Space is starting to look like the better mining operation | Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.::Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.
Less harmful to Earth’s environment, anyway. The environment on those asteroids is going to be all kinds of fucked up, hard luck for any giant space slugs that might be living there.
No no, it’s beyond the environment. We took the mining operations and moved them outside the environment.
It’s all fun and games until the front falls off.
I mean this is kind of a ridiculous take. There is no environment there. They are asteroids. The asteroid belt represents ~3% the mass of the moon.. There are plenty. Enough with the hand wringing.
It would be great if we could move this environmentally destructive practice to a place where there is no environment. Its one of the few justifications that really makes sense for investment in space travel. Not because it could be profitable, but because it could help us preserve literally the only habitable place in the universe we know of. That alone should be justification for investment.
Its just another implication of how hard it is for humans to understand that “space is big”.
I don’t think it was ridiculous at all, and I wholeheartedly believe this would negatively impact the giant space slugs from Empire Strikes Back. Can’t you tell how serious I am?
Plus what about the giant space potato bugs that live under these rocks? They’ll die without shelter.
I think it was a joke
I’ve legit read articles from people unironically saying we shouldn’t ruin the environment of the moon with mining. The moon. The place often compared to bombed cities. They were worried we would look up to the moon and see big dust clouds, which doesn’t even work without an atmosphere.
There is no atmosphere on the moon, but the moon is composed of rock which is very responsive to vibrations.
The lunar impactors from the 60s and 70s made detectable vibrations on the other side of the moon when they struck. We know this because one of the Apollo missions left a surface experiment running when they left. That experiment also picked up the vibrations of the descent module as it expanded and contracted due to the sun. Vibrations on the order of millimeters being picked up from a 70s era instrument placed several meters away from the descent stage.
I do wonder if large scale mining on the moon could negatively impact any human settlements, as the vibration from the mining would certainly propagate to them eventually.
That’s so weird! Why doesn’t earth rock do that?
I mean, it does. But it takes a lot more energy.
We have earthquakes all the time, but the earth is very big compared to the moon, and we have a hot liquid mantle and core that probably dampens a lot of those vibrations.
The moon is basically a giant rock, with no other medium to transfer energy into. So when it gets hit by something, that energy just gets transmitted around the surface of the moon until the energy is depleted.
I’m imagining people knocking morris code to communicate from one side of the moon to the other lol
But think of the space slugs that eat those rocks
I hope you’re aren’t serious. I’ve seen people who legit believe in extra-terrestrial environmentalism and that we shouldn’t ever mine asteroids because it might “mess up the ecosystem”.
So my grandchildren will be more than likely be belters. Got it.
ROCK AND STONE
For Rock and Stoooone!
Huh. You don’t say? I could have told you that and I’m not a genius. Who knew off world mining would be less environmentally impactful to the earth. One issue though would be cost.
I think the point is that emission from space flight to and from the asteroid (with a sufficently economic size of payload and fuel) is starting to even out. If you take that into account it’s not so obviously less harmful to the environment. But I’m almost certain that it will be way more expensive for a long time.
Or figure out a space elevator which in theory would work but if it failed, it would be very bad.
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How often do we mine asteroids on earth?
All the time, but they hit long ago.
I think the implication was that some genius decided to suggest the idea of dropping the asteroids on the surface before mining them the old-fashioned way. Because there’s no way that could possibly go wrong. It’s not like anybody ever makes math errors or anything.
Wait, that speed wasn’t given in feets per minute and the mass wasn’t in pounds? I guess we’ll find out if 1800 m/s is too fast for a smooth landing.
And all the mining waste are dumped in space, where people thought out of human’s reach so it’s safe to leave it there, until proven otherwise. I may be pessimistic, but if such technological advance made it will likely expand region of human activity and thus history repeats.
Space is big, really big. On average there are thousands of kilometers between asteroids. Between the larger ones I’m seeing estimates if 100,000 kilometers between them. Earth is 12756 kilometers in diameter.
If humanity gets to a point where it can support a population as large as you are suggesting, then we can probably deal with space junk in the asteroid belt. Also we can just go “over” it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For instance, a study by Ian Lange of the Colorado School of Mines considers the potential—and challenges—for a fledgling industry that might reach a significant scale in the next several decades, driven by the demand for critical metals used in electronics, solar and wind power, and electric car components, particularly batteries.
While other companies are exploring the controversial idea of scooping cobalt, nickel, and platinum from the seafloor, some asteroids could harbor the same minerals in abundance—and have no wildlife that could be harmed during their extraction.
Lange’s study, coauthored with a researcher at the International Monetary Fund, models the growth of space mining relative to Earth mining, depending on trends in the clean energy transition, mineral prices, space launch prices, and how much capital investment and R&D grow.
By their assessment, metallic asteroids contain more than a thousand times as much nickel as the Earth’s crust, in terms of grams per metric ton.
Electric vehicles and their batteries need about six times the minerals conventional cars do, and they require both nickel and cobalt in significant quantities.
The Democratic Republic of Congo accounts for 70 percent of cobalt production, for example, while nickel primarily comes from Indonesia and the Philippines, and Russia and South Africa have most of the global supply of platinum-group metals.
The original article contains 701 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
No shit sherlock.
Dead space vibes.
They towed the boat out of the environment.
Into a different environment? Did the front stay on?
