The first space mining freighter needs to be named the Nostromo... because that worked out so well for another crew :)
Read the proposed US ASTEROIDS Act to green-light mining IN SPAAAACE
A pair of US Representatives are pushing legislation that would remove some of the legal hurdles to commercial space mining. HR 5063, the adorably named American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities In Deep Space (ASTEROIDS) Act, would define when resources mined from an asteroid could be considered private …
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Saturday 12th July 2014 11:29 GMT MrT
ASTEROIDS...
..."If you're gonna claim a comet, stick a flag on it. If you're after space resources stick a flag on it..." it's Destiny, Spacechild.
And the bacronym writers were having a field day there: ASTEROIDS Act, named by the same department that brought you the study into Ballistic Objects Launched Locally over Conflict Zones (bulk quantities, aged stock preferred)...
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Saturday 12th July 2014 14:55 GMT The Axe
Law doesn't enable, it recognises ownership
Blame a badly written article. There is no law stopping anyone from mining asteroids at the moment. And this new law doesn't enable people to mine asteroids. What it does do is recognise the legality of the ownership of the mined materials when they are brought to earth. Without the law material could be taken from the miners and there wouldn't be any law that said it was theft as no country would have recognised the ownership.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 19:51 GMT AndrueC
Re: Law doesn't enable, it recognises ownership
Without the law material could be taken from the miners and there wouldn't be any law that said it was theft as no country would have recognised the ownership.
This all assumes the material and/or perpetrator is brought to Earth. Personally I think it's better to use the material to build an off-Earth civilisation. Still it's probably best for now not to let Earthly governments know that. Let them pass their laws if it keeps them happy and encourages them to provide funding and assistance ;)
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Saturday 12th July 2014 14:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Why the UN?
I don't think it's a very good idea that it should be decided by the UN. You then have an awful lot of nations who aren't spacefaring and have no plans to go in to space deciding on the legislation. Added to that - what democratic mandate is there to have the legislation repealed at the global level?
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Sunday 13th July 2014 08:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why the UN?
Interesting. So if you go into the forest to burn down the trees, all those who don't follow you have no decision in what you do?
Just because others cannot get to space, does it mean they have no say (or polite discussion even, come on) in what anyone does and what the laws may be?
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Monday 14th July 2014 09:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why the UN?
The analogy doesn't work because, on Earth, someone will own or live in the forest. There is no analogy for what we're seeing here.
And if you can't get in to space, why should you have ANY say in what US companies under US jurisdiction do with resources they exploit out there? Why should we go around asking Burkina Faso or Bhutan what they feel about mineral extraction in space?
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Monday 14th July 2014 13:03 GMT Raumkraut
Re: Why the UN?
> The analogy doesn't work because, on Earth, someone will own or live in the forest. There is no analogy for what we're seeing here.
People are only capable of "owning" a forest due to the laws of man. Beside the relative difficulty in access, the only reason asteroids are treated differently are because of the laws of man (the outer space treaty).
> And if you can't get in to space, why should you have ANY say in what US companies under US jurisdiction do with resources they exploit out there?
Just because you can't go somewhere, does not mean that activities in that place do not affect you. I personally can't fly up into LEO, but I'm certainly affected by what might go on up there (hello, GPS).
What about someone going out into the middle of the Atlantic (international waters), and dumping a thousand tonnes of highly radioactive waste? Should Switzerland, a land-locked nation, not have a right to complain about such activity? They may not have an Atlantic coastline, but I'm sure they have dealings involving the Atlantic (importing fish, for example).
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Monday 14th July 2014 15:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Why the UN?
There's no comparison between the two situations. In your hypothetical toxic waste dump Switzerland would be affected.
Countries who aren't mining in space won't be affected by laws affecting ownership of stuff mined in space. There are no byproducts which might affect them. There are no labour laws which will affect them. Their ownership of resources on Earth won't change. This really doesn't affect most countries, and it really never will. I don't see why they should have a say in something which can not, does not and probably never will affect them.
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Friday 11th July 2014 22:11 GMT bigtimehustler
Right, and of course the US has decided their laws apply to the whole Universe (literally this time) again. What about when another country passes a law that says the opposite and steals said mined products from the US private space craft? hey are obeying their law and US law does not apply, they are not in the US.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 19:53 GMT AndrueC
Seriously, fuck you, groundhuggers.
I prefer the term flatlander :)
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Saturday 12th July 2014 13:02 GMT jai
and steals said mined products from the US private space
well, that's just plain stealing. doesn't matter if you're on the ground or in space, whether you're american or more sophisticated. you'd have to intercept, board, probably overcome-if-not-kill the crew, make off with the booty. we'll be bringing back the old piracy laws and setting up a Eastern Galaxy Trading Company to patrol the murky depths of the starry skies. Pirates of the Capricon Cluster......
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Saturday 12th July 2014 18:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm into this but the technology ain't exactly ready.
The feel when: no space drives.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 21:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
""you'd have to intercept, board, probably overcome-if-not-kill the crew, make off with the booty."
Very unlikely. Most space mining that returned metals to Earth would be bulk metals like iron. Gold and other rare metals would be very minor, because for asteroids the processes that concentrate rare metals (gravity, weathering, bio) are absent.
Rather, picture a stream of metal chunks or something similar, routinely aero-braking and dropping onto a bare patch of desert. Not much booty to be had there, but plenty of room for government to step in and do what they do best, namely screw things up.
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Monday 14th July 2014 13:14 GMT NumptyScrub
quote: "well, that's just plain stealing. doesn't matter if you're on the ground or in space, whether you're american or more sophisticated. you'd have to intercept, board, probably overcome-if-not-kill the crew, make off with the booty."
None of which is technically illegal, as it has happened in a location where there are (literally) no laws that apply, thanks to there being no jurisdiction or sovereignty over anywhere outside Earth's gravity well. "International waters" is not the same thing as "interplanetary space".
All the US are saying is that they will honour any claims of ownership over extraterrestrial material brought onto US soil.
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Friday 11th July 2014 22:31 GMT Mark 85
Nothing to worry about here....
Take a quick look not just at the House, but also the denizens of the Senate. Most seem not to have a clue about space. The few that have spoken are so far out there in their beliefs that they all qualify as space cadets.
On second thought..... we should all be worried.
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Friday 11th July 2014 22:44 GMT Suricou Raven
There are so many problems.
1. The asteroids are not near earth. Occasionally one ventures nearish, but at tremendious velocity.
2. The delta-m required to bring even a small asteroid into earth orbit is tremendous.
3. Any large, steerable body in orbit or above is potentially a hyperweapon. That is, the type of thing that makes regular WMDs look like toys. The last time a major body impacted, there were dinosaurs roaming the earth. There aren't any more. Do you want to see that in the hands of private industry?
4. No-one has the faintest idea how to do zero-G refining, with only energy as an input.
5. Most asteroids, and all comets, are crap-grade ore.
6. The only way it might be at all economical would be to keep the minerals in space, and use for space-based manufacturing of more ships - there's no point bringing most of them down, as only a few minerals (Platinum, gold) are expensive enough to justify the reentry cost. So you'd be mining minerals for an industry that doesn't exist.
It's a nice idea, but what we have here is the basic chicken and egg situation. For space industry like this to be practical requires great advances in very specific fields of technology that aren't going to advance without space industry, and a space economy to purchase the goods which can't take form until there is an established industry beyond geostationary orbit. Asteroid mining remains a pipe dream unless either someone makes a breakthrough in technology (perhaps a space elevator) or else many trillions (Yes, with a T) of dollars are thrown away on mega-projects in the hope of maybe setting up favorable economic conditions for someone else to profit from.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 08:33 GMT toxicdragon
Re: Once braked into a stable orbit...
In peter hamiltons nights dawn trilogy he explains this exact thing, basically the asterioids are moved into orbit, the ore is liquidized and foamed, then launched down onto the planet using aerobrake and lands into the sea. I will admit it is weaponised 30 seconds later but its something.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 14:20 GMT Suricou Raven
Re: There are so many problems.
Depends if you want to aim where it's coming down. It's a lump of rock, not an aerodynamic ship, and even if it does get down right it'll lost of of the mass to atmospheric burnup. Each 'delivery' would need to be hooked up to some equipment to carefully control reentry and fitted into a heat shield.
The alternative is in-space refining, but see the other points for that.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 13:36 GMT Cardinal
Re: There are so many problems.
Wouldn't the economic argument for space mining depend entirely on human need for the particular resource, and how much of it (if any) was left on this planet?
e.g. If oxygen began to run out .......?
No doubt quintizillions of dollars would be a small price to pay.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 14:25 GMT Suricou Raven
Re: There are so many problems.
We've plenty of most mineral resources left. The cheap reserves may be running out, but there are pricier ones left - and still a lot cheaper than space mining.
Maybe if you can find an asteroid of largely gold or another precious metal it might be halfway viable. But those are proper asteroids - as in 'belt.' Far, far away in delta-V terms, and very massive. The delta-M would be ridiculous. You're not bringing one of those to earth with conventional rocketry.
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Monday 14th July 2014 15:08 GMT DragonLord
Re: There are so many problems.
In theory the problem is one of getting to the asteroid belts to mine in the first place as having the fuel to return to earth shouldn't be a problem as soon as you find a few Ice bearing asteroids. Of course you need to work out how to refine the fuel from the water in the first place, but that's something that can be perfected fairly close to earth.
What's the betting that the first structure built outside earths gravitational field is a fuel depot/station with massive solar panels for the refining.
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Monday 14th July 2014 22:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "Refine the fuel from ice".
The reality is more amazing than we realise, but sadly our imaginations are just that, and rarely do they become real...
You cannot just make fuel from ice. That's not how thermodynamics works. "Water" is an energy store here, from which we make rocket fuel (ox and hydrogen) with the assistance of a power source.
You have solar in space, but much less in the asteroid belt. So your looking at decades to return something that way. Taking your own fuel is again problematic as you hit the rocket equation and fuel becomes a payload you cannot afford to carry (basically a reducing return of investment problem).
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Tuesday 15th July 2014 15:49 GMT DragonLord
Re: "Refine the fuel from ice".
You can brute force fuel by electrolysis using just solar electricity. If you take up a nuclear power source you can do it faster. If you have some carbon around you can then turn the hydrogen into a safer and more portable fuel using electricity and a catalyst.
It doesn't matter if it's slow as long as it's not too slow.
As a side thought though, once you've got your momentum going wouldn't you be using ion engines to move through the solar system anyway? At which point you need fairly small amounts of actual fuel, and would be using the hydrogen/oxygen for escaping gravity wells that are stronger than your ion engines only.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 06:06 GMT Captain DaFt
meanwhile:
Captain Eugene Cernan turned 80 this year, no closer to his dream of losing the title 'Last man on The Moon', While Congress babbles inanely about how their corporate overlords get to divide the riches of the solar system.
NASA has to beg for crumbs to study the mysteries of creation while the NSA and US military get billions to spread fear and mistrust of the US around the world.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 06:36 GMT Neil Barnes
As pointed out above
There is no great reason - or indeed need - to search for any other than extremely rare and extremely important minerals in the asteroids and ship them home; it's economically unviable.
There *may* be reasons why it's worthwhile doing refining[1] of more common metals in earth orbit rather than on the surface and shipping the results to ground, but there are still a lot of reasons why not.
There are eight billion reasons, on the other hand, why we should be out there mining, refining, and building ships and places to live - we have all those eight billion eggs in one basket at present. A dinosaur killer only has to be lucky once.
However... like it or not, the writ of the US does not and cannot extend beyond this planet. There is no sense, no point, in writing laws which cannot be enforced; any exploitation of the asteroids is going to be a free-for-all which will make the California gold rush look like an afternoon stroll in the park - simply because there are too many people for whom the attitude is 'see it, grab it' irrespective of prior claims or rights.
Nonetheless, I do believe that the sheer size of the asteroid resource is beneficial; things are a long way apart and even a thorough freeloading pirate has to do an estimate of whether the dv to get somewhere outweighs the benefit he can expect upon arrival. I think also, as happened in California and other gold-rush locations, that the citizenry will act together against bandits and organise rules and regulations which work for them - but they won't be controlled by anyone on earth. (Alternatively, the bandits control everything and then discover that if they want to benefit from this control they have to become governments in an of themselves - look at the drug lords in South/Central America for examples.)
It annoys the hell out of me that forty-five years (almost to the week) since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, we're not already all over the asteroid belt, the rings of Saturn (all those lovely volatiles!), the surface of Mars and the Jovian moons. Make no mistake - the USA has no right to be ruling on what is possible out there (nor the UK - the only country ever to have abandoned a working space technology - how embarrassing is that?).
[1] a post earlier suggested there was no known way refining metals using just energy. There are no deep-space *tested* methods... but here's one thought: find a small metal target, spin it gently, if it's not doing it already, build a large mylar or similar reflector, leave the target at the focus of the reflector and wait until it melts. The heavy stuff ends up in the middle.
A favourite way of getting refined metal to the ground from orbit involves a similar process: make a hole in the middle of the refined metal, fill it with ice, and heat again until the metal softens and the ice melts and flashes to steam. This leaves you with a nice big bubble of metal. Now let the water out and seal some vacuum in (you don't want to waste the water) and if you got your sums right, you have a lighter-than-air (at some height to be determined) vessel that's strong enough to survive the trip to earth. A nice gentle float as you let air back in... sounds like a job for the SPB!
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Saturday 12th July 2014 12:00 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Re: As pointed out above
like it or not, the writ of the US does not and cannot extend beyond this planet.
Are you sure you're not some sort of stinkin-commie-subversive-hippie-fag?
I am quite sure many Americans believe their laws and rule should extend, not just across the whole earth, but across the whole universe and that, one day, God will provide. Hallelujah! USA! USA! USA!
In the meantime it provides America with a legal pretext for military conflict with anyone who disagrees with America's dictating of how things will be should that be needed.
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Sunday 13th July 2014 00:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As pointed out above
I think that the vast majority of resources obtained from asteroids will be kept in orbit. Materials such as Water, Iron, Nickle, Cobalt, Aluminium and Silicates are all plentiful on earth and can be used for making things. Any extracted Platinum Group metals we will want on earth for our high tech industries. It is not that hard to bring them back from orbit and no it wouldn't involve dropping a solid muti-tonne block of metal that would hit the ground with the force of an atomic bomb (sorry Americans - we know this is your primary fear).
In micro gravity it is easy to create metal "sponges" that have an overall density of less than water so would float if dropped to a sea. Plus as I'm sure you understand that if you increase an objects surface area and decrease its density the objects terminal velocity decreases. So if the object dropped through the atmosphere it would go down like a marshmallow and not a Chelyabinsk meteor! And anyway I would mold the metal sponge in the shape of a Sycamore seed that would spin its way down - eventually.
The moment that someone starts on orbit additive manufacturing (direct laser 3D printing) of asteroid derived metal/alloy/compound powders, space industry will take off like a house fly.
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Sunday 13th July 2014 08:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As pointed out above
"Eggs in one basket" argument does not hold. Think of an island in an ocean. You can start to live out in boats in the sea. These don't help you survive. Their more at risk of sinking than the island. Even surviving a tsunami, if you prepare, is easier on an island than out at sea (though a random unseen tsunami is the opposite).
Exploration is purely that. It's not going to give us a second place to live. It would be easier to live at the bottom of the ocean and ride out (not literally ;) ) any destruction above sea from an asteroid.
Anything bigger than an asteroid (so moving from life killer to planet obliteration) has already been cleared out of our local neighbourhood. Anything outside of that, probably has less likely probability of hitting us before the heat death of the universe (see number of star collisions in galaxy mergers for how low the probabilities are) that we don't have anything to worry about.
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Sunday 13th July 2014 09:33 GMT Neil Barnes
Re: As pointed out above
We may have to agree to differ here. A dinosaur killer won't leave the sea bottoms alone.
But I don't understand your 'living in boats' argument: I'm not suggesting that we should. We should be using the boats to get to other islands - things of which the asteroid belt appears to be plentifully supplied. There are other islands: Jupiter's leading and trailing Trojans, or some of the moons around Jupiter and Titan. Consider giving icebergs in the rings of Saturn a nudge so that they land on Mars - a few hundred thousand might give an atmosphere that's of some use, in time.
I'm not thinking next thursday - I'm thinking decades and centuries. But we should have started thirty years ago.
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Monday 14th July 2014 22:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: As pointed out above
Other islands are so far away, it's not possible within our own planning time. That is, even beyond our own lifetimes into the distant future for whatever effect we can have on it.
Perhaps in the distant future when setting up such a travel AND sustenance is possible. But now? It's no more possible than attempting time travel. Though we can do other things closer to home, but "colonisation" is not going to be it. We'd be there already if we could. The rocket science was done. The other obstacles are planet sized. Choose a planet, and you have a problem the size of a planet!
Even the most hospitable rock we could find within 100 light years, is more likely to get torched before this one does. We'd be bailing out into the sea, when we had a perfectly repairable, though arguably leaky, ship already. Our planet getting hit by a rock? It's got the best odds of avoidance. Our planet getting solar flared out? It's got the best shielding out there... So any other destination lowers our odds of survival. It's the gamblers fallacy. Until we find a perfect match and a way to get there.
I mean no harm, but I'd hope anyone taking a dip, is able to swim the distance. We're not talking rivers and lakes here, we're talking attempting to swim an ocean, with no supplies...
I think someone coined "space ship planet earth". The best space craft for travel, is already under your feet. We'll reach a close encounter of another solar system naturally, before we will through technology...
In the mean time, exploration is for the joy of seeing and learning and progressing. But it's not to be our false crutch or hope.
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Monday 14th July 2014 08:41 GMT Trygve Henriksen
Re: As pointed out above
Actually...
It IS easier to survive a tsunami out to sea than on shore.
The big wave doesn't really start to form and crest until it gets close to shore.
Far out on deep water you'll only notice gentle swells.
Unless it's caused by a ginormous hunk of rock dropping at supersonic speeds into the drink close by, of course...
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Monday 14th July 2014 21:03 GMT noominy.noom
Re: As pointed out above
@TechnicalBen
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Your conclusions are correct. Your island analogy is a little strained but I can see it. I think the whole point is we should be in no hurry to get off planet. There is no where to go that would be more viable than here even after a catastrophe. Until FTL travel. The physicists are still not sure that is going to be possible but it looks unlikely, at least in the next few centuries.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 14:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
I must be the only one who thinks it's a good idea.
By guaranteeing, through some sort of legal framework, the right to own what you've extracted, that creates a structure in which companies can work if they choose to.
Yes, it's US legislation, and boo hiss America. But America remains the only country which is really doing anything in space at all, both in the public and private (eg Elon Musk) spheres. And this means that an American company, with its corporate HQ in America, can be certain that any minerals it chooses to extract will be its, and can't be appropriated by anyone else. It's the basis of property ownership and the legal guarantee of that ownership, and that's, perhaps, a start towards the exploitation of space.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 14:24 GMT Clive Galway
Demand for resources in orbit
I think a lot of you miss the point when you are thinking about metals and such.
There is plenty of demand for resources in orbit. Currently we ship them up from the surface at a huge cost per kilo - way in excess of what that resource is worth on earth.
If someone were to start mining in space and selling fuel, oxygen and water in orbit - there would be buyers.
Correct me if I am wrong, but does splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen require anything else except power?
You probably wouldn't even need to bring it all the way back to earth. Fuel stations at strategic points in the solar system would probably be of value already.
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Saturday 12th July 2014 15:27 GMT IT Drone
Footfall
I can't read these asteroid mining stories without thinking of this book...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall
Aliens launch a "dinosaur killer" asteroid at the earth and destroy India. (Except there is no need for alien intervention given the stupidity of humans.) Thinking about it though - perhaps the dinosaurs were space-faring and did themselves in?
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Saturday 12th July 2014 20:04 GMT AndrueC
Re: Footfall
Thinking about it though - perhaps the dinosaurs were space-faring and did themselves in?
There's quite a good S/F book along those lines. It's called Tool Maker koan. It's not a classic but it develops quite nicely.
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Monday 14th July 2014 08:19 GMT 's water music
Re: Footfall
>> Thinking about it though - perhaps the dinosaurs were space-faring and did themselves in?
> There's quite a good S/F book along those lines. It's called Tool Maker koan. It's not a classic but it develops quite nicely.
Steve Cole also treats this subject in his Astrosaurs cycle.
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Monday 14th July 2014 10:32 GMT Andy E
Minions! I need more robotic minions!
Considering that it can take many years to get to the Asteroid belt this is has to be a job for robots. Once there, they would need a working life measured in decades to be viable. It would also make commercial sense just to leave them there once they broke down.
Assuming the robots take 10 years to get there and after another 5 years have sufficient resource to ship it back to near earth orbit (the Moon makes more sense) it would take another 10 years to get here. So were looking at a minimum of 25 years after the robots were sent before anything of use is delivered back. Like others have said I can’t see what the commercial return would be. Scientifically it would be interesting but unless there is a huge, huge load of something valuable it’s going to be too expensive to do.
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Monday 14th July 2014 12:42 GMT Boothy
Re: Minions! I need more robotic minions!
The last proposal I saw was basically to build automated mining rigs, with a built in 3D printer.
The printer would use the mined resources (minerals/metals etc), to be able to create both the inevitable spare parts you'd need, and also to build new mining rigs. So self replicating.
Initially all the extracted resources would go to build new rigs, till you had a cluster of them, at which point most of the extracted materials would be fired of towards Earth orbit, where they'd be used in orbit (i.e. to build new ships, satellites, stations etc.).
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