Looks like humanity is entering the next phase of our existence.
I'm glad to be alive during the transition.
video: Asteroid Mining Mission Revealed by Planetary Resources, Inc.
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Great. This will only encourage Michael Bay to release a follow up to Armageddon.
Looks like humanity is entering the next phase of our existence.
I'm glad to be alive during the transition.video: Asteroid Mining Mission Revealed by Planetary Resources, Inc.
I'll second cool if possible, but there's room for grinching too. According to their plan, which I read up on on Bad Astronomy they're going to probably be producing massive amounts of scientific data and engineering know-how along the way. That's wonderful, but are they going to treat that data as part of the common body of scientific knowledge or as trade secrets and intellectual property?
If the former, great. If the latter, I'm fairly indifferent to them. Yes it would be nice if they could supply water or whatever to NASA in situ in orbit a few years down the road, but only because that would help NASA generate more of the common body of scientific knowledge stuff.
Just to be a contrarian, even if they do use that data as trade secrets, won't their business make space more accessible for other commercial ventures? The collective body of public knowledge is bound to increase along the way.
My concern is what happens when our patent law mess comes face-to-face with the burgeoning space industry. I have no doubt that someone will gain a patent for "entering geostationary orbit by means of a man made device using propellant and computers".
I have a moonbase, with a mass driver capable of flinging mini mountains into orbit. You don't.
I'm not sharing jack.In fack,.....here's a small laundry list of stuff's I will require you to cede me to not do some complex math and drop a 10 ton moonpie on your earthling capital citiez b##*!es.
PLOX, feel free to send copious space marines, IPBM's, and whatever else you have 238,855 miles through my swarm of solar powered drones; I enjoy the video game that is interplanetary combat anymore. I like playing Angry Birds with my massdriver too.
THANX, ROBERT HEINLEIN!!!
Oh, yeah. I'm Declaring Independance.
Bring it, earthlings.
Ummm... mass drivers are in no way impossible to build on Earth... they are just cheaper to fire from the moon. And if a hit on Earth could kill billions in a city... well, imagine what a near-miss would do to a habitat dome on the moon. So yeah, we'll bring it all right.
Man zombies would make great astronauts!
On a more serious note, I am glad to see that the private sector is boldly going where no government has gone before. Humanity needs a frontier, and as the Shat would say at the beginning of Star Trek, space is the final frontier. Plus, getting mining and dirty factories into space will do more for the environment than any amount of protests will.
Hopefully the need for power will advance SPS technology as well. Time to start using that big fusion ball in a practical manner.
Man zombies would make great astronauts!
On a more serious note, I am glad to see that the private sector is boldly going where no government has gone before. Humanity needs a frontier, and as the Shat would say at the beginning of Star Trek, space is the final frontier. Plus, getting mining and dirty factories into space will do more for the environment than any amount of protests will.
Hopefully the need for power will advance SPS technology as well. Time to start using that big fusion ball in a practical manner.
I pray Thorium becomes the future!
Just to be a contrarian, even if they do use that data as trade secrets, won't their business make space more accessible for other commercial ventures? The collective body of public knowledge is bound to increase along the way.
My concern is what happens when our patent law mess comes face-to-face with the burgeoning space industry. I have no doubt that someone will gain a patent for "entering geostationary orbit by means of a man made device using propellant and computers".
I have a moonbase, with a mass driver capable of flinging mini mountains into orbit. You don't.
I'm not sharing jack.In fack,.....here's a small laundry list of stuff's I will require you to cede me to not do some complex math and drop a 10 ton moonpie on your earthling capital citiez b+**+es.
PLOX, feel free to send copious space marines, IPBM's, and whatever else you have 238,855 miles through my swarm of solar powered drones; I enjoy the video game that is interplanetary combat anymore. I like playing Angry Birds with my massdriver too.
THANX, ROBERT HEINLEIN!!!
Plus we will need an asteroid as a counterwieght for the space elevator when we do finally get around to building it.
It's sounds cool... But how expensive will resources mined in space be!
Does adding weight to the earth have any risk of affecting its orbit?
I can convince myself both ways if I think about it for a while.. :/
I think it would be seriously difficult for any human endeavour to add more weight to the earth than what is already dumping down on it without our efforts...
Mass has no effect on velocity which is what you need to have a stable orbit. Affecting the gravitational pull of earth won't be an issue either. Most people forget that the earth is huge compared to the entirety of what Humans have achieved. Even if we doubled the mass of refined metals on the planet, I doubt we'd have any measurable difference in gravitational pull, mass, or orbit.
Does adding weight to the earth have any risk of affecting its orbit?
I can convince myself both ways if I think about it for a while.. :/
It is estimated that, on average, the earth gains 150,000,000kg every year. This seems like a really big number, but it is actually insignificant in relation to the mass of the earth. If we assume that the mass accumulated at a constant rate over the entire 4.5 billion years the earth has been around, it has gained a whopping one one-hundred-thousandth of a percent of it's original mass. That works out to a layer about 66cm thick over the entire surface of the earth. I don't think we have to worry much about the earth's orbit decaying due to it's mass increasing.
If you want something to worry about, try the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park.