[ExI] Mining the Sky SL Talk I gave today

Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com
Sat May 1 03:39:42 UTC 2010


On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:

>
> Yes.  However, retrieval isn't as big a problem as
> securing the area against others who would like to
> "retrieve" what you de-orbited (ruining the whole point
> of the operation).  (You'll also need to secure against
> spectators.)  Unless you can get at least Predator-grade
> unmanned vehicles, you're going to need your own humans
> present, for security at least.
>
>
I thought our big problem was getting stuff out of earth's gravity well, not
flinging stuff down into it.

If you can gather enough mass together from outside earth, why not park and
use it for a space elevator?  Then you'd just ferry the useful bits down the
elevator to counter other useful (probably expensive) stuff going up to do
more elaborate processing.  After you get enough useful mass parked,
processed and upgraded for other cool uses wouldn't we be in a better
position to launch new efforts directly from space?

Hurling rocks at the ground (no matter how accurately) seems like a lot of
inefficiency.

Maybe I'm missing something; this is something like rocket science...
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