Planetary Chauvanism, and Zubrin-ites

I think we are missing one another, Ian. I don't really disagree with the
things you said. I wasn't discussing the Moon-versus-NEO issue at all in
my reply.

My issue with Josh's original statement was the phrase
"asteroids... after they have been hollowed out, make space
colonies..."

Using asteroidal regolith to build a 'space colony' seems to me to be a
much more reasonable approach than hollowing-out the asteroid in order to
build a space colony inside. Another contributor to this thread
pointed-out that some or perhaps many small asteroids might be rubble piles
or severely fractured, such that we could not rely on the mechanical
strength of a tunnel wall to contain an artificial atmosphere. Also,
tunneling and "hollowing-out" would entail hard-rock mining techniques (see
footnote), which are more challenging than the surface mining of regolith.
I just don't see what the advantage to "hollowing out" would be. Why
hollow-out rather than collect material from the surface?

Footnote: There's evidence that some carbonaceous asteroids might not have
much mechanical strength at all, so that "hard-rock mining" might reduce to
"soft-rock mining" in these cases.

Ron Menich

Ian Woollard
tesco.net> cc:
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Planetary Chauvanism, and
09/05/01 03:17 Zubrin-ites
PM
Please respond
to
spacesettlers

rmenich@... wrote:
> Josh Kane wrote,
>
> "Well, the thing is, it would probably be prohibitively expensive to
build
> space colonies a la Gerard K. O'Neill. My idea is to mine the asteroids
> and, after they have been hollowed out, make space colonies."
>
> I don't believe you. Could you please supply some supporting evidence or
> argumentation? What is it that makes you believe that it would be easier
> to tunnel through an asteroid versus skimming off and processing surface
> regolith?

I don't think that that's seriously in doubt is it? To get the ore
to a space settlement you'd have to launch it, and that is going to
cost something. The delta-v to launch from an asteroid is ridiculously
low, and with luck, an asteroid will have large quantities of every
substance you can want (the moon is deficient in volatiles), as well as
24x7 sunlight (the moon only has sunlight half the month.)

Even O'Neill said that that was the place to be, in the long run.

The only question is: which asteroid? A well equipped
expedition would be able to survive, even prosper, given enough
information about what's there before they leave.

> Ron Menich

- Ian Woollard (ian.woollard@...)

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological
civilization?"
- Gerard O'Neill