Harvesting Asteroids

MySandwich wrote: »

I don't really think this is an issue. These minerals have industrial uses and lower commodity costs benefits most people, and would ultimately facilitate economic growth

I think they're are all sorts of issues with our economy, space travel and even manufacturing going into the future.

It doesn't matter if an industry needs a mineral, if another company has to mine the minerals for profit then they're not going to invest the money if they'll get less and less returns on each load they sell. They'd literally be kicking the stool out from under themselves and every method a company has for improving factories like improving efficiency can't over come the problem of the more they produce the less it's worth.

Then take into account what kind of settlement you'll need to mine asteroids. Even if you have robots doing a lot of the hard work you'll need people. Those people will need some forms of renewable food production and even the ability to manufacture.

Manufacturing is presenting a new problem for our economies and could present another problem for people living in space. CNC and 3d printing is becoming better and cheaper by the day. It's now possible for a one man shop to produce stuff that would have either been impossible 30 years ago, or massively expensive. This is going to make low production customised products much much cheaper and undermine the market share of companies that mass produce.

The other issue is if that mining colony can produce pretty much any piece of technology they want on site they don't need earth. If they're producing food they'll only need earth for luxuries and things they can't produce like textiles. As that colony grows it could get to the stage where they don't need earth, earth has nothing they want, and they may just decide it's not worth trading with us.

That could happen over and over again with groups of people becoming more and more self sufficient and having less reasons for trade. It's possible every space city could be more than capable of mining enough raw materials to sustain itself and has no need for the trade network we have on earth.

Trade is a fundamental part of the human condition, it's probably been with us since before we were humans. We find it extremely hard to operate without it but I can see it becoming redundant when we start living in space.

I'm sure it will still exist, there will always be experts in their fields and so on, but what do you trade in space when minerals are easy to come by and you can probably automatically whip up just about any piece of technology by pressing a button?

I'm pretty sure any big company that's looked into space mining has seen that it's an industry of diminishing returns because of the abundance.

Fathom wrote: »

Several space mining companies formed. Pie-in-the-sky? Or future mining of asteriods, Moon, etc.? Talk "space mining industry."

Mining the moon for helium 3 isn't a bad idea. Mostly because they only need a few dozen grams of helium 3 to power the entire earth for a year.

For everything else the earth needs to much for it to be viable. If you go to space to mine minerals for electronics you're in competition with a kid from Africa. The kid from Africa probably gets paid less than a dollar a day, the space mission is going to have to bring back enough to last decades to cover the cost of the mission.

I guess it makes some sense for rare elements but if it's rare there's probably not much of a market for it.

Our markets and economy is at odds with space colonisation. I don't think we can depend on private enterprise to do anything other than turn low earth orbit into a holiday destination.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I suspect that asteroid dust , like moon dust is very sharp and unfriendly to mechanical stuff. So might need to make gear out of something with a harder surface than aluminium.

I was watching a video on a guy who's been tasked with making concrete out of moondust, I think he's worked out a way of making it but it was surprising just how unfriendly that moon dust is to just about anything.