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.
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.
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”.
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?
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.
No no, it’s beyond the environment. We took the mining operations and moved them outside the environment.
So my grandchildren will be more than likely be belters. Got it.
ROCK AND STONE
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
