Mining an Asteroid

Theyve been predicting that wed run out of (iron, copper, manganese, cobalt, nickel) since Malthus. Weve barely scratched the surface of the planet.

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I don't think we can technically run 'out' of anything. It's always going to be cheaper in the long run to recycle metals, rather than smelt ores. Anyway, in space you don't need to counter gravity. You can make vessels that only need to resist inertia (accelerating/braking) with walls thick enough to hold in an atmosphere.

Besides, THIS is what the crew of a typical Jupiter mining ship look like:

http://www.tristess.demon.co.uk/reddwrf.jpg

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farmerman wrote:

Rosborne,Remember the "cost effectiveness " argument that Buzz Aldrin made about space travel.He said'100% of the money on the space program is spent on earth" I believe the only thing I see that an asteroid can provide in intergalactic prep, is if it were made an intergalactic near light speed platform itself. Im just playing the whatta we do game, and thinking in a slightly different box. However, I wonder whether we cannot reach aplanet like MArs and take its resources and crack its water for energy , and make it a jumping off point.
Still more Howevers , In reality, when we are going to the stars .It almost doesnt matter where we leave from, the destination distances are hewmongous in comparison.

Hi Farmerman, You should check out my previous posts on this thread. I think we're mostly in agreement.

Also, when I mentioned colonization, I wasn't assuming intergalactic travel, that's a problem which needs a very different solution, or a much longer timeframe (like millions of years).

I would guess that humans will colonize our solar system long before we will make much headway into the rest of the galaxy. And it will probably start with space stations, then the Moon and then Mars before it goes to asteroids. But at the rate we're going now, none of us are going to be around to see much of it. Bummer.

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We may have only just scratched the surface but plate tectonics and well most of the inner part of the Earth being really hot will mean that it'd probably be more viable to mine outer space than inner Earth.

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Rosborne,You sound like you wish to be "le voyajeur".
I listened to a speech given by one of the early Shuttle astronauts a bunch of years ago and he said that one of the side effects was a kind of sea sickness and nausea that you had to learn to deal with early. I hate nausea.

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rosborne979 wrote:

none of us are going to be around to see much of it. Bummer.

Don't be too sure. There's been more change in the last 20 years than in the last 200.

Looking at the graph of human achievement there should be as much change in the next 100 years as there would be in 20 000 years at the current rate of progression.

We couple possibly live for centuries. Or curse our children for being able to. ???

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Tobruk wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

none of us are going to be around to see much of it. Bummer.

Don't be too sure. There's been more change in the last 20 years than in the last 200.

Looking at the graph of human achievement there should be as much change in the next 100 years as there would be in 20 000 years at the current rate of progression.

We couple possibly live for centuries. Or curse our children for being able to. ???

Unless our life spans are greatly increased, I doubt we'll live to see interstellar travel. If you graph the maximum speed achievable by humans throughout history, I believe the result is that the first time we could send a ship to Alpha Centauri that we couldn't later overtake is in about 600 years. I saw this calculated when I was a kid. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.

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Tobruk wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

none of us are going to be around to see much of it. Bummer.

Don't be too sure. There's been more change in the last 20 years than in the last 200.

That's true, but it's been over 30 years since we chose to go to the moon. The *ability* to make progress is irrelevant if nobody *tries*.

(Also, I'm assuming that none of us will be around in 2104, even if there are some pretty good medical advances.)

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If we built the Dad....... um, the interstellar version of the Orion we could get to Alpha Centauri in a human life time now.

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Tobruk wrote:

If we built the Dad....... um, the interstellar version of the Orion we could get to Alpha Centauri in a human life time now.

What is the Orion, other than a constellation?

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A space craft with a pusher plate at the bottom and lots and lots of tiny nukes.

The nukes are dropped out the back and explode. The blast wave hits the pusher plate and well, pushes it. Bumpy ride but should be able to get you up to 10% of the speed of light on a trip to Alpha Centauri.

Thought up in the 50s but abandoned due to the international treaties banning nuclear detonations in space.

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Tobruk wrote:

A space craft with a pusher plate at the bottom and lots and lots of tiny nukes.

The nukes are dropped out the back and explode. The blast wave hits the pusher plate and well, pushes it. Bumpy ride but should be able to get you up to 10% of the speed of light on a trip to Alpha Centauri.

Thought up in the 50s but abandoned due to the international treaties banning nuclear detonations in space.

How many nukes does it take to get a spacecraft this size up to 10% of the speed of light?

And remember, half way throught the trip, it'll have to start decellerating by using the same number of nukes against a decel plate in front of the ship. That could be a lot of nukes, each one producing a pretty big jolt. Prepare for a bumpy ride.

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It's easy to write this Orion idea down on a message board, but, I suspect that it's difficult to actually do, and that the totality of all the issues involved in building a spacecraft that can do 10% the speed of light (67 million miles per hour), not to mention the technical problems with building a ship that uses nuclear detonations for propulsion, exceeds our present capabilities.

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rosborne979 wrote:

Tobruk wrote:
A space craft with a pusher plate at the bottom and lots and lots of tiny nukes.

The nukes are dropped out the back and explode. The blast wave hits the pusher plate and well, pushes it. Bumpy ride but should be able to get you up to 10% of the speed of light on a trip to Alpha Centauri.

Thought up in the 50s but abandoned due to the international treaties banning nuclear detonations in space.

How many nukes does it take to get a spacecraft this size up to 10% of the speed of light?

And remember, half way throught the trip, it'll have to start decellerating by using the same number of nukes against a decel plate in front of the ship. That could be a lot of nukes, each one producing a pretty big jolt. Prepare for a bumpy ride.

Well, in fairness, you could turn yourself around, and break with the same engine.

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Brandon9000 wrote:

It's easy to write this Orion idea down on a message board, but, I suspect that it's difficult to actually do, and that the totality of all the issues involved in building a spacecraft that can do 10% the speed of light (67 million miles per hour), not to mention the technical problems with building a ship that uses nuclear detonations for propulsion, exceeds our present capabilities.

Apparently we could build it today and many scientists are quite upset with the nuclear test ban treaty which means that we can't legally build and then use one.

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I greatly doubt that any reliable scientific source would tell you that we could successfully build a vehicle to do 10% the speed of light today.

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Why not?

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That still is 40 + years to proxima centauri, and then assuming you just stop for lunch and return ,were talking 80 years rouindtrip. We gotta do better, because of all the 3 alpha centauri stars, none have evidence of planets. The star in puppies has , at least, a destination. but that would be 900 years one way. This would present a considerable problem to thhe crew.

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40 years now but how long in say a few decades. Change is speeding up as I've already stated.

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Tobruk wrote:

Why not?

Because we lack the technology.

Just because an idea can be enunciated, doesn't mean that the technology or knowledge exist to implement it. Even if the means could be found to produce a ship which can continuously generate nuclear explosions, a thousand other technical problems would have to be solved to make it usable, and to reach and sustain the monumental speed you are suggesting. Among the thousand issues might be:

1. What kind of materials would be required for the combustion chamber to sustain themselves against thousands of nuclear explosions?
2. What kind of radiation shielding would be required when every speck of interstellar dust hit the ship at 10% the speed of light?

Have you ever actually worked on any technical development project? I hate to say it, but the idea that we could just whip this out in the reasonably near future sounds a little naive to me.

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Mining an Asteroid

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