•

Space is starting to look like the better mining operation | Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.

Space is starting to look like the better mining operation

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/space-is-starting-to-look-like-the-better-mining-operation/

Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.

Space is starting to look like the better mining operation | Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.::Mining in space might be less environmentally harmful than mining asteroids on Earth.

41 comments

pimento64

•

Less harmful to Earth's environment, anyway. The environment on those asteroids is going to be all kinds of fucked up, hard luck for any giant space slugs that might be living there.

TropicalDingdong

•

I mean this is kind of a ridiculous take. There is no environment there. They are asteroids. The asteroid belt represents ~3% the mass of the moon.. There are plenty. Enough with the hand wringing.

It would be great if we could move this environmentally destructive practice to a place where there is no environment. Its one of the few justifications that really makes sense for investment in space travel. Not because it could be profitable, but because it could help us preserve literally the only habitable place in the universe we know of. That alone should be justification for investment.

Its just another implication of how hard it is for humans to understand that "space is big".

pimento64

•

I don't think it was ridiculous at all, and I wholeheartedly believe this would negatively impact the giant space slugs from Empire Strikes Back. Can't you tell how serious I am?

CmdrShepard

•

Plus what about the giant space potato bugs that live under these rocks? They'll die without shelter.

otter

•

I think it was a joke

frezik

•

I've legit read articles from people unironically saying we shouldn't ruin the environment of the moon with mining. The moon. The place often compared to bombed cities. They were worried we would look up to the moon and see big dust clouds, which doesn't even work without an atmosphere.

Zron

•

There is no atmosphere on the moon, but the moon is composed of rock which is very responsive to vibrations.

The lunar impactors from the 60s and 70s made detectable vibrations on the other side of the moon when they struck. We know this because one of the Apollo missions left a surface experiment running when they left. That experiment also picked up the vibrations of the descent module as it expanded and contracted due to the sun. Vibrations on the order of millimeters being picked up from a 70s era instrument placed several meters away from the descent stage.

I do wonder if large scale mining on the moon could negatively impact any human settlements, as the vibration from the mining would certainly propagate to them eventually.

EthicalAI

•

That’s so weird! Why doesn’t earth rock do that?

Zron

•

I mean, it does. But it takes a lot more energy.

We have earthquakes all the time, but the earth is very big compared to the moon, and we have a hot liquid mantle and core that probably dampens a lot of those vibrations.

The moon is basically a giant rock, with no other medium to transfer energy into. So when it gets hit by something, that energy just gets transmitted around the surface of the moon until the energy is depleted.

EthicalAI

•

I’m imagining people knocking morris code to communicate from one side of the moon to the other lol

sharkfucker420

•

But think of the space slugs that eat those rocks

LordGimp

•

No no, it's beyond the environment. We took the mining operations and moved them outside the environment.

nilloc

•

It’s all fun and games until the front falls off.

MossyFeathers

•

I hope you're aren't serious. I've seen people who legit believe in extra-terrestrial environmentalism and that we shouldn't ever mine asteroids because it might "mess up the ecosystem".

FrankLaskey

•

So my grandchildren will be more than likely be belters. Got it.

theterrasque

•

https://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/17284_5.jpg

KickMeElmo

•

ROCK AND STONE

blake24964

•

For Rock and Stoooone!

Mafflez

•

Huh. You don't say? I could have told you that and I'm not a genius. Who knew off world mining would be less environmentally impactful to the earth. One issue though would be cost.

mint_tamas

•

I think the point is that emission from space flight to and from the asteroid (with a sufficently economic size of payload and fuel) is starting to even out. If you take that into account it’s not so obviously less harmful to the environment. But I’m almost certain that it will be way more expensive for a long time.

jaschen

•

Or figure out a space elevator which in theory would work but if it failed, it would be very bad.

Cocodapuf

•

Well it all depends on how your logistics work. If your mining operation is mostly robotic then you would probably design it to mostly send materials down to earth, not more rockets up.

This could in fact be done, and you could manage it by launching single missions that last many years. You could use the very minerals you're mining as additional propellent. Or you could just send up a vast supply of xenon, an extremely efficient propellent, and operate off of that supply for years.

cyd

•

Realistically, asteroid mining is centuries away, if it ever happens at all. Deep space is an incredibly hostile environment, which makes it non-conducive for the kind of tinkering and experimentation that usually leads to human technological progress.

Hamartiogonic

•

The human body is incredibly picky. Everything has to be just right or the human simply dies of anything and everything. Things like gravity, radiation, temperature, pressure and so many other variables matter a lot.

Space exploration and asteroid mining are the kinds of jobs better left for robots.

nilloc

•

Feels like we’d need a very clean way to launch and land enough robots to-from space to iterate for it to have much less environmental impact.

Like a space elevator basically.

Zron

•

You don’t need to land the vehicle with the cargo.

Just slow the cargo down in orbit, maybe slap some heat shielding made from space mined resources on it, and then let the cargo drop. The deorbit stage can stay in earth orbit and wait for the next piece of cargo to come in.

Realistically, once we start seriously mining in space, the only thing that needs to be launched from earth would be human consumables, like minerals for growing crops, preserved foods, and medications that require resources only found on earth.

Moving manufacturing up to space after the mining would seriously cut down on the cost of operations. There’s little reason to drop resources on earth, when you could sell things like refined metals, water, and fuel to other space based companies at a premium, just so they don’t need to launch it themselves.

Scubus

•

How often do we mine asteroids on earth?

frezik

•

All the time, but they hit long ago.

Etterra

•

I think the implication was that some genius decided to suggest the idea of dropping the asteroids on the surface before mining them the old-fashioned way. Because there's no way that could possibly go wrong. It's not like anybody ever makes math errors or anything.

Hamartiogonic

•

Wait, that speed wasn’t given in feets per minute and the mass wasn’t in pounds? I guess we’ll find out if 1800 m/s is too fast for a smooth landing.

inconel

•

And all the mining waste are dumped in space, where people thought out of human's reach so it's safe to leave it there, until proven otherwise. I may be pessimistic, but if such technological advance made it will likely expand region of human activity and thus history repeats.

Brokkr

•

Space is big, really big. On average there are thousands of kilometers between asteroids. Between the larger ones I'm seeing estimates if 100,000 kilometers between them. Earth is 12756 kilometers in diameter.

If humanity gets to a point where it can support a population as large as you are suggesting, then we can probably deal with space junk in the asteroid belt. Also we can just go "over" it.

autotldr

•

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For instance, a study by Ian Lange of the Colorado School of Mines considers the potential—and challenges—for a fledgling industry that might reach a significant scale in the next several decades, driven by the demand for critical metals used in electronics, solar and wind power, and electric car components, particularly batteries.

While other companies are exploring the controversial idea of scooping cobalt, nickel, and platinum from the seafloor, some asteroids could harbor the same minerals in abundance—and have no wildlife that could be harmed during their extraction.

Lange’s study, coauthored with a researcher at the International Monetary Fund, models the growth of space mining relative to Earth mining, depending on trends in the clean energy transition, mineral prices, space launch prices, and how much capital investment and R&D grow.

By their assessment, metallic asteroids contain more than a thousand times as much nickel as the Earth’s crust, in terms of grams per metric ton.

Electric vehicles and their batteries need about six times the minerals conventional cars do, and they require both nickel and cobalt in significant quantities.

The Democratic Republic of Congo accounts for 70 percent of cobalt production, for example, while nickel primarily comes from Indonesia and the Philippines, and Russia and South Africa have most of the global supply of platinum-group metals.

The original article contains 701 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

itsonlygeorge

•

No shit sherlock.

Jikiya

•

They towed the boat out of the environment.

Parabola

•

Into a different environment? Did the front stay on?

Sygheil

•

Dead space vibes.

Bonskreeskreeskree

•

What could possibly go wrong adding a ton of mass to earth

HerrBeter

•

Not too much. It's just a single ton. Unless it's a ton of antimatter

Dedh

•

I've been curious about this subject (increasing or decreasing the planet's mass) & wanting a real fact based explanation. The fact that man has built structures that had a measureable impact to Earth's tilt indicate that there is a calcuable figure that represents the effect that the cumulative mass being removed from close to Earth's core/surface & shifted into orbit or pushed out of the planet's gravitational field has/will have. I've got no idea ehat the impact would be, but at some point reducing the mass of a spinning object has to result in changes. How many non-returning ships sent off-planet does it take to reduce the gravitational field of Earth? Does it impact Earth's orbit around the Sun? And inversely, how much off-planet mined materials brought here before ...idk - Earth's gravity is increased? Assuming the # is "real", shouldn't we be determining how much can be mined on the moon & brought here? Better now than waiting until the next environmental crisis headlines read "Moon weight loss has lead to extreme ellipse-ing of it's orbit: expect even more monumental tidal extremes!". Again, I don't know what the real impact would be, I made this last bit up for dramatic effect/illustrate my question.

Bonskreeskreeskree

•

This was exactly my point. It's silly to assume we can just bring endless resources to our planet and not eventually fuck up our gravity or rotation.

frezik

•

There isn't likely to be much material shipped down the gravity well. It's too expensive unless you can also build a space elevator, and maybe not even then. Maybe for some very high value metals, like platinum. Otherwise, the value of the metal has to be greater than the value of the heat shield that you're going to ablate away on entry.

Asteroid mining is very useful for building things in space. Not so much on Earth.