Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Caliane_sl said:

Nice. one step closer to mans dream of blowing up the moon.

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Tuco_sl said:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...sEnabled=false

Great news. Asteroid mining is the next big step in space exploration.

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All the major commercial asteroid start ups (Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, Etc.) are really excited about the prospect, but they're really wary about the how NASA is going to go about it. There's currently a good bit of political push to keep all the development in house, which will waste a lot of time and money by duplicating work that's already been done by the private companies. NASA is also using the CalTech/KISS study method which is to "scoop up" an asteroid and cart it back to earth. The problem is that NASA might play with the asteroid around earth for years before just "giving" it to the mining companies. This would cause a lack of funding/development for commercial programs and make NASA a vertical monopoly owning every step of the process making the other companies dependent instead of self-supporting.

A lot of the companies are trying really hard to have NASA commit to funding the technology for mining and letting the private companies perform the captures which should open it up a lot faster. Both Deep Space Industries and an unannounced corporation both have drastically different retrieval methods which are currently being patented and can retrieve asteroidal resources at least 5-6 years earlier than the CalTech/KISS Method if all goes well. Planetary Resources is well-funded enough I imagine that they'll have their own game no matter what NASA does, plus they're focusing on setting up fueling depots and telescopes first. DSI is focusing on orbital processing to make metal foams and rarer metals, whereas the unannounced companies each have other niches.

Xasten_sl said:

A lot of the companies are trying really hard to have NASA commit to funding the technology for mining and letting the private companies perform the captures which should open it up a lot faster.

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I'm sure that'll go great.

Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:

I'm sure that'll go great.

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It's going to happen no matter what. Most of the patents currently pending are methods for landing the material on earth. For example, Deep Space Industries plans to send "whiffle balls" of metal down to earth that should impact the ground at <500 mph. Some estimates put the whiffles at landing ~60mph. A few companies are already deeply into negotiations with several governments about landing rights (think deserts with no cities around for 100's of miles), and they'll probably have them within the next year or so. There's very little real danger in sending any mined material back to earth, but there is a huge perception of danger within the general population, and the retrieval methods will have so many fail-safes it's unreal.

Believe it or not, companies like SpaceX and the like are composed mostly of former NASA scientists, and NASA is actually fighting brain-drain right now. These companies will soon be just as, if not more, competent than NASA at their specific functions. Private development is the future, and MASSIVE savings are being/beginning to be realized with the employment of private launch platforms. The same will be true with private mining and retrieval.

Tuco_sl said:

Look on the bright side, asteroid mining and space exploration in general will be a massive boon to solar technology.

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Until BP accidentally lands said asteroid on top of said Solar factory.

Just to be 'that guy' for a second....

Do you know how to build an offshore oil platform? I sure as hell don't but can you imagine the number of people and the amount of money you would need? It's mind bottling! Projects of that scale or like a space shuttle or a massive tunnel are so large, and the risk of loss on a potential failure so huge, that the question of weather or not the project was publicly or privately funded has less and less importance. The humans involved are certainly striving for success and or failure regardless. In other words, the BP spill could have happened to the exact same platform even if it was owned by the government. In neither case does the occurrence indicate to us the apparent difference between socialism and capitalism. We graft that on to the event ourselves. The real difference lies in our humans, not our machines.

When a new frontier is being explored, the known risks involved, and inherent uncertainties whenever anyone does something for the first time, push most activities found there well outside of the realm of profitability. So government becomes the premiere driver of such activities.

Once a boundary to the unknown has been examined and the risks understood; corporations, that are made lean by their hunger for profit, can come in and populate that space with all kinds of enterprise. This is a great process to advance technology, and probably one of the most worthwhile uses of public funds.

Of course, when said activities becomes rote, that hunger will take hold again. Left to themselves, companies will chew their own legs off and crash their industries for a quick buck. So government needs to ensure the harnesses of commerce are kept tight, and the dogs of capitalism are kept pointed in the right direction.

No matter what they do with the asteroids, lets hope they start off with a small one, just in case...

From a technology perspective, you would have to start with a small(er) asteroid. Large asteroids you would probably have to mine at the asteroid where it resides vs. tugging it back to Earth.

AngryGerbil_sl said:

Just to be 'that guy' for a second....

Do you know how to build an offshore oil platform? I sure as hell don't but can you imagine the number of people and the amount of money you would need? It's mind bottling! Projects of that scale or like a space shuttle or a massive tunnel are so large, and the risk of loss on a potential failure so huge, that the question of weather or not the project was publicly or privately funded has less and less importance. The humans involved are certainly striving for success and or failure regardless. In other words, the BP spill could have happened to the exact same platform even if it was owned by the government. In neither case does the occurrence indicate to us the apparent difference between socialism and capitalism. We graft that on to the event ourselves. The real difference lies in our humans, not our machines.

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The difference is that I can operate some direct bit of power over the leadership of government that I cannot over BP. And you can make all the arguments you want about being able to buy stock or choosing to not shop there after the fact. The fact of the matter is, that is not even remotely the same thing as being able to elect the positions of power directly (which, frankly I think even that level of separation of power is basically a failed experiment).

BrutulTM_sl said:

It's cute that you think that.

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It's not wrong. Why do you think the right hates government so much? It's an institution that can only bemostlycontrolled with money because, at the end of the day, there is still a voting booth that people can walk into. They can use money to buy campaigns, and politicians, and whatever media spin they prefer and all of that shit, but there exists at least one moment of power that is not merely in the hands of whoever has the most money.

mkopec_sl said:

Does not work when billions are spent on campaigns full of lies. Its all washed out in the end and there is nothing you can do to insulate yourself from it. There is no vote in this country. The two chosen puppets are handed to you every time and you get to chose between dumb and dumber. Now where is that power you wield with your vote again?

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In the voting booth? Again, I'm saying that we have a great system. I'm saying it offers more than ZERO control (which is what we have with BP, or We're-Gonna-Drop-Space-Rocks-On-You Inc, or whatever).

Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:

(which is what we have with BP, or We're-Gonna-Drop-Space-Rocks-On-You Inc, or whatever).

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It would be more costly to retrieve an asteroid of sufficient mass and hold the ground hostage, than it would be to mine the resourcesin situ(in position), which is what the current mining start ups aim to do. Sure it's possible, but it flies completely in the face of all economic logic. Ransom would get you less $ than selling the stuff safely (kind of like how in Wanted they killed people for piddly amounts of money instead of making trillions off of the super-healing bathtub wax).

Further, some of the retrieval systems cannot do any real damage. For example, Deep Space Industries' metal whiffle balls might take out someone's house. If you want to do that, there are ways that don't cost billions.

Further, no one's going to bring an asteroid into orbit without a predetermined landing site for any retrieved materials. This will require negotiating with the local government (which all the current start ups have already been doing for well over a year), and the local governments are going to be exceptionally cautious in making sure that some CEO doesn't decide to play super villain. If any of the REALLY big rocks that could do potential damage are retrieved, they'll be placed at long distance orbits or at lagrange points posing no threat. Even if some Dr. Evil wannabe got control of the asteroid MassEffect "Bring down the Sky" style, it'd be so obvious that corrective measures could immediately be taken.

I'm not talking about people doing it on purpose.

Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:

I'm not talking about people doing it on purpose.

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Exactly, I fear them trying to save 10k or 100k or maybe even 100m on something they deem not to be crucial and go with a generic version of something and it causing an entire country of people to be wiped off the face of the earth. For whatever reason in my head I can deal with incompetence more than I can a company trying to save a buck, with the government I at least know that they won't cut corners due to being cheap, NASA for the shit they do has a very good track record. Hell the shit NASA pulls off NASA has a hard time believing they managed it, I think our country had more faith in NASA than NASA had in NASA with the Curiousity landing.

Until NASA does something like mine an asteroid in orbit then I think it should be off limits, park that shit on the moon and go from there. Now if they work with NASA and NASA has huge involvement with the private sector company doing the mining then I would be more inclined to be ok with it. NASA has a great track record with what they have done especially considering the field they are doing it in, the ironic thing about NASA is that with as great at math as they are for some reason they are absolute shit at price estimation

TLDR I trust NASA based on their track record and my possible irrational hate for companies that cause major disasters because they are cheap fuckers.

Risk is an inherent part of any venture, and yes, it's perfectly logical to have a concern. There will be serious oversight and regulation of any operation that retrieves material. The FAA, for example, has very strict launch rules wherein the risk to any individual member of the public must not exceed 1X10^-6 per mission, and you must possess comprehensive liability insurance in the amount of the Maximum Probable Loss possible as determined by the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. Similar standards will be in place for any such retrieval.

The idea that private industry will be unsupervised is false, as is the notion that private industry would be less safe than a government body under such a situation.

BurnemWizfyre_sl said:

Exactly, I fear them trying to save 10k or 100k or maybe even 100m on something they deem not to be crucial and go with a generic version of something and it causing an entire country of people to be wiped off the face of the earth.

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By the time we possess the technology to move asteroids of sufficient size to be capable of causing extinction level events, it will be a trivial matter to instead mine them in place. At most, retrieval missions will bring back several hundred thousand tons of material which will be various metals of near 100% purity and they will have been shaped as airfoils. They will not crash down so much as they will "land" in the desert at ~500 MPH.

For the forseeable future, the worst case scenario is far less dangerous to the planet than any number of other ventures that already are broadly within the private sphere.