By-Pass the Moon?

On Mar 15, 2008, at 6:29 PM, Dan Wylie-Sears wrote:
> > Not to mention that we yet have no real experience with refining
> > ores in free fall.
>
> I don't see why we would despin an asteroid and then struggle to
> overcome the challenges of zero-g.
>
With almost any asteroid, the surface gravity is so close to zero as
to make no difference when it comes to materials handling.
> > There have been many discussions over the years over how to do
> > this, but it's still speculation until somebody demonstrates to
> > make Iron out of ore in weightlessness.
>
> That may be an issue for other plans, but I'm talking about mining as
> what's all-AI, not smelting and manufacturing. I want to bring
> asteroids or significant chunks of them to near-earth space, and do
> the sophisticated processing where lightspeed lag is manageable and
> sending up new hardware is possible.
>
That's a reasonable plan, but an expensive one -- you have to apply
the delta-V between the asteroid's orbit and ours to every kg you
bring back.
> Really, is there that much you can do on-site that you can't do with
> telepresence?
>
Quite a bit, yes, but the gap is narrowing steadily.