<pie_>
i mean i guess the answer is yes but is space mining REALLY possible?
<pie_>
i mean deltav deltav deltav...
<pie_>
idk this seems...gimmicky is the wrong word
<awygle>
pie_: lots of asteroids are closer, deltav wise, than the moon
<pie_>
oh.
<pie_>
do they even have anything good in them though?
<pie_>
iron is cheap..
<awygle>
*shrug* we are bad at figuring that out, generally
<awygle>
the theory is that asteroids are undifferentiated material
<awygle>
the reason platinum et al are hard to find is that they sink to the cores in planets
<awygle>
asteroids don't really have "cores", so they're likely high in heavier metals relative to the earth's crust
<awygle>
there's pretty good science that all of our good platinum mines are asteroid impact sites
<qu1j0t3>
awygle | the theory is that asteroids are undifferentiated material // I think about the difficulty of metal recovery from landfill a lot. but maybe not as much as our descendants will have to
<awygle>
qu1j0t3: yeah, a similar problem
<qu1j0t3>
especially the ones that will have to be recovered from billions of dirty, dissolved surface mount components
<qu1j0t3>
and smashed lcds
<awygle>
if i were gonna bet on the future, i'd bet on ubiquitous resources from asteroid mining and a shift to more organics (graphene etc) before i'd bet on large scale resource recovery from landfills
<qu1j0t3>
i don't think that's a choice we will get to make :)
<awygle>
but i know a lot about the first, some about the seocnd, and none about the third so ...
<qu1j0t3>
we've managed to stake nearly all our tech on non renewables and have never considered recoverability. i can't find a way to minimise this problem...
<qu1j0t3>
it's bad enough how we extract them _now_ ...
<qu1j0t3>
so yeah, space mining, tho :)
* qu1j0t3
thinks this is the moment where pie_ gets to say, hey grandpa, bed time...
<awygle>
qu1j0t3: do you have any specific thoughts on the problem? just because i'm like "yay space" doesn't mean i'm not interested in solving problems here
<pie_>
regardless of human economics, what kind of mass economics does space mining work out to...
<pie_>
whats 10kg of spacerock gonna do for you...
<pie_>
(i literally have no idea about the numbers involved, how big of asteroids to divert anyway?)
<qu1j0t3>
awygle: the 3 R's.. i don't think the answer is recovery from landfill except as a last resort.
<qu1j0t3>
awygle: but this is even off the meta topic, so
<awygle>
pie_: there are a lot of different approaches dicussed. either you return the refined minerals or you just divert the asteroid into a more useful orbit (say around earth or the moon)
<awygle>
once you're higher in the gravity well you have a lot of leverage for that kind of thing