[Serial_Worrier]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

All of a sudden there's this new interest in mining asteroids for all our "rare earths" and whatnot. A question I'd have for planetary physicists would be how much mass of material can we extract from such bodies before having an adverse effect on the orbits of these bodies? Imagine mining some asteroid, and then suddenly it veers off course and slams into the Earth. Not good.

[dolanbaker]

Well, that's one way of getting the minerals down to earth quickly and cheaply!
No need to mine it at all.

[SeaGypsy]

+1 Gaz. Stupid distraction from reality is what this is all about.

[EnergyUnlimited]

At $ few tens of millions per kg it might work, so if asteroid is made of large, Cullinan size diamond crystals and relatively close to Earth, who knows?

But for all other purposes that is a plain nonsense.
More of that sh*t will be paddled around as distraction, while modern civilization goes down the drain.

And you don't need to be planetary scientist to work it out.
Just check how much it cost to bring lunar rock back, even by robotic probe.

[NickyBoy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', 'J')ust check how much it cost to bring lunar rock back, even by robotic probe.

[SeaGypsy]

For the same reason your laptop can run for hours on the energy it takes to go outside and measure up where to dig a hole, mining in space is way beyond our ability. We can create endlessly more efficient electronics (Moore's Law) but when it comes to digging holes in the ground there are hard limits. Compare the energy inputs required for deep sea mining (mostly limited to oil/ so far) to those on land for some appreciation of the maths involved. Nobody has invented the hydrogen powered engine to drive the mining equipment just to begin with, leaving whatever effort having to carry the bulk of it's fuel load, or a mass of batteries and solar panels/ with mandatory delays for recharge constraints. I think this is just something to try building a bubble around, really.

[HopDavid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NickyBoy', '
')Of course, none of this matters if you have lost the ability to create fuel for your rockets .

[HopDavid]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', 'A') question I'd have for planetary physicists would be how much mass of material can we extract from such bodies before having an adverse effect on the orbits of these bodies? Imagine mining some asteroid, and then suddenly it veers off course and slams into the Earth. Not good.

[Keith_McClary]

Today's Dilbert:

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nother reason we don’t have a manned space program any more is that all those decades of giddy rhetoric about New Worlds For Man never got around to discussing the difference between technical feasibility and economic viability. The promoters of space travel fell into the common trap of believing their own hype, and convinced themselves that orbital factories, mines on the Moon, and the like would surely turn out to be paying propositions. What they forgot, of course, is what I’ve called the biosphere dividend: the vast array of goods and services that the Earth’s natural cycles provide for human beings free of charge, which have to be paid for anywhere else. The best current estimate for the value of that dividend, from a 1997 paper in Science written by a team headed by Richard Constanza, is that it’s something like three times the total value of all goods and services produced by human beings.

As a very rough estimate, in other words, economic activity anywhere in the solar system other than Earth will cost around four times what it costs on Earth, even apart from transportation costs, because the services provided here for free by the biosphere have to be paid for in space or on the solar system’s other worlds. That’s why all the talk about space as a new economic frontier went nowhere; orbital manufacturing was tried—the Skylab program of the 1970s, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station in its early days all featured experiments along those lines—and the modest advantages of freefall and ready access to hard vacuum didn’t make enough of a difference to offset the costs. Thus manned space travel, like commercial supersonic aircraft, nuclear power plants, and plenty of other erstwhile waves of the future, turned into a gargantuan white elephant that could only be supported so long as massive and continuing government subsidies were forthcoming.

[KaiserJeep]

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that anybody would give credence to some weirdo tree-worshiping cultist ideas about space technology.

I mean really - Druids?

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s a very rough estimate, in other words, economic activity anywhere in the solar system other than Earth will cost around four times what it costs on Earth, even apart from transportation costs, because the services provided here for free by the biosphere have to be paid for in space or on the solar system’s other worlds.

[Withnail]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')
Oh, he's just a luddite.

Elon Musk is making that re-usable rocket, which will cut costs to just the fuel alone which is nothing.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Withnail', 't')he Space Shuttle used to recover and reuse its boosters and obviously the main vehicle, but it didn't make Space Shuttle flights particularly cheap.

It was meant to, in theory.

[Withnail]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Withnail', 't')he Space Shuttle used to recover and reuse its boosters and obviously the main vehicle, but it didn't make Space Shuttle flights particularly cheap.

It was meant to, in theory.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'N')ever in my wildest dreams would I have thought that anybody would give credence to some weirdo tree-worshiping cultist ideas about space technology.

I mean really - Druids?

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Withnail', 'I')f having recoverable boosters makes launches cheaper, why were Space Shuttle launches more expensive than rocket launches?