Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum
Space mining is presently insanely expensive, at least partly because you need to lift your fuel all the way with you. So now the plan is to capture asteroids, extract water, convert this to hydrogen and oxygen, and stock it at an orbiting fuel depot, thereby making space mining viable.
|
Let's put numbers to it. Only speculation says platinum or iridium are in asteroids. A rich deposit is maybe 2% of the material. It costs about $0.5 million just to transport seven gallon of water that far up. Add more expenses to take the energy out of something doing in excess of 17,000 MPH so that it can land. How many dollars is a pound of platinum worth?
The space elevator is nice in theory. Meanwhile the promising technology is to replace rockets with planes. So use oxygen in the air rather than carry it. To use wings for lift. As demonstrate by Rutan? when that group won an X-prize.
So a mining colony is setup on an asteroid. Then the colony survives and mines until the asteroid returns from its long orbit. To send a package to earth. We could not even keep a Martian Rover running through a northern Martian winter for a full year. The proposed task is daunting - even if something worthwhile exists to mine.
It is only a proposal along with another 10,000 that were equally viable and only based in speculations. But would make a good science fiction murder mystery.