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