[ExI] Mining the Sky SL Talk I gave today
samantha
sjatkins at mac.com
Sun May 2 06:55:39 UTC 2010
Mike Dougherty wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net
> <mailto: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?
A space elevator comes much later. You need exotic materials, very
fancy engineering and an awful lot of red tape and insurance to tackle
that one. A lot more than dropping a few things in deserted areas
requires.
>
> Hurling rocks at the ground (no matter how accurately) seems like a
> lot of inefficiency.
>
Heck, gravity does the work for you except for packing it up and a bit
of small scale cosmic pool to set its trajectory.
Personally, the main wonderful thing to me about developing near earth
resources is that you get all that lovely useful very heavy material
"out there". out of the gravity well, without having to mortgage the
entire planet to get it there. Using that material you can build out
space based solar and solve what is probably I most pressing immediate
issue on earth, the pending Energy Crisis. You can also drop down
critical materials we are running low on down here. The precious
metals are mainly, in my mind, a way to quickly fund more launches and
amass a lot of working capital while the groundlings come to understand
the huge future value of what you are gathering in orbit.
Space elevators? Sure, but a bit down the road.
- samantha
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