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Quoted: Of what relevance is that to the conversation? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: No one on earth right now will ever see that time. Of what relevance is that to the conversation? Well.. it is so far off that there is no reasonable expectation that any semblance of our current economy maintains even the remotest context with that future one. Watching the Expanse would give you as much potential insight on the subject as Star Wars. It is a fundamentally flawed question because no one has a clue what that future economy looks like. It dam sure will not be anything like the one we have now ! |
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Quoted: 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. View Quote Oh FFS it's not even close at all. Drummer all day every day. |
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Space is cold or roasty, radioactive and all the closest orbs of interest are all very far apart.
We evolved on this Petri dish. Don't forget it is a Petri dish. |
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Just because you bring a $100 trillion (at current prices) gold asteroid to Earth doesn't mean we suddenly have $100 trillion worth of wealth and prosperity and everyone gets a mansion and a bugatti veyron. It just means gold will be very cheap. Which means you can use it for lots of things that you couldn't before. I'm not sure what effect gold being cheap would have on the economy. Maybe some world banks or governments that rely on gold deposits would have to switch over to some new reserve value that could upset hedge funds and government debt and such. But that wouldn't happen overnight.
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Quoted: 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] View Quote You know how I know you've never dealt with a mining company. They're comfortable with 5+ years of operating in the red, like dumping hundreds of millions into a project before a single dime has been produced. Mining is the one industry with the financial stomach for space exploration. Also there's a Texas sized nickel-iron rock out past Mars that has already been identified with enough gold and platinum that mining it could make gold cheaper than aluminum. |
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I saw a documentary about this recently, something about not looking at it. Anyway the tried to mine a comet and things didn’t work out too well.
But it could be part of the progression being a space fairing people. Maybe we could aim a good one at Mars and deposit some raw material before we get there. Or aim one at the moon since it’s closer. That thing can take a beating. |
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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 I doubt much will change. We are probably 2-3 (at least) generations away from any kind of productive mining happening anyway. It's also going to be an expensive and dangerous thing to do so once those costs are factored into everything I just see very little changing. |
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Our first mining attempts will be either on the moon or Mars, mostly just trying to reduce the costs of a science outpost.
Right about the time that gets figured out we will have one hell of a war to see who controls the next few hundred years of humanity. |
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Turn more toward a service economy. There's a guy who drives around here making a living by scooping the dog shit out of people's yards. Subscription service. Yep.
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To everyone who says that the communists will kill us all before this happens.
You're going to let them? Or for that matter, do you really think nature is going to let them? Communism killed a lot of people in the 20th century. Not everyone is going to just line up to have their throats cut. The effects of asteroid mining and the building of a Dyson Swarm will have an effect on this planet, particularly on economists, like this. Pink Floyd Echoes & 2001 A Space Odyssey HD Yes it's expensive getting to space right now. But that cost is undeniably coming down. SpaceX's Starship heavy booster is essentially a space truck. Something that can get yugge loads into orbit for an expected $87 a kilo. I'm not joking, that's what some people estimate. Other companies are picking up on this design mantra. Neutron Rocket | Development Update Even the Europeans have begun work on a reusable rocket. It's incredibly un-ambitious, but at least it's a start. |
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Quoted: What is spot price for a gold nugget from Mars ? View Quote If there were 50 tons of molecularly pure gold bars just sitting on the moon's surface right now it would not be cost effective to go get them right now. Starship, once it is in service would make that trip cost effective. |
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US Space Environmental Protection Agency will see to it that not a single gram of material brought from beyond this planet can be used to turn a profit. Meanwhile, the Chinese will be flooding the market.
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Would it be theoretically possible to fuck up the earths rotation or orbit by adding the extra weight from space materials? I know it’s a stretch, but eventually you would think that the earths weight would increase. Rotating objects tend to do weird things when you increase or decrease their mass.. Pretty sure that’s what actually killed the dinosaurs and caused the ice age..
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Quoted: Turn more toward a service economy. There's a guy who drives around here making a living by scooping the dog shit out of people's yards. Subscription service. Yep. View Quote That only works with a functioning middle class, which socialism and communism kills off, sometimes literally kills off. |
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Quoted: US Space Environmental Protection Agency will see to it that not a single gram of material brought from beyond this planet can be used to turn a profit. Meanwhile, the Chinese will be flooding the market. View Quote The US government is very quickly spending every last milligram of respectability that they have. Based on the evidence that I'm seeing they are going to back the neo-feudalistic types. Then the question remains. Is everyone on this planet just going to lie down and die like good little dogs? There are almost 8 billion people on this planet. All of them are going to become good little communists? The Real Villain of Star Trek Discovery Season 4 Finally Revealed |
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some type of planet based space elevator is needed for transport to the surface... material science and engineering have a ways to go to make cheap movement a reality. chemical based rockets are expensive and gravity wells unforgiving...
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Quoted: If there were 50 tons of molecularly pure gold bars just sitting on the moon's surface right now it would not be cost effective to go get them right now. Starship, once it is in service would make that trip cost effective. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: What is spot price for a gold nugget from Mars ? If there were 50 tons of molecularly pure gold bars just sitting on the moon's surface right now it would not be cost effective to go get them right now. Starship, once it is in service would make that trip cost effective. Collector value would be high for a Mars nugget. I can see it being sold as Mars gold, meteor gold, and so on. Anyone ever bought moon dust dirt just to have it ? Genuine question. Industrial usage to amount to anything would take volume and I believe like your saying not cost effective. For now. Even if it were pure gold bars. Let alone the mining and what processes it would take in space. Earth First we'll Mine the Other Planets later. |
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Quoted: Would it be theoretically possible to fuck up the earths rotation or orbit by adding the extra weight from space materials? I know it’s a stretch, but eventually you would think that the earths weight would increase. Rotating objects tend to do weird things when you increase or decrease their mass.. Pretty sure that’s what actually killed the dinosaurs and caused the ice age.. View Quote Well all the earths gold and other materials mined have been moved to other locations. So we've already unbalanced things here on this rock. |
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Quoted: Collector value would be high for a Mars nugget. I can see it being sold as Mars gold, meteor gold, and so on. Anyone ever bought moon dust dirt just to have it ? Genuine question. Industrial usage to amount to anything would take volume and I believe like your saying not cost effective. For now. Even if it were pure gold bars. Let alone the mining and what processes it would take in space. Earth First we'll Mine the Other Planets later. View Quote I believe that it is somewhat illegal to own moon rocks or dust. At least the rocks or dust that was brought back by the Apollo missions. Though there have been cases where this stuff was snuck out of NASA and wound up on the open market. When SpaceX is able to go to the moon and back reliably I imagine that they will want to sell moon rocks to private individuals to help kickstart mining operations. At which point the government will step in and some kind of resolution will have to be made. Odds are that the rocks will be sold to the public eventually. All the while you will have scientists, communists and environmentalists screeching about it to anyone dumb enough to listen. |
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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 If cobalt, nickel, chrome, or other materials become cheaper, then you can use them in places where they are too expensive now. Platinum is very abundant in asteroids. It is highly useful for catalysts. |
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Quoted: Interstellar and interplanetary imperialism!! What’s old is new again. Think of the repeat possibilities. https://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thumbnails/imperialismafricanewpp-150324185607-conversion-gate01-thumbnail-4.jpg?cb=1427241479 View Quote Slight problem there, muchacho. There are no technologically handicapped, melanated people out there in space to oppress. At least not yet. According to science fiction anyone living on the frontier of space is going to be a helpless, dumber than dirt, Starving Marvin of some sort. Even if that makes absolutely no sense. |
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Quoted: Would it be theoretically possible to fuck up the earths rotation or orbit by adding the extra weight from space materials? I know it’s a stretch, but eventually you would think that the earths weight would increase. Rotating objects tend to do weird things when you increase or decrease their mass.. Pretty sure that’s what actually killed the dinosaurs and caused the ice age.. View Quote Planetary imbalance could be the next global warming crisis |
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Quoted: 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) View Quote |
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The value of stuff in space - is that it's in space. Earth has little to do with it.
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Quoted: Whaddayamean when?? We already do…plutonium???…Where do you think it comes from? Duh…..Pluto! https://greatlakesledger.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/pluto-planet.jpg View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: 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? Whaddayamean when?? We already do…plutonium???…Where do you think it comes from? Duh…..Pluto! https://greatlakesledger.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/pluto-planet.jpg Can’t wait until we tap into Uranus. |
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Quoted: The value of stuff in space - is that it's in space. Earth has little to do with it. View Quote If we are able to build large infrastructures in space then it will have a massive effect on Earth. Probably starting with sunshades derived from the technology being deployed on the Webb telescope right now to cool the planet and effectively neutralize global warming. |
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it isn't really going to happen in my lifetime so i haven't given it much thought.
maybe we'll mine some rare stuff from asteroids but in general i don't think we'll have inter planetary mining operations in the next 50 years. |
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Quoted: Slight problem there, muchacho. There are no technologically handicapped, melanated people out there in space to oppress. At least not yet. According to science fiction anyone living on the frontier of space is going to be a helpless, dumber than dirt, Starving Marvin of some sort. Even if that makes absolutely no sense. View Quote If you mean The Expanse one thing they got wrong is how long it would take to strip Ceres of it's water. Some estimate Ceres has more water than Earth does, but even being conservative there's more water in Ceres ice than the Atlantic Ocean. There wouldn't be any shortage of air or water on Ceres, or any reason to haul ice back there, for millennia, at least. |
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Quoted: Planetary imbalance could be the next global warming crisis View Quote I mean, one could make the argument that overpopulation is creating to much weight on the planet and slowing it’s rotating thus causing climate change.. Next thing ya know the government will put the world on a diet.. “if everyone looses 15 lbs, you can go back to using internal combustion engines” |
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Several years ago a local company proposed mining asteroids. They came to my then-employer looking for proposals for mining machines. Their projected gold yields were equal to the gold supply on the entire planet. I recall thinking that would surely depress the gold market, but what do I know?
Anyway, it wasn't feasible then and it's still not feasible. And if you invest a fortune to bring back massive quantities of precious metals, you'll find your pile of gold has devalued itself. Look at deep sea mining. There has been an interest in pulling manganese nodules from the seabed, and when copper prices spiked the prospect of mining hot water vents looked realistic. But it has never panned out, so to speak. |
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Quoted: I mean, one could make the argument that overpopulation is creating to much weight on the planet and slowing it’s rotating thus causing climate change.. Next thing ya know the government will put the world on a diet.. “if everyone looses 15 lbs, you can go back to using internal combustion engines” View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Planetary imbalance could be the next global warming crisis I mean, one could make the argument that overpopulation is creating to much weight on the planet and slowing it’s rotating thus causing climate change.. Next thing ya know the government will put the world on a diet.. “if everyone looses 15 lbs, you can go back to using internal combustion engines” IIRC sloshing oceans slow our rotation by a quarter second a year or so. It's possible the extra jiggling from obesity is accelerating that trend. |
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Quoted:Slight problem there, muchacho. There are no technologically handicapped, melanated people out there in space to oppress. At least not yet. According to science fiction anyone living on the frontier of space is going to be a helpless, dumber than dirt, Starving Marvin of some sort. Even if that makes absolutely no sense. View Quote |
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Quoted: I mean, one could make the argument that overpopulation is creating to much weight on the planet and slowing it's rotating thus causing climate change.. Next thing ya know the government will put the world on a diet.. "if everyone looses 15 lbs, you can go back to using internal combustion engines" View Quote |
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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 Attached File |
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Quoted: If you mean The Expanse one thing they got wrong is how long it would take to strip Ceres of it's water. Some estimate Ceres has more water than Earth does, but even being conservative there's more water in Ceres ice than the Atlantic Ocean. There wouldn't be any shortage of air or water on Ceres, or any reason to haul ice back there, for millennia, at least. View Quote Oh it's not just The Expanse. Think for a moment about every science fiction story you have ever heard of involving space colonization or aliens. Now name the ones that did not have crippling water shortages as a plot point. The only one that comes to mind is Star Trek. And they are certainly portraying the universe as a place short on EVERYTHING in STD nowadays. But yeah, besides Ceres the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have some ice worlds that contain more water than on all the oceans on Earth. The only reason why you would have a shortage of water out in space would be if you were being rules by space communists who had induced a state of artificial scarcity. |
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Way back in Roman times someone came to the Emperor and explained how they found a way to get a new metal that sounded like aluminum from a clay like substance. The emperor thought the metal could be a competitor with gold and silver so he put the discoverer to death. Any wonder Rome tech grew so slowly over a thousand years and they were defeated by barbarian hordes.
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