[ExI] Mining the Sky SL Talk I gave today

[Adrian Tymes]

Mind if I forward this chat log + presentation to some friends?
You touched on a lot of the points I've been touching on when
I propose this idea.

One thing to consider: harvesting on-site is more efficient from
a mass budget point of view, but might not be more efficient
from an operational point of view.  Building and launching
refining equipment before you've confirmed that you have an
asteroid with good materials, and that you can safely return
the material to Earth (orbit or ground), might be more difficult
to finance than returning an asteroid to Earth orbit *and then*
taking care of getting equipment to process it.  (Also, if you're
eventually going to use most of the asteroid - say, a M-type
where the bulk of the iron is intended for eventual use as a
space habitat's shell - then you might as well capture it all in
the first place.)  Also, refining equipment in orbit can be
teleoperated from the ground more efficiently than the same
equipment a few light minutes away.

Also, you'll need a way to confirm the mineral content of an
asteroid you intend to mine, before you can drum up much
financing for an operation to mine it.  Identifying a M-type is
step one, but you'll need more precise data than that.

Are you planning to give this talk elsewhere?

--- On Sat, 4/24/10, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

From: Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com>
Subject: [ExI] Mining the Sky SL Talk I gave today
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Date: Saturday, April 24, 2010, 6:29 PM

Acknowledgments
 
I ended up only having a day to prepare this talk.  So of necessity I flipped between many sources on and offline to get information to compile.  I cribbed mercilessly.  I would like to flesh this
information out so any help from those of you more knowledgeable, especially you real rocket scientists and astrophysicists, would be much appreciated.   :)
 
Some sources I used:
 
Entering Space - Robert Zubrin
 
Mining the Sky - John S. Lewis
 
Wikipedia
 
NEAR-EARTH ASTEROID TRACKING   

Near Earth Objects

Near Earth Objects Map

Internet Encyclopedia of Science

and especially the wonderful site:

Permanent: Asteroid mining, space colonies, commercialization

- samantha (aka Serendipity)

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________
extropy-chat mailing list
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20100425/4217fefd/attachment.html>