User Panel
Posted: 12/28/2021 9:10:32 PM EDT
So much is based on the value of our limited mineral resources. What happens when we tap into the nearly unlimited metallic resources of the asteroids in our solar system?
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When I mine my shower system it’s like a fucking wool sweater worth of my wife’s hair.
ETA: goddamnit you edited the title to quickly. |
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Tap into the shower system?
Well, I have a half a bottle of shampoo, if that helps... |
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Belters start to feel unappreciated. Belters throw rocks at Earth. Many figured it's just the churn, but it's actually over. Better off aboard a Laconian Magnetar-class.
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Quoted: When I mine my shower system it’s like a fucking wool sweater worth of my wife’s hair. ETA: goddamnit you edited the title to quickly. View Quote I am quick but I feel your pain. I have too I to have used the drain hedgehog to pull out many feet of drain hair that could be classified as a biological weapon |
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I guess it depends on how much it costs to mine it and bring it back. I guarantee you they will probably lie about how much they actually get. Market manipulation you know? Some entity or entities will acquire a monopoly on it in some way or another.
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Quoted: Belters start to feel unappreciated. Belters throw rocks at Earth. Many figured it's just the churn, but it's actually over. Better off aboard a Laconian Magnetar-class. View Quote This is what got me thinking. The upcoming world economy is going to be based on rare earth metals. We've moved from Hunter gatherer to farming to oil based industrial to now the tech age. Next we move off planet. The height of the tech age will revolve around rare earth metals and when they become unlimited there will be a churn. There's enough gold out there to make 24k trinkets a dollar store item |
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Well I can tell you one thing, you don't see them killing each other over a goddamn share.
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We will need better engines and materials that last longer in space before that happens.
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We are never getting off this rock.
Communism will kill us long before the technology gets there. |
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Mid term, The costs of decelerating that much ass (lol, keeping that typo!) is quite expensive, odds are they will be shipping much more manufactured end products from orbit than raw ore & metals/alloys.
That said, Some early space manufacturing areas have been identified as: 0G 3D tissue printing, gravity makes the stuff deform and lose shape before the cells bond into a cohesive structure. Fiber optic cable, there’s a kind of fiber cable that is about 20-30% more efficient when made in 0/micro gravity. Computer chips, there are other semi-conductors available that aren’t silicon, it’s just that silicon is the easiest to make perfect flawless crystals to work on. some of silicons competitors can be made flawless in 0/micro gravity. Long term/big picture, it’s possible metal may replace plastics as a cheap material, there’s that much metal in asteroids. As more manufacturing occurs off planet, environmentalists find some way to curb/complain/stop real progress towards a brighter cleaner future, they will do the same with fusion, since they’re all about exploiting problems, not solutions. |
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The Billionaires become Trillionaires because they will have wrapped up all the revenue from those adventures.
TC |
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20 years ago I might have been excited and anticipated such a prospect.
Right now we can’t even get milk and toilet paper from the dairy/factory to my local Publix. Not to mention any such endeavor at this point will only involve government incompetence, graft, and greed on a scale never before seen in the history of the world. |
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Evo freaks will never allow it. Damaging to moon ferret native environment.
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Why raise a cow for years on feed when I can just replicate a steak in the replicator?
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They’ll use it to build interstellar craft, habitats, and 3D printer ships.
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The miners declare themselves independent and call themselves the Belter nation.
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Quoted: 20 years ago I might have been excited and anticipated such a prospect. Right now we can’t even get milk and toilet paper from the dairy/factory to my local Publix. Not to mention any such endeavor at this point will only involve government incompetence, graft, and greed on a scale never before seen in the history of the world. View Quote True, but the only thing keeping Elon from Mars at this point is fucking FAA environmental assessments... |
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You don’t need to worry. Neither do your kids nor their kids nor their kids.
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If the logistics can be sorted out so that interplanetary cargo transport is affordable, the three biggest things will be abundance of cheap iron, nickel, and hydrogen. An energy economy based on hydrogen might be feasible at that point.
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I imagine the market will adapt, and more uses for those materials will keep their prices high, and allow for technologies we've only dreamed of to replace what we know now.
No way did folks manufacturing stagecoaches foresee a private space exploration company, much less modern cars. Likewise will the world adapt when "rare earthly metals" are no longer rare, or earthly. Alternately, they'll bring it back in such small amounts they'll be able to manage price shocks better. |
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Quoted: The miners declare themselves independent and call themselves the Belter nation. View Quote The real question will be whether Belter chicks or Martian chicks are hotter? It is a tough call, but right now I'm going with Drummer over Draper, but I can be swayed. They both look wild and can certainly handle a weapon. |
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Once we develop the power generation (fusion) needed travel in space efficiently and to mine the asteroid belt and beyond, materials won't matter. The energy production is the bottle neck.
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I just want my own terraformed planet far beyond the reach of the woke commie bastards. Just a little rock to be a pioneer on.
Something like one of the outer planets from Firefly would do nicely. |
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mining the solar system will not be cheap. I suspect any terrestrial mining will cost less. The only real time mining off earth will probably make real economic sense is when the materials are being used off earth.
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Quoted: mining the solar system will not be cheap. I suspect any terrestrial mining will cost less. The only real time mining off earth will probably make real economic sense is when the materials are being used off earth. View Quote Pretty much this. I am curious how one would cast metal in zero gravity, but I suppose by that point artificial gravity is the easy part. Same for machining, chips off the CNC floating around would be bad. |
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Human economy has always and will continue to be energy based. The core driver has been the best energy that could be used, food for slaves and animals, whale oil, the. coal, then petroleum.
outer space is energy plentiful with vast volume of solar power available, however getting there is energy expensive, Those metal resources will he valuable because of their location, they will allow,the building of infrastructure in space energy cheaply. Question is will we transfer people to live in space, or goods from space to earth, or just power? Oh, and while I don’t think we have anthropogenic global warming now, I will change my mind on that when we start beaming terawatts of power down from solar collection in space for electricity. |
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Quoted: So much is based on the value of our limited mineral resources. What happens when we tap into the nearly unlimited metallic resources of the asteroids in our solar system? View Quote ......................... What's the problem again? |
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Probably won’t happen in the next 100 years by which point I’ll be dead and my grand kids will be retired so I don’t really care.
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Quoted: Pretty much this. I am curious how one would cast metal in zero gravity, but I suppose by that point artificial gravity is the easy part. Same for machining, chips off the CNC floating around would be bad. View Quote Additive manufacturing. Wire is fairly easy to produce in zero-G/ vacuum, especially compared to all the infrastructure you'd need to cast lots of different parts. I think we could do it with fission/plasma drives now if we really tried, but some kind of self-replicating nanotech would make it much easier. Our cost to orbit, and the total lift necessary to get infrastructure in place, are both declining rapidly over time. All the heavy stuff that's rare in the Earth's crust is abundant in asteroids, that's why it'll be economic someday. |
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At first, I thought about the massive inflation that it occurred in Your OP after Cortez brought all that gold back to Spain.
Then I remembered that we have fiat currency so the stock markets will probably just enjoy years of excessive exuberance before collapsing as a result of said optimism along with a heavy dose of central bank fuck ups. |
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There's a nearby rock in space that has a mass est. of 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. It's loaded with virtually every element we need. It's super close too and it way overshadows any other asteroids by like a billion times over. What if I told you that you don't even need a rocket ship to mine it? Neigh, a rocket ship would actually be a huge liability and waste in this situation. Can you guess what this space rock is called??
I joke, but seriously. You'd have to basically find a asteroid made of gold to make it worth setting up some on-going, multi-trip mining operation that could possibly be profitable. Right?.....right??? |
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Quoted: There's a nearby rock in space that has a mass est. of 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. It's loaded with virtually every element we need. It's super close too and it way overshadows any other asteroids by like a billion times over. What if I told you that you don't even need a rocket ship to mine it? Neigh, a rocket ship would actually be a huge liability and waste in this situation. Can you guess what this space rock is called?? I joke, but seriously. You'd have to basically find a asteroid made of gold to make it worth setting up some on-going, multi-trip mining operation that could possibly be profitable. Right?.....right??? View Quote No. It just has to be cheaper than launching and transporting the material from earth. |
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Quoted: At first, I thought about the massive inflation that it occurred in Your OP after Cortez brought all that gold back to Spain. Then I remembered that we have fiat currency so the stock markets will probably just enjoy years of excessive exuberance before collapsing as a result of said optimism along with a heavy dose of central bank fuck ups. View Quote But *why* was there massive inflation in Spain? As you correctly note that isn't an issue in our case because we aren't basing the monetary supply on metals. So since inflation isn't a problem, what happens when gold becomes cheap as dirt? (besides pissing off the fools who think it has intrinsic value) |
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Quoted: So much is based on the value of our limited mineral resources. What happens when we tap into the nearly unlimited metallic resources of the asteroids in our solar system? View Quote Not to worry OP, the Dumocrats will have the economy destroyed way before that ever happens. |
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Never happen. If they can't show a profit in the next quarter and get their bonuses, no one will do it. [especially American businesses]
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Quoted: This is what got me thinking. The upcoming world economy is going to be based on rare earth metals. We've moved from Hunter gatherer to farming to oil based industrial to now the tech age. Next we move off planet. The height of the tech age will revolve around rare earth metals and when they become unlimited there will be a churn. There's enough gold out there to make 24k trinkets a dollar store item View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Belters start to feel unappreciated. Belters throw rocks at Earth. Many figured it's just the churn, but it's actually over. Better off aboard a Laconian Magnetar-class. This is what got me thinking. The upcoming world economy is going to be based on rare earth metals. We've moved from Hunter gatherer to farming to oil based industrial to now the tech age. Next we move off planet. The height of the tech age will revolve around rare earth metals and when they become unlimited there will be a churn. There's enough gold out there to make 24k trinkets a dollar store item You have a point but they will remain limited in the sense of the cost and trouble it would take to mine them. |
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