[ExI] Mining the Sky SL Talk I gave today

spike spike66 at att.net
Tue Apr 27 22:38:51 UTC 2010


 
> ...On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
> ...
> 
> In other words, by insisting that the platinum stay outside 
> the gravity well, you are in effect insisting that no one 
> ever be able to make use of it - which is the exact opposite 
> of the reason you claim to want to keep it up there.
> 
> I have presented a way by which some (indeed, most) of the 
> platinum can eventually be used in space.  It's just that we 
> have to start by sending some down the gravity well.  Adrian

OK this seems convincing enough.  

We can work this problem in parallel.  You figure out how to get the
platinum down here, I will figure out a way to use some of it for mirror
surfaces, and there will likely be plenty left over.  I confess I am stumped
on how to pay for my scheme (without government involvement of course).  I
must figure out how to get the payload mass waaaaaay down there, like a
twenty kilos to 3 AU circular.  That would cost about fifty-ish million
bucks, with a pegasus class launcher.  But that wouldn't carry enough PVs to
generate sufficient power to vaporize the reflective material at a milligram
per second.  Might take longer than 4 months to coat the inside of that
balloon.

If my scheme is successful, we could use it to haul the platinum from 3 AU
down to about a 5000 NM HEO.  From there I don't know how to recover it, but
it seems like it should be possible.

spike 






More information about the extropy-chat mailing list