The Astronomy Thread

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Tuco

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Basically at that point you're hitting a situation where money as a form of exchange becomes meaningless and you're back to straight barter.

Which it wouldn't surprise me all that much if that's how global economics already works. And then we just sort of throw a money figure on it to make some domestic sense of it.

But all economic systems are modeled around scarcity of resource. A virtually unlimited supply of x... that's something new.

But I guess it's really not virtually unlimited. Maybe the supply is, but the extraction and delivery isn't.
My previous post on this was a bit of a fantasy that described how dropping the value of heavy earth metal to dirt levels wouldn't be that disruptive outside of those particular industries, so I'll give the most realistic version here:

Even in the most optimistic view, the extraction of heavy metal resources on an asteroid will be very expensive. The impact of introducing asteroid metal into Earth's economy will likely happen very gradually over generations. There is just no cheap way to move the contents of an asteroid safely to a processing plant on Earth. Optimistically it's going to go from billion dollar research ventures to barely profitable over several generations.

And really, I think when we get to the point where it's possible we'll probably want to keep most of it out of the gravity well anyway. An entire industry will be created in orbit before we get our first big asteroid, and that industry will need the same materials in those asteroids.


So, we'll have a drop in resource scarcity of heavy metals when we start asteroid mining in the same way we've had an energy surplus since we invented solar panels in the 1800s.



Note: The above is void when we invent an Epstein drive via radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity thrusters.
 
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Kiroy

Marine Biologist
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Well, at the rate we are going, the 1st person to step on Mars is probably in grade school right now lol

If you're talking NASA maybe.

116-musk.JPG
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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The moon sucks, who cares that we haven't been to it.
Depends on available resources on it. It's like earth: fuel is the key to the economy.

Right now, if you ship to earth orbit (LEO to geosync), it's ok to send everything from the ground. But once you start going somewhere else, unless magic farting unicorns drives exists, then you have two ways:

- Minimum energy Hohmann orbit, which gives you months (for mars) to decades (for outer planets) transit times.
- Propelled trajectories, which use a lot of fuel, but cut that to reasonable times.

The hitch is that getting that fuel is expensive. And it costs as much to lift a 1-ton satellite as it costs to lift 1 ton of fuel.

Enter the moon. The moon has a 1/6th gravity field. It has 1/6th escape velocity. Basically, it costs (in fuel) something of 1/36th less to launch something from the moon as it costs from earth. Launching a satellite from the moon would cost a lot less.

Alas, the industry to make satellites and spacecrafts is a bit too sophisticated to implement on the moon. But making fuel ought to be extremely simple - provided the resources are available in the lunar regolith somewhere - so you can make a launch your ship from earth, then fuel around the moon, and go on your merry way for cheap around the solar system.

That's why it's potentially important. The Moon is potentially the next Saudi Arabia. If it has what it takes.
 
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iannis

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I do remember like 15 years ago reading about a Jap lab that was working on making concrete and water out of moon rocks. They could make the concrete, they could make the water.

I dunno how much uranium the moon has. Or thorium. If you can make water out of moon rocks, and you have a source of power, you can make fuel.

SPACE ETHANOL.

I bet though that it probably WOULD be better to make greenhouses on the moon and grow corn or kudzu up there. lol. And that's obviously retarded.
 
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spronk

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blows my mind that there is maybe a 9th planet further out
'Planet Nine' Can't Hide Much Longer, Scientists Say

Its estimated to be 15-20x further away from the Sun than PLUTO, so just insanely farther away with a 10,000 - 20,000 year orbit around the sun. Crazy. Also for the math to work out it would have to be 10x the size of the Earth.

I think some of the astro guys on reddit though said MOST scientists don't believe there is a 9th planet, and there are other explanations for the kuiper belt alignments. If there is a 9th planet though, its expected to be found in the next 5 years.
 
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Ukerric

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He3 might be key to fusion and lots of energy, but it's shit for rocket fuel.

For rocketry, you want an oxydizing stuff. Nitrogen-based stuff is good because it's easy to keep for the trip to wherever. LOX+stuff is slightly worse. The simplest fuel from the moon would be... lox+hydrogen (that is, water split with solar panel electricity).

If you can extract water cheaply from lunar regolith, you're ok (because good luck finding enough nitrogen on the moon).
 
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Ukerric

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Seems like we'd be better off mining ice on an asteroid, which has an escape velocity attainable by flicking a booger.
Yep, except for the part where you have to ship the ice back to earth/mars/wherever for use. That's where the economics of the thing become complicated. You need to factor the cost of bringing the fuel from wherever, plus the anticipation cost (your fuel has to be extracted months/years in advance to be available when you're going to need; vs having your fuel produced on the moon and sent to orbit an hour or two before you arrive to fuel).

However, once you move to outer planets, then the belt becomes your best fueling station. For any traffic from earth, it's probably going to be a toss-up. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't also cheaper to produce nitro fuels on Mars to refuel any mars-starting ship rather than send ice from the belt.
 
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Tuco

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Yeah I think it all depends on if we can find an easily minable water asteroid with a friendly orbit to earth. I wonder what the cost of moving a hunk of ice from said asteroid to earth's orbit is vs lifting it from the moon.
 
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Cad

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Is this not a bunch of bullshit? Do we have a working helium3 reactor or even a plan to make one? Would it even be suitable for rocket fuel?

Seems like we'd be better off mining ice on an asteroid, which has an escape velocity attainable by flicking a booger.

I think these type of plans assume we have a working fusion reactor that can be used as a power source for rocketry otherwise any mining/refining operation on the moon is more or less infeasible anyways.
 
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Ukerric

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I think these type of plans assume we have a working fusion reactor that can be used as a power source for rocketry otherwise any mining/refining operation on the moon is more or less infeasible anyways.
Oh, no. You can use solar panels. At least 15 days out of around 29. No need of undeveloped technologies.

The same applies for spaceships propelled with LOX_H. You carry the water/ice, and start your electrolysis operation as you approach the moment where you're going to brake; you only need enough solar panels to do so. The advantage of designing "real" spaceships is that they don't really need streamlined shapes, like in the movies or TV shows; you can have all kind of stuff protruding from them. Electrolize your ice, retract the panels if they can't handle the deceleration burn, start burning, and slide into orbit at destination.

(that, or you get magic fusion drives like in The Expanse or similar semi-realistic shows, where you have enough energy that you don't need to split ice to burn, you just sublimate it as reaction mass)
 
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Khalan

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Whenever they land the rockets, I get the same feeling I did when we beat a raid boss for the first time in EQ
 
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