giving pressure to expand into space.

[Crissa]

Strange, why isn't it in the equation?

Because I'm certainly paying for it.

-Crissa