[ExI] Space Mining

[Adrian Tymes]

I also note the subject line of this email.  In addition to asteroid
mining, there is the potential for lunar mining.

I suspect that lunar mining mostly makes sense to support lunar
manufacturing.  (While there is the prospect of mining helium-3, that is of
no great value until after, not before, helium-3 fusion is demonstrated and
becomes ready, with the possible sole exception of the fuel source, for
commercial deployment.)  This begs the question of what to manufacture on
the Moon that could be of significant value; the best answer I have found
so far is solar panels for power satellites, and/or entire solar power
satellites, to be built and launched into Earth orbit at much lower cost
than building and launching from Earth's surface into orbit.

On Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 11:38 AM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think I have mentioned this before https://htyp.org/Mining_Asteroids
>
> "This article provides a rough analysis of mining an asteroid for gold
> and other high-value elements (platinum group metals) for return to an
> Earth market. Given serious bootstrapping at an asteroid and the
> development of low-cost transport to GEO in the context of a power
> satellite or similar very large operations in space, it appears an
> asteroid-mining project could make money beyond the wildest dreams of
> avarice."
>
> 12 years ago.
>
> I should update it.
>
> Keith
>
> On Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 5:21 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > There are firms trying to make it happen today.  Even I have developed a
> bit of relevant tech.  The main barrier is, of course, the continued high
> cost of launching hardware to survey and then to mine.
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 31, 2024, 4:15 AM Kelly Anderson via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> So nearby they are reopening a gold mine using cyanide to bleach the
> >> miniscule amounts of gold out of the ore in open top but lined pits.
> >> As I think through whether this is a good or bad thing for our part of
> >> the country, I wonder when does the EXL community think asteroid
> >> mining might actually start to happen.
> >>
> >> Personally, I can't imagine it being more than 24 years out, the
> >> lifespan of this locally proposed mine.
> >>
> >> -Kelly
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