Asteroid use

Marcel Williams wrote:

> --- Ian Woollard wrote:
>
>> Marcel Williams wrote:
>>
>>
>>> MW: Hollowing out asteroids would be a waste or
>>> resources. You could probably build dozens of
>>
>> space
>>
>>> islands with with the materials you hollowed out
>>
>> from
>>
>>> the asteroid in the first place.
>>
>> Ian Woollard: This *isn't* an either-or thing. You
>
> can do both.
>
> MW: But why would you want to unless you enjoy doing
> things their are economically unneccessary?

What necessity means you can't do both? You hollow out
the asteroid and send some or all of the resources
out to the settlement (which is in zero-g). They purify
it and send you back materials and tools to build
with. You're in mining they're in industry. What's
the big deal?

>> Ian Woollard: And wasting resources? There's more
>
> metal in Eros
>
>> than can be mined from the entire surface of the
>> earth. That's *ONE* asteroid and not a particularly
>> big one.
>
> MW: What's surprising about that?

What's surprising is that you are *worried* about 'wasting'
resources. It's not as if anything much is in short supply.

>>> MW: And industrializing
>>> the surfaces of the Moon and Mars make far more
>>> economic sense than trying to build large space
>>> islands at this time.
>>
>> Ian Woollard: Actually the lunar surface is quite
>
> hostile to
>
>> equipment: the Apollo astronauts found that their
>> suits were worn away after only a few hours. Lunar
>> dust is *sharp*. That's a problem for any long
>> stay scenario.
>>
>> The surface of the moon is a radioactive, airless,
>> dusty, lifeless place.
>>
>
> MW: Which is why its an excellent place for dirty
> industrialization.

Ah! Space killer app! You want to make sandpaper! ;-)

>> Ian Woollard: The surface of mars is nearly as bad,
>
> the atmosphere
>
>> is less than 1% of the pressure of the earth- it's
>> very radioactive too because the atmosphere blocks
>> very little of the suns energy.
>>
>
> MW: Again, another place for dirty industrialization.
> You can build as many plutonium and uranium nuclear
> reactors as you want. And an excellent place for
> those in the asteroid importation business to work on
> the processing of small asteroids in Mars orbit.

Mars orbit as opposed to Solar orbit? I suppose its
possible. Same way that certain parts of cities are
usually hives of activity even though nobody actually
*does* anything there. But then all industry is
elsewhere. The thing you've forgotten is that moving
unpurified rock *costs*. Moving manufacturing plants
around costs too, but a lot less. Therefore manufacturing
plants go to the mountain i.e. the asteroids. They
send back processed materials.

> MW: You'll still have the problem of cosmic radiation
> and the problem of producing artifical gravity.

I don't consider gravity a problem. It's too trivial. Its
only a tether and a counterweight. Cosmic radiation
is only a few meters of left over slag, or water or fuel
or whatever you have to hand.

>> Ian Woollard: Microgravity makes certain processes
>
> possible. For
>
>> example on earth we use something called
>> electrophoresis to separate DNA. You pass a current
>> through a material and it separates out. In space
>> you
>> can use electrophoresis to separate bulk materials
>> like ore. It can't be done like that on earth
>> because
>> convection current form and ruin the process
>> (that's why electrophoresis uses a gel in DNA
>> work, but what gel can you use for molten rock?)
>>
>> Love to see you move 100 tonne blocks around. In
>> space you can do it with one hand. Here, catch!
>>
>
> MW: Microgravity is also an excellent place for
> producing metalic whiskers with tensile strengths 30
> times that on the original metal. Microgravity is also
> an excellent place to produce ultrathin aluminum for
> my interplanetary lightsails. And a great place for
> producing artificial diamonds. But you don't need an
> O'Neill space colony to do that. All you need is a
> small space platform which could be manned or
> unmanned. And in most cases it would be preferable for
> such facilities to be unmanned.

Not unless there is a big breakthrough in robotics.

> MW: Think 2050 because that will be the earliest
> you'll see for such a structure large enough for
> people to want to spend the rest of their lives in
> :-).

Oh right. In exactly 48 years we will suddenly go
'Oh wait- its O'Neill time!' and break out the mass
drivers. Nah. Look its simple. Space is growing
exponentially at about 15% per year. Therefore in
20 years we will have 16x more traffic into space.

That will make it a trillion pound industry.
And that's if it doesn't accelerate. I think it
will accelerate. All it takes is someone to
build a Roton. But this isn't something that
anyone can predict. It could happen in 2-3 years.
It could happen in 15 years. It might never
happen.

My bet is 8-20 years at the moment till we see
space mining of some kind; probably Lunar, possibly
asteroids.

>>> Ian Woollard: Their time will come. But their
>>> time is definitely not in the next 20 or 30 years,
>>> IMO.
>>
>> Ian Woollard: Oh well, if you say it. That's ok
>
> then.
>
> Today we can barely place 25 tonnes into orbit
> and NASA wants to replace this system with a vehicle
> that can place an even smaller tonnage into space.

That's right. That's why the ISS is only 460 tonnes
of mass. Oh no that can't be right, its more than
150 tonnes. Weird.

>> Still, a wise man once said, almost exactly a
>> century ago:
>>
>> "I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother...
>> that man will not fly for fifty years..."
>>
>> - Wilbur Wright 1908
>>
>
> MW: Another wise man once said that Rome wasn't built
> in a day. O'Neill thought the first space islands
> could be built in the 1990's. It never happened
> because it takes more than just dreams. It takes
> political action.

O'Neill was wrong about that. He was a professor
when we needed an industrialist.

You need to keep politics out of space as much
as possible. Political will is too ephemeral. It
rarely lasts more than 5 years. Look at history.
America is run by English speaking, not Spanish
speaking people. That's probably because the
English speaking lot were working for profit.
The Spanish was a government run organisation.

You're looking at space all wrong. Space
isn't rocket science anymore. Not really.
It's a reality. There's people up there
right now. There's plenty of money to be
made from and in space. Its not all government,
its an industry in many countries; they turn
a profit. There's competition. Russians
versus Americans versus Europeans versus
Chinese versus Japanese.