[ExI] Mining the Sky SL Talk I gave today

[Adrian Tymes]

--- On Fri, 4/30/10, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought our big problem was getting stuff out of earth's gravity
> well, not flinging stuff down into it.

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

What you're missing is the financial angle.  The plan is, "Get stuff
back to Earth to sell ASAP, even if it's inefficient from a long term
technical point of view, because the ability to finance and start this
operation is a lot more limited than the amount of material that can
eventually be collected."

In other words, the big problem is, "How do we get the money together
to make this happen?"  All of the technical problems are far easier
to deal with (and in many cases, entirely or almost entirely solved
already), and are thus by definition far smaller.

(Also, corollary: the reason that flinging stuff down into the
gravity well solves the financial angle, is because there is a far
greater need and demand for the material on the bottom of the
gravity well than at the top.  Eventually, there will be a greater
need at the top, but eventually, we can harvest more material for
that need.  This is only about how we start up space
industrialization, not about how things will always be.)