6 ms·
This should be obvious, but there is so much wishful thinking out there about this that essentially boils down to praying that we discover a magical propulsion
by flagrant 6y ago
This should be obvious, but there is so much wishful thinking out there about this that essentially boils down to praying that we discover a magical propulsion system that doesn't follow physical laws. It's simply not feasible, and a basic understanding of gravity and the rocket equation should disabuse anyone of the notion that we will ever be mining in the solar system. This also applies to anyone suggesting we might leave the solar system at any point, at least while maintaining life on board.
- emteycz 6y agoWhy propulsion? Why rockets at all? https://youtu.be/LMbI6sk-62E https://youtu.be/LMbI6sk-62E
- flagrant 6y ago"If this pipe dream is too remote, why don't we try this even more ridiculous pipe dream?"
- emteycz 6y agoWho said it needs to be soon?
- flagrant 6y agoWhat you've done is taken a hard unsolved problem and replaced it with an even harder unsolved problem, and you think that constitutes solving the problem.
- emteycz 6y agoI didn't solve any problem, I just demonstrated that a faster horse is not the only option even though the article presents it as such. The physics of orbital rings are understood well for many decades; it just costs a lot and the economy is not there yet. It might not get there if nobody said rockets aren't the only option.
- postalrat 6y agoWhat physical laws would need to be broken to mine the belt or even other planets? I'm failing to come up with any.
- Kim_Bruning 6y agoI'm not sure why you postulate a magical propulsion system, pretty much 1960's technology can get you to an asteroid and back (with cargo). In fact, it has been done already. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/5/22155825/jaxa-hayabusa2-mission-asteroid-sample-return-landing-australia https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/5/22155825/jaxa-hayabusa2-m... Now to make a commercially viable variant, you may not want to have your starting point be on Earth's surface. That much I'll grant.
- flagrant 6y agoAs the article points out, Hayabusa "spent six years and 16.4 billion yen ($157 million) recovering a single gram of material". What is the plan for commercial scale mining? How do we get the equipment there? How do we get the material back? Scaling up increases the requirements by many orders of magnitude to the point where it becomes unviable. It's not enough to simply point to launch systems that can put 100 tons into orbit and recover a single gram of material and say "look, it's possible". Scale is what makes it impossible.
- Kim_Bruning 6y agoThe article states: "Escaping Earth’s gravitational field makes transporting the volumes of material needed in a mining operation hugely expensive. " This is entirely true. The writer has fallen into a classical trap in assuming you must launch your mission from earth. Never is a very long time though. I'd postulate that sometime between now and "never" we might have some alternative place to launch our fuel from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization https://www.nasa.gov/isru/overview https://www.nasa.gov/isru/overview This gets you your profit margin you need to scale up.
- flagrant 6y agoYou have (somewhat) covered the fuel requirements by bringing in ISRU. That's fair, but I would remind you that ISRU is a research technology and is not even close to producing enough fuel fast enough to supply a single mission to the Moon, let alone massive commercial mining operations across the solar system. But fuel is not the whole story, is it? You need equipment. That's coming from Earth no matter what way you slice it.