Panelists:
Geoffrey A. Landis: NASA, John Glenn Research Center, aerospace engineer, writer
Bob Vernon: Air Force, Department of Defense work
Peter N. Glaskowsky: computer architect, space elevator author, inventor
Keith Gremban: robotics, Department of Defense work
A long-time interest of mine has been mining the asteroids. I wrote a story that involved it, but haven’t been able to interest anyone in it yet.
I watched this session with lots of interest.
I’ll be grouping each person’s comments on the subject and add in anything else I think of at the end!
GEOFFREY LANDIS:
- [Are these] resources for EARTH, or resources in SPACE? Who’s there?
- Do we send Humans, robots, or both?
- Geological metals, soluble in iron. Platinum is dissolved in iron; metal ores; what about Psyche (asteroid in the Main Belt). Iron is mixed with rare-earths on the surface. Catalysts – catalytic converter. “All cars will be obsolete by 2032.” Gigatons will be used, highly abundant NOT on Earth. By refining the iron, nickel, and cobalt from the asteroids, we remove the “impurities” from 98.998% of the iron – about 25 parts per billion. That’s reasonable. Don’t go to carbonaceous chondrites = carbon, CO passed over iron and nickel = volatile gas. Transport: return to CO = rare metals, ferrous metals – bringing them to Earth would be too expensive. A PLATINUM FACTORY = that would be HUGE! Pl, Fe, Ni all come out pure. Economical – we do it on Earth, can we fo it in space?
- What else? H2O, carbon, precious metals, mining for space colonies, LUNAR mining?
- Science fiction gets asteroid and Lunar mining wrong
- The Moon’s short on carbon (a crazy writer, Asteroid Mega-Novel) Allow people to move out, mine iron, assemble for Earth. BUILD in space, drop onto Earth.
- Economical value of space junk? How about the little guy who can skip orbits? PROPELLANT BUDGET.
- Junk is boosted into GRAVEYARD ORBIT (???? Idea for a story title???)
- Telerobotics – but people still have to be NEAR. But Phobos controls them…
BOB VERNON:
- It’s hard, but it WILL happen. Should do: spinoffs to GET there; develop technology from the spinoffs
- once the volatiles are gone, take the iron
- Robotic prospecting, someone in a spacesuit pulling their robot “mule” behind them
- Legal aspects of space mining? “it’ll be the wild, wild west”, you just can’t land settlers on the ground
- TOURISM! BUT, you’ll need infrastructure in place.
- Build equatorial Earth colonies in space: L5, O’Neill, WITH RADIATION SHEILDING (maybe the waste scavengers sell the leftovers processed into a slurry, sort of like “space cement” that’s quick, cheap, and easy to do???)
- It WILL produce more resources than we can EVER USE (Hmmm…that’s what logging companies said about the giant White Pines along the St. Croix – they logged it out in 22 years, then headed West, leaving behind brush, weeds, and a devastated land…)[Picture from my personal files]
- Military will want to clean up junk (maybe like the old Works Projects/Progress
Administration or the Civilian Conservation Corps????)
- can use ground-based, industrial lasers because they can’t focus very far out.
- can also use propellant to deorbit the smaller garbage
- we CAN’T do it with the tech we have. We need a Human mind closer to the stull. Drones have to have a Human to control them in the loop [DThomsen?]
- EFFORTS give us hope; robotics are advancing and we’re (supposedly????) moving toward AI.
PETER GLASKOWSKI
- We can and WILL mine asteroids, but for the purpose of argument: 99% of the stuff left over from mining will be thrown away. But we should use it in space…
- Rare Earths, metals, Platinum, radiation guns (that Jewelers use???)
- Carbon, H2O and H for propulsion
- Moons are covered with ice; the “ice line” [story title!] = rock on the outside, frozen water on the inside
- Asteroid Mining Winters – no longer interested; “bitcoin companies” are dead; “TransAsteroid Corporation”, talking about it. Economics are NOT “bullish”, thought they could get ahead
- Company that actually tries to do it…
- have to have BOTH asteroid and Lunar mining
- Trying to entertain, “Robot Mule” – Good story! BUT miner bots don’t TEACH people how to do it…
- How big are diamonds? What part of the world economy? Refining in space, eliminate pollution; create technology to refine without waste! CO resource…
- Move off for INCENTIVE might create a market for companies to IMPORT from space. What’s the environmental cost [My thought: WHY aren’t Climate Changists talking about moving industry off Earth? Why are they constantly talking about “give up, give up, do with less, do with less!” Why not get rid of the Chicken Little attitude?]
- Tethers Unlimited, Rob Hoyt ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLjxoscCi0A ), make a big ball of crap, with sticky stuff; poisons for industrial processes???
KEITH GREMBAN
- Economics of it SHOULD do; spinoffs to get there, develop the tech from the spinoffs.
- ROBOTS! NOT HUMANS!!! Need economic incentives to include Humans
- Mining the MOON provides resources to mine the asteroids
- can use Far Side mining to create radio telescopes funded by universities…
- focus on interesting BIG problems, we don’t look at small ones!
- refine metals, etc, IN SPACE
- We CAN get robots to do it, but WE want to be there!
- mining the asteroids is inevitable, but ROBOTICS is the key and competition is NECESSARY
So, there you go, the experts have weighed in, and the fact is that this is going to go into a series I’ve been writing on mining the asteroids. I suppose I should have led off with this, but I didn’t, so…there you go. You might want to check the previous posts in this series.
Personal comments or to investigate my personal blog, go to: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/
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