So, they can just make a mining base on the moon and decelerate and deposit the asteroids in the moon or orbiting the moon for the big ones?, then payloads could just be shot back to Earth with a cannon to land on deserts as meteorites with really low speed so there would be no big crater or things like that, just the payload of metal chunks impacting the ground to be later collected.
Space elevators don’t necessary have to be massive or build like a giant skyscraper, probably the best design is a tether actually. You just need to build it high enough for the centrifugal force from the Earth’s orbit to cancel out the pull of gravity. Now you only need a material strong enough to not tear apart. Could be very practical since you can build two main stations on the tether, one where the centrifugal force is equal to Earths gravity to simulate 0 G, and another at double the centrifugal force to simulate 1 G for more long term human dwelling.
In orbit mining and refining, along with in orbit manufacturing, are all KEY to getting us out into the solar system. Without that, we are stuck here in low earth orbit.
Yeah, I guess the gravitational differential is worth the subpar purity and expertise that “offshoring” manufacturing in space would produce. The downsides would quickly be worked out at the pace technology is moving
What if being "interplanetary" is meaningless? Being "stuck" on Earth is many times better than being "interplanetary" on cold, dead planets where humans need more to live than is worth it.
@@davidsoom1551 Then what is your interest in this topic? Humans, some of us at least, have throughout our history taken on hostile environments to find out what was out there in those wild places. I think we still have a lot of that spark still with us. It might not be YOUR cup of tea, but it's real for many.
12:00 The problem with the space elevator isn't that it would fall down over its own weight... because that's not how they would be engineered to work. You need an anchor, teather, and counter weight and than from there it's tensile strength holding it together with centrifugal force. The problem is we don't have materials strong enough to make it out of that won't snap.
Active support like spraying it with a scaled-up high pressured hose or something like pumping liquids throughout the structure to sustain maximum force on all parts while reclaiming it through the same process. This is explained better in Isaac Arthur’s video about the subject. It is pretty cool 😁.
I'm glad asteroid mining is getting more attention lately. Perfecting this technology is a crucial step in establishing a self sustaining space based economy. It's good that so many recognize here that returning minerals to the earth isn't the real goal here. Asteroid mining should be focused on sourcing water which can be used for both rocket fuel and air. We should be able to obtain such basic resources at a fraction of the cost of the mineral water shown in your video. The delta V needed to travel in micro gravity is relatively insignificant. We can also source building materials from asteroid mining enabling construction of massive space ships and later O'neill cylinders for habitation/manufacturing. It's possible high value precious minerals could be economically returned to earth. Hoping we establish a permanent presence on the moon asap and begin developing new technologies to achieve these goals. Can only hope Sue Origin reverts to Blue Origin pulling off the legal attack dogs delaying moon missions.
Yes and they can take the hydrogen particles ⚛️ from the water 💧and press them into each other and squeze out electricity ⚡⚡⚡ from it with Fusion power ⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡✒️🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paul Birch, a scientist/engineer/author that died in 2012, made space elevators obsolete. The video Orbital Rings over on the YT channel Isaac Arthur explains them in detail, but I'll describe it here. It's basically a ring like structure occupying a leo orbit. It would be attached to the earth using something like kevlar. The reason it stays up, and why you can have a direct connection to the ground is because inside an orbital ring is a tube lined with magnets. A magnetic cable would be hurling down this tube and around the whole planet at faster than orbital speed. This creates centrifigal force that lifts the orbital ring out to the limits of the ground connected cables. These can be built to any inclination or height and would make it possible to even abandon the entire planet if we had too. It would also serve to allow resources to be brought down or lifted away.
Long winded post here: I do believe that a small habitat could and will be built on Mars to house scientific studies, and perhaps some kind of resource station for mining companies and manufacturing companies to work from, that would have likely rotating personnel staying for a few months at at time, and going back and forth from Mars to an orbiting large space habitat that spins and creates its own artificial gravity. This huge space station would likely be at least 1 km in diameter so that it doesn't need to spin too fast to create the gravity humans need. This space station would have been built in space, from space mining and from manufacturing in space the building materials, such as steel structures, beams, trusses etc. The science says this type of gravity would work, but we really need to study an actual built system operating in space close to the earth. I think the chances of success are good in that regard. The hull of the space station could be designed very heavy duty and thick with materials that would stop or limit exposure to radiation from space, and solar flares etc. Water works as that type of shielding but the outer shell of the Space station would have to be very thick, like perhaps several feet thick and filled with water! Maybe other materials might work and not need so much thickness, but definitely way more thickness that is available to have on a Elon's Starship, or any other Space Ship that has to enter a planet's gravity well (such as the earth's, and fly out of it again. I think that we need to start building these large rotating Space Stations as soon as possible. I believe most harvests from space mining will be used in space, and likely never taken down to our planet due to the high cost of bringing it down, and that fact that we have more than enough that we need on earth at this time in this century. Perhaps very rare minerals and metals and such that might assist in something like the future of nuclear fusion might be worth bring down to the planet, where only small quantities are needed to do great things. One of the biggest things with this overall scenario of ideas, is that the building is space and creating large permanent space habitats with gravity etc. will save our dear planet Earth. Every major country and society on planet earth survives from growth of economies. Economies survive from constant growth of manufacturing, building etc.. We are running out of the ability to continue with this growth model of existence on planet earth without destroying it and ourselves. Let us hope that our technology advances enough very soon to outpace our destructive ways of life, and allows these kinds of plans to move forward to take the growth that we will always need into space.
well said, I agree with your way of looking at the future. It's true a great deal of infrastructure will have to be built in space and on the moon, before space mining can get into full swing, which probably will not happen till later in this century.
I don't think that Mars will require a nearby 1G habitation area, but if it does, tethers from the poles of one of Mars' two small moons would probably be the best solution. Converting part of one of those moons into space ships will probably happen anyway, so those tethered communities will be needed. No reason you couldn't have several sections, with one being for people whose work didn't take them outside, and the innermost for people commuting to zero-g. Centrifuges will probably be necessary on the Moon, but not on Mars. Why? People on Mars will tend to use their Earth gravity muscles. (No wasted space on stairs, at least not to go up or down one floor. Figure it out.) On the Moon though, jumping several floors will be likely to result in broken bones, often not those of the jumper. Once someone jumps, people, pets, and other things can move into your planned landing spot. I expect a pole with rings or some other grips will allow people to move up and down without risk--and without exercising their Earth muscles. Also on the Moon, you can take long gliding steps, much less energy than on Earth. Go too fast and need to stop? You had better have a wall to run into. The amount of speed you can lose by shifting your weight had better be restricted to one or two steps.
Benu: You are overlooking the cost of moving steel from the Earth Gravity Well into a space orbiting manufacturing station. That makes the iron on Benu very valuable indeed if you plan to do do interplanetary ship building (for example) in orbit..
@@ne1cup I'm sure there will be some but, I don't think that is the prime objective. To be space faring we much live in space. To live in space we need massive space structures. The way to make these is not by lifting them of terrestrial planets.
They are still, by an impossibly massive margin, the most accessible resources to us in the entire universe. They will never be irrelevant as long as they exist.
Figuring out how to mine and build in space will solidify us as a space faring civilization because you won’t have to depend on earth and can maintain yourself with what’s already in space without having to land and launch from earth.
Economic survival is necessary for a colony so it will have 3 choices 1.. mining 2.. manufacturing 3..agriculture. All of these will support not just one colony but all colonies with trade agreements.
"getting those materials to the surface."... that's completely missing the point. this is an example of "frame of reference thinking". but there is hope, since you do talk about the use of resource from space in space. and there you go; once we can scale in space, then we will have the resources and capability to build things like space elevators. but until then, what's mined in space, stays in space... and that's the key to the whole enchilada. space is the ultimate highground. productive and meaningful tech operations in space means both wealth and power. most likely, hegemony over earths' surface activities.
There may be good strategy that can be derived from the concept of "what's mined in space, stays in space", but to think about space travel and investment without regard to Earth and it's inhabitants is elitist and negligent. We should be looking for investments of space travel to benefit Earth, not to escape it or dominate it.
@@damiangreen299 Why? Looking to Space is the exact opposite of "elitist and negligent". It is looking to secure the future of Humanity as a species. Looking ONLY to benefit Earth and its population ignores the bigger picture, is selfish, and narrow-minded. MrGunderfly brings up a meaningful point about wealth and power, whether I enjoy considering it or not. Do you have a logical reason to believe that the Rich and Powerful of Earth won't (relatively) soon migrate off-Earth into climate-controlled Habitats where they can look down upon "The Masses" and feel superior ... as they already do while living down here with the rest of us??? Do you think that Military Powers would "think about space travel and investment without regard to Earth and it's inhabitants"? They're already thinking about "hegemony over earths' surface activities", as MrGunderfly mentions, and have been for decades! Would you prefer to wait until competing Military Powers establish a winner in the race to dominate Space ... and by doing so dominate the Planet Earth? Or would you put your hope in an independent endeavor to get mankind out of the bottom of this gravity well before some Military presence forbids it? You talk of what we SHOULD be doing, without consideration of what those who seek power WILL DO, whether we like it or not.
@@randyinchesapeake8129 Ok, let's analyze this. First of all, I didn't say: "looking to space is elitist and negligent", I did say: "to think about space travel and investment without regard to Earth and it's inhabitants is elitist and negligent". I concede that my original statement was flawed; it would have been more precise for me to say: "to largely invest Earth's resources in space travel without regard to the effects it has on Earth and it's inhabitants is negligent, and for now at least, also elitist." I agree with you that it would be wise to look to space "to secure the future of Humanity as a species", however, it should be recognized that securing the future of Humanity as a species is really the underlying goal; that does not require us to go to space anytime in the near future. (I would expect that most people would agree that it is also about preserving other life on this planet as well). The point of looking to space as the method of securing our future is merely to help give us options, however, we should only act on those options if they do not jeopardize the underlying goal of preserving life on this planet. That was my initial point. And, as you point out, there are some other reasons people might want to go to space: 1) the wealthy might prefer to inhabit a location where the less wealthy can not venture to, that is the essence of elitist behavior. Is there anything wrong with that? If it is done at the expense of others, then yes. 2) Space tourism may also be ok, if and only if it is not done at the expense of others, and climate change is a real effect we must consider. 3) Militaries may also want to dominate particular locations by means of a presence in space. (Frankly, I am not a fan of the idea of Imperial forces dominating space.) 4) Finding profit in space may also be ok, but again, only if it does not harm or take from others. Anyway, it is clear that you believe that it is inevitable that people are going to find ways into space for less than the most benevolent of means, and I suspect you may be correct in that belief, and that is exactly why we are talking about what we SHOULD be doing about that. We must first recognize what forms of space travel may be beneficial to all, support those that are, and then also find ways to hinder ventures that are exploitative. With respect to your statement: "Looking ONLY to benefit Earth and its population ignores the bigger picture, is selfish, and narrow-minded", I admit I am perplexed. I did not mean to imply that all distant space travel must benefit Earth, rather that immediate, Earth related space travel must not harm Earth. The picture I envision is probably similar to yours, one in which space travel exists, but where minimal harm is done to Earth and its inhabitants. I recognize that the concept of "minimal harm" is subjective and will continually be widely debated, but I believe that is the essence of the discussion we are having and that the video was focused on: a cost vs benefit analysis for going to space. As far as I can see it now, the costs outweigh the benefits for building a colony on Mars, for space tourism, and for all conceived space mining concepts that I have seen as well. That's not to say that won't change in the future though... If we come up with a really good plan, the benefits might outweigh the costs.
Mine in space, use in space. Earth have to big gravity well. On the other hand, mining from asteroids and moons is good idea for quicker human colony growth in other planets and satelites like Mars and Moon.
Realistically that’s the most probable future for space mining. Building a in space infrastructure to take advantage of the resources and build bigger more useful spacecraft etc that couldn’t be built in earth. So many possibilities for just keeping collected resources in space
Just to say, nice video presentation. Some other channels go a tad overboard on the stock video clips (“this would not end well” .. insert video of random person crying. And so on) which i find very distracting. This channel does well at skipping the fluff. Well done. Keep rocking.
Bringing resources and manufactured goods down to earth should be very easy... Drop Pods - Compact heat shield, big parachutes, air bags... Gravity powered... Or Space-planes with heat shields that glide.. Depends if you need a gentle landing or not...
shape the stuff you want to return into something that will simply glide down, it would require a little abrasive material to survive re-entry but returning stuff from space in gliders is the way to go, the space shuttle was essentially a glider after all.
not a glider... rather I think a copter like vehicle that floats down could be an option... once it gets into an atmosphere anyway. Until it gets into an atmosphere, regardless of the shape, it will be a falling burning rock. That is the issue. Once you get into an atmosphere is much easier. Its while its still in space, falling towards earth, that is the problem, that gliding or any another type of tech besides antigravity would be a big issue, especially where you have lots of weight as in metals. You cannot glide outside of an atmosphere.
Space mining is a no brainer for many reasons. With so much excess liquidity, this would spur on a lot of development and would receive trillions in investment within a few decades
Regarding how we extract/collect minerals on an asteroid- a "vacuum machine" will not work in a vacuum!!! We wd need fine mesh sieves/nets. They got it right in The Expanse.
We could seal off the machine and the ground, then pump the probe with air so that it starts the vacuum. Gravity is pretty weak, so pebbles and rocks will just float up exponentially.
Actually space elevators could work in theory, once they get out of the Earth's atmosphere the tip will be in orbit, the centrifical force will be enough to stop it falling over, which means it will not need a missive base. I think kurzgesagt has a video on it
Weight is not the only problem heat radiation cold space it would have to be space worthy 🙌 I to would like to go after asteroids and mine them to build a bigger space colony that mine water and other materials using robots to mine and collect the materials and I'm constantly pursuing ideas because it's an adventure that's different from any other explorer we know what's out there we just need to do it before we won't have a choice because of world politics or some unidentified natural destructive something comes are way
@@Jessiesuain One of the best plans for asteroids is to put one into an orbit that comes close to Earth, then close to Mars. There are some asteroids where a solar-powered ion engine could improve the orbit, but they are useful already. (You probably don't want to come too close to Mars, but it has an elliptical orbit that would require the (ion) engines burning most of the way to Earth, so that it got thrown onto the right next orbit by Earth's gravity. Obviously you want rooms for paying passengers deep inside, a lot of cargo could sit on the surface. Would it save time on going to Mars over the direct transfer orbit? On occasion, but passengers would be exposed to less radiation than on Earth. (If I was planning the colony on Mars, I would put it in coprates chasma or some similar deep location. Much less radiation.)
09tuna, we don't only need to get out of Earth's atmosphere with a space elevator. That would not help anything and it would crash down to the surface immediately. It would need to go out until the geostationary orbit of around 36.000km height or a bit higher than that to permanently stay there. And there you can push a satellite into space by hand ;-) But it would only stay in the orbit of the space elevator upper station. So to be a low earth satellite it would need an engine and some propellant to adjust it's orbit. That's not free of cost, but rather cheap compared to a launch from Earth's surface. But it would be expensive to build the space elevator. The cables would still have to be invented, maybe made of nanotubes. And no one knows if it would snap and crash to the surface if there was a hurricane or if it just gets old. Who pays for the damage on the ground? What about satellites or space junk crashing into the cable and snapping it? While you are going up and are therefore crashing down? That's nothing that anyone would want.
They could send robots to an asteroid to build space ships and stations. Sending raw materials back into the Earth gravity well, and then launching them back out into space as a ship/station seems wasteful.
your first sentence was spot on. And they will but far in the future, will they have manufacturing on choice asteroids. that is a mind boggling thought.
Again, a great video. Thanks! Here's my two cents: As you point out, bringing space ore back to earth would be prohibitively expensive. But we can afford to build orbital factories to build the ships needed to haul the freight and we can build orbital processing plants to turn the space ore into the resources needed to continue expanding. These processing plants and factories could also be mobile. We could send them out to the asteroid sites to do the work until the resources are gone. Hey, does that sound just like what we have done on earth? Of course, out in space there won't be any aboriginals to complain that we are destroying their homes.
The mining is one thing but the refining process is just as polluting once you manage to get the materials back to earth and the burning and natural break down of the end product also usually has it's polluting aspects left in the earth environment.
seems to me that the most valuable thing to mine first would be fuel to make transport much easier. so ice asteroids would be the most valuable to the space mining industry. after that the robotics could collect in order of value.
Shape the mined space resources into ablative heat shields, large and thin. Aim them in intervals at desert locations. Ablative waste material on the front, valuable material on the back. There are all kinds of variations on this theme including wing shaped manned or instrumented structures that could fly from the back side after is slowed to a safe speed. Endless possibilities.
Hollow it out and build a larger version of Raptor engines!! Along with large solar sails!!! Nicknamed Cookie Monster!!! It would have large & small bays for small and large rocks along with a large crew section!!!
5:29 add two Falcon 9 boosters to each Starship. Reduce the size of onboard fuel capacity, increase loading. Recycle each Falcon 9 boosters. Remount them onto the next Starship going up.
Excellent excellent discussion. It seems like everyone is so excited about building ships that go to space, and I think that's great when there is a practical reason to do so, but too often people don't really give it as much thought as was presented in this video. More discussions like this need to be had. I think the next discussion that needs to be had is about the ethics of building a self sustainable colony on mars as Space X is planning. I might argue that it would probably never be self sustainable...
There's no reason it couldn't. It would need industrial and robotic capital, and its growth would be limited by the growth of its artificial biosphere, and it's more vulnerable to cascading systems collapse, but Mars isn't really lacking anything, just the supply chain to get things is different.
@@louishermann7676 I like your optimism, but in order for a colony on Mars to be self sustainable (a true backup planet for humans), it would need to be able to thrive and grow on it's own with no space flights between Earth and Mars bringing it fresh supplies. So lets think for a minute about what it would take to get it to that point. A self sustaining colony would need to be able to not only grow food for it's inhabitants, but would also need to have the ability to perform maintenance on it's structures and robots by mining, manufacturing, and replicating absolutely everything on the planet that keeps things operational. That means it would require many of the same sorts of advanced factories that we have here on Earth such as microchip manufacturing facilities, pharmaceutical facilities, transportation manufacturing facilities, construction hardware and materials manufacturing factories, machine shops, etc... It would require an unfathomable amount of investment of Earth's own resources and expense to achieve that. However, I'll concede that IF mining on Mars could be done profitably enough, and environmentally friendly enough, to support continuous transport missions that not only brings materials back to Earth, but also helps to bring supplies to Mars to build some of these more advanced factories, then that might make sense. But to build such an expensive colony on Mars without having a method of providing any net resources back to Earth does not make sense. In summary, Mars needs to be able to provide Earth with something of nearly equal value to the investments from Earth necessary to establish a colony there. To this day I have not seen or heard any evidence that there is any realistic way of mining or manufacturing anything of significant value on Mars to the benefit of Earth and so building a colony there does not make sense at this time. If I am wrong about that, I would certainly like to know what that source of value would be. Special note; it is commonly argued that value to Earth would come in the form of technological advancements learned from building a colony on Mars, however other technological advancements that benefit Earth will still be made on or near Earth for very different reasons, so any claims that technological advancements from building a colony on Mars would provide any significant value to Earth without having a clear idea of what those advancements may be, can not be legitimized as an argument for building a colony on Mars. Mining, or terraforming and harvesting, are about the only things I can think of that might offer real significant value, but I just don't think we've developed good enough plans for either of those yet.
@@damiangreen299 As someone with an antique Sci-Fi book collection reaching back to the 1930s, the most logical progression I recall had Earth being supplied with large amounts of food grown in huge caverns on the Moon and launched to Earth magnetically in floating containers which were towed to port after splashdown. (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress / Robert A Heinlein) The economical viability of a Martian colony doesn't really come into play until you need to resupply a Lunar colony, which can be done more economically from a Martian colony; even though it is further away, due to the lesser gravity and the potentials which that implies. The Moon is conveniently close, but lacks resources found on the Planets. And its very low gravity is both a blessing and a curse, depending on what you're trying to accomplish Building a Space Elevator on Mars is a far more technologically feasible project than building one on Earth, which could lead to Mars becoming a primary trading hub in a Solar Civilization. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy; "Red Mars", "Green Mars", and "Blue Mars", is an excellent read about a fictional colonization and terraforming of Mars ... beginning with 100 colonists landing in 2026. That's not too far off from what Musk has in mind, so it doesn't propose technology of the far future that doesn't yet exist. In fact ... I've just decided to read it again! Meanwhile; I haven't properly considered which would make more sense to do first. A Martian colony, a Lunar Colony, or an orbiting Space Habitat. But to do none of them is foolish.
You really should have a look at Isaac Arthur's megastructures series, especially on the subject of space elevators. They are actually held up by having the middle of the cable in geosynchrounous orbit, so they have a very small ground footprint. The biggest issue is actually atmospheric turbulence, and the tensile strenght of the material that pretty much requires carbon nanotubes to work on earth. However, steel would be good enough to build one on the moon.
Having something become more common makes it less valuable but our uses for it increases dramatically. If titanium became dirt cheap, we would all be driving around in titanium cars.
My idea: create a canal from the Mediterranean to fill up the qattara depression in the Sahara desert, to make a lake, turn crash land asteroid chunks into there to mine. The lake will prevent dust from shooting everywhere and the resulting tsunami will not harm anyone. The minerals can then be loaded up from ships accessed by the canal.
You've proven me wrong, thinking asteroids would be beneficial to get right now, which they are. You have shown me exactly how hard it really is to attempt asteroid mining
Around 11:50 you spoke of a space elevator. If any viable elevator is ever built, it will not be "standing", it will be "hanging" from a center of mass at or above geosynchronous orbit. This means it would be anchored to the ground, not resting on it like a conventional building. There has been much speculation and probably a few serious designs (none of which this layperson has seen) that would accommodate solutions to all of the challenges associated with such a large structure, even were is possible to actually build with existing materials what amounts to such a long cable.
The only way it will get cheap enough and that is if robotic and artificial intelligence greatly improves. It only costs a lot because you have to send humans and expend a lot of energy just keeping them alive.
Maybe 3, 4 hundred years from now there will be more humans living permanently in space than on earth. Lets face it planets are not a safe place, oh, sure on a nice day, yes it's beautiful. But those condition can be replicated in space. And you won't have to worry about forest fires, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning, volcanoes, earthquakes or landslides.
I am a Skeptic when it comes to building a successful colony on Mars with a population over 100 people who will be able to live there permanently and not have to leave after spending a couple of years there. There are just way too many problems to overcome.
Mold the metals, silica and water ice into giant V-wings, using aerodynamic properties to negotiate safe, profitable and productive recovery. Use the earths deserts such as Egypt's too recover the formerly distant mining substances.
We don’t bring resources to the surface of earth. We begin building our own habitats that exist in space. Makes the most sense for our transition to space faring.
one proposal for recovering platinum group metals from space was to use concentrated solar to ablate off waste materials. A husk of platinum-group metals would remain and could be reformed into a low-density metal foam. This metal foam might be shaped as a 1m diameter sphere massing only 200kg or so. Thanks to the high melting point of platinum group metals, these low density balls would be able to survive atmospheric entry. They would be deorbited over some sparse landmass (probably the Mojave desert) where they could then be collected by ground teams. Even without onboard guidance systems, they could be deorbited precisely enough to land within 1km^2 and easily tracked using ground or airbourne radar.
2:03 nop, actually some came from volcanic eruptions too, and iron deposits were actually living being in the past that died due to oxygen poisoning, the iron in the oceans oxidized and deposited at the bottom.
Man-ual labor & building of supply, is a traditional bureaucracy, however, AI servant and surrogate robotics, would undermind that tradition, yet exponentially reduce the cost, at unbelievable savings to reach the trillion+ earning performing these task, the phobia is whats holding back the service.
I believe space mining will be a necessary part of space exploration in the future. It's likely more practical to mine for resources to be used in space for space. I also believe in the possibility of having a space material processing station in synchronous orbit with earth which can use an elevator to transport materials to and from earth. The idea of a carbon fiber elevator is decades old. Trying to land a large, fully loaded with dense material, ship on earth would be costly beyond comprehension.
For the record, I am a huge Space X fan and I have big hopes for Elon Musk and his goals. He is and likely will continue to be a big player in the Space Race. I just don't think big cities will be developed on Mars in our life times if ever. Science will continue and expand on Mars, but it will be mainly a learning process for humans.
Unfortunately that just won't work. Obviously, you can keep sending probes to Mars and do science that way, but once you decide to send even ONE human there, you will need to send hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of people there. Mars just is too far away for something like a Antarctic Base with just a handful of scientists to be even feasible. Therefore, SpaceX' plans are designed to make ANY kind of habitation on Mars possible as even the smallest step will automatically mean it has to be a HUGE step.
@@Junyo You may be right Edward. My thoughts about having hundreds or perhaps 1 or 2 thousand people there are that they would generally be there for business such as mining or some kind of support service for that industry. They would also be there for Scientific studies. They would likely have to rotate crews every 3 months or so due to the lack of technology to enable humans to stay on Mars for extended time beyond just a few months. That kind of technology and implementation on Mars wont likely be around for centuries. Forget about genetic engineering enabling humans to withstand that vast change in gravity. Forget about mega structures on Mars allowing artificial gravity and protection from radiation. Forget about using the poisonous regolith being cleaned on a scale that would support hundreds of thousands of people or millions. Forget about many of the ideas to support humans on a large scale city plan for centuries.
On returning stuff to earth; at first it doesn't have to be a lot, you can get quite a bit of money for selling space-diamonds, probably enough to outweigh the price of relatively small parcels You can do a Space-x reverse thrust landing that just makes the stuff stay together as much as possible while not worrying about keeping the rocket functional; you let the rocket crash, let the ground be the primary slowing mechanism, but you slow it down as best you can. The landing zone will probably be in a desert...
I think you may need to build spaceships at the asteroids to avoid the huge costs of gravity and fuel, but maybe send a shipload of gold or platinum once in a while to help pay the bills. If we take practical steps, I don't think it is necessary to deliver any raw materials back to earth. 1) learn how to grow enough food to live continuously in space 2) learn skills to build in space from scratch (start initially with raw materials sent from Earth) 3) Extract resources from where they are most economical and practical 4) Build near the extracted resources 5) Become Self-sufficient in space
There is no way for us to easily re-enter thousands and thousands of tonnes of materials that might only be worth $10/lbs. It's quite possible that a) the materials have to be refined very pure in space before returning, b) only gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium, He-3, ruthenium, etc. might be profitable to return to earth surface during our lifetimes and c) cheaper elements from the asteroids like nickel might only make sense if used in space industry and most of the end products being used in space and only very highly refined and finished end-products worth a lot more than $10/lbs being returned to earth. If you found heaps of 24k gold bars on the lunar surface, I doubt that it would be profitable returning them on the Lunar Starship at least not until the numbers of Starships goes up significantly. The Starship might be able to return some tonnes of payload back from the moon's surface and a metric tonne of gold is only worth $56M. A program costing billions and billions of dollars cannot be easily paid back by a few flights each returning even $250M worth of gold. The gravity well of Earth is a huge problem for space mining and space industry.
I don't recall who I initially heard the idea from, but the cheap way to to it (for solid metals at least) is to process the material into very porous nodules with low mass and high surface area. Assuming you could either shoot them from the moon via a mass driver, or drop from orbit of Earth without them totally vaporizing, the next issue is a solvable one, which is targeting and recollection on the surface. I think the most plausible method of doing so would involve several hundred or thousand square miles of unpopulated, equatorial land with no vegetation. The nodules would only be dropped periodically in huge quantities to ensure airspace is kept clear of planes/spacecraft/satellites. After dropping, some kind of combine could sift through the sands and pickup the nodules. The Achilles heel of all this however, is the potential to create a absurd amounts of space junk if improperly targeted. It might require transporting the nodules within a coherent vehicle to orbit and THEN directionally jettisoning them. They would be dissipated by the atmosphere, but not by more than a 50 mile diameter, one would imagine.
@@michaelvanbogaert7888 Not only space junk but a space weapon. Deorbiting thousands of tonnes can already be problematic in the case of technical faults but a lunar mass driver would easily be dual use technology.
good show. .i also love spacex too. we went to Boca Chica from California to see the starship getting built. i went ahead & bought the S dual motor long range till my tri motor fsd cyber truck get here. i have lost of solar & backup battery system to charge them both at home
I've always thought that quantum entanglement would be the best way to mine in space. We have made it work before, so if we could scale it up to take the atoms from the asteroid and send them to Earth to be reconfigured we wouldn't need to be shipping back and forth. What do you think?
Can you point me to some material on the practical use (particularly successful experiments!) of quantum entanglement? Genuine request, not a passive aggressive insult.
@Personality Malfunction "In a 1935 paper, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen examined how strongly correlated quantum states would interact with each other. They found that when two particles are strongly correlated, they lose their individual quantum states and instead share a single, unified state." And "In three independent experiments in 2013 it was shown that classically communicated separable quantum states can be used to carry entangled states. The first loophole-free Bell test was held in TU Delft in 2015 confirming the violation of Bell inequality."
@Personality Malfunction all I know is if they did it ten years ago, they are only understanding it more as time progresses forward. I think this will be the key. Imagine if we can beam shit from an asteroid back to Earth 🤷♂️ I mean 100 years ago landing on the moon was a ridiculous notion, I think we can do this 😄
The simplest solution to Space Mining.... ....What you mine in space, you use and/or keep in space. Do not try to bring it back to the surface of Earth. Set up ore processing on the asteroid or on Mars. Use that ore to build habitat, more spaceships, and use the precious metals of gold, silver, platinum as currency. However, Gold makes an excellent shielding, from cosmic rays, for electronics, platinum and silver make excellent electrical conductors (better than copper). Cobalt, mixed with aluminum, is a very strong but light construction metal. Mix Cobalt with Iron, and you have a metal so heavy and strong, Mars is the only place humans can work with it.
at around 13:00 you say that it would be more cost effective to mine water in space than to haul it up from Earth. Very true! Any resources that you must have in space are likely to be cheaper to gather from "small" rocks already "in space" than to drag up from deep in a planets gravity well. All this assuming that a feasible technology to collect and purify asteroid/comet water is developed. Please note, however, that though the cost you gave per pound to take water into orbit and beyond might be fairly accurate at the present time, if SpaceX's new rocket fulfills its promise, the cost* will be closer to $1000 per pound than $43,000. *- note that the cost to SpaceX will be that small, the price of hiring SpaceX to haul it could still be "astronomical" -- depends on the market.
We would want to use most of it for manufacturing in space. First to build the space manufacturing infrastructure, then to manufacture space habitats, ships, etc.
I think we have got to start thinking of this mining in space before we all destroy this planet . This is a great topic and i am glad you made this video. Nasa should really starting thinking of this.
On the subject of water if you refer to available information regarding the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud it will become apparent that water is one of the most abundant substances present in space in our solar system. While the two former locations are currently virtually unattainable relevant obstacles will probably not persist for very long if we focus on developing and establishing habitation in space and performing research relevant to improving survival and travel there.
Hundreds or thousands of small AI drones go out into the asteroid belts and find specific asteroids that seem to have the correct material properties for mining. Then once they find one within the correct size parameters, they push it and then pull it with a specific force just to move it ever so slightly. This gives the AI the specific gravity or mass of the asteroid. The AI then calculates exactly what force in what direction will send the asteroid on a clear path to Earth so that it enters the atmosphere and partially burns up landing in a specific part of the desert or ocean where it can be retrieved. The drone could send a signal to Earth stating exactly the time it would land in the designated area. Once the drone reached it's life expectancy it would use it's last bit of propellant to settle into an asteroid to be out of the way for other drones. It's actually a pretty simple system. And once it starts happening regularly the mass leaving Earth to go into space will off set and balance out the materials coming down to Earth.
1. We do not need to bring all the resources back to earth. We already got plenty of resources here. Most manufacturing will be done in space or in the bases on moon / mars. 2. If you want to get materials to earth, just form a big solid block of them and drop them on earth. Use some rockets to slow them down just enough not to burn during reentry and create some nice impact craters in the desert, from where you can recover the block of material.
12:00 It neither requires foundation the size of Mexico nor would it fall over if it was relying on predominantly tensile strength as such an elevator is closer to a tether than a tower. The very asteroid in question could be parked in geostationary orbit and then lower cables into the atmosphere as foundation for building up the space elevator that will funnel segments of it down to Earth as it is methodically broken down by solar powered drones, using pressurized water + sand to tactically bore tunnels. Digging them out for the sake of fragmenting the whole thing into appropriate blocks for transport down the tether system.
Space trucking ! I'm all in ! The only way I can see we can get the mined ressource on earth is to do all the refining and manufacturing up there and you ship a full product down to earth. Eventually, most people will move in space close to their work, this will free space on earth and we will learn how to colonize a whole solar system. But Mars is the first step, living/mining in space will come after once the starship legacy come of ages with new ships, engines, techs, etc. etc.
A space station with a tether could work. Using the orbit of the station would keep a cable tight tied to Earth. If you find a mecheane to travel up and down
Capture, stabilizing, and orbital manipulation will not only allow earth new precious metals to build clean energy systems, but it’s good practice to stop potential asteroid impacts.
Asteroid mining/manufacturing is generally more appropriate for things that stay in space - like e.g. O'Neil cylinders / space stations; or items used to colonize/explore other planets/moons
The elevator isn’t a bad idea, it’s plausible. But it requires some advances in material science. It is also anchored in orbit, therefore the burden isn’t wholly on the earth. Falling is not likely.
Space elevators from my understanding stand up not because they have deep foundations but because of centrifugal force of the earths spin, they are more tethered by cable to the earth to stop them floating off. I think they are also proposed to be located around the Lagrange point between earth and the moon. Where the forces cancel each other out. That is a layman’s understanding, I am sure there are many mistakes in that simple analogy. Thanks for a great video, lots of interesting facts that I didn’t know.
Please do a video on Processing these materials in space. What will it take to turn that iron ore into the billions of tons of steel needed to make space colony habitats?
To land the starship with the 100t load, you coul refuel it in orbit and do a short deorbit burn, then reverse land it, possibly using all 3 sealevel raptors or even have a specific version with 6 sealevel raptors.
To get material from orbit to earth is not that hard. No monster parachute needed. You can make big bags that can carry around 5 tons from fire-resistant material. The same fabric used for the shields. Add a parachute system to it, and you can just let it free fall into some desert. 20 x 5 tonnes is also 100 tons, but the parachute does not need to be that big. For ore you might even consider slowing the speed down to just 50 or 100 km per hour. It is metal that can not be damaged. Higher speed is a way smaller chute.
Space mining is a very viable business. Olympus Mons is the best place to begin mining. Advanced technology will play the biggest part in space mining. So what are we waiting for, let's get on with it.
This is a great video, and I think you bring up an important point. Billionaires and billion dollar corporations will attempt to create artificial scarcity when they access the big asteroids like Psyche. Just like the Debeers do with diamonds. If they just let those resources flood in, they will be pricing themselves out of operation. It is going to be very, very interesting on an economic level. Will we allow space monopolies to flood the market with resources and, in effect, devalue the industries they're doing business in should they choose to? Once Mars has infrastructure sufficient to self-sustain; will the Martian colonists just fly over to the nearest asteroid belt and start mining, or will they have to pay some "tax" to "the people's Solar System"? :) Interesting time to be alive.
We might not have many options to work within our current standard model of economics, but I believe when we crack Nuclear or Cold fusion the abundance of energy produced will enable us to construct space vehicles in orbit, or on the moon.
Space mining is one of those interesting spaces where it only makes sense if you have a space economy but since it is the basis of the space economy it's a little bit chicken and egg. It's one of the few places where I agree with Bezos's approach to wanting to build Dyson spheres (or whatever works) to move industry to space. I don't think you mentioned it but ULA (I think) offered a price for space water or O2 if delivered from a space source.
More common materials, like iron, nickel, water, that sort of thing should be mined for operations in space (like building big habitats.) There's no way it would be more cost effective to bring them to Earth than to obtain them on Earth. If space settlements are to start growing and becoming self-sufficient, that's when space mining could be more cost-effective than launching from Earth. Maybe platinum-group metals could be worth the trouble of bringing home
To mine in space is more for building things in space like Gateway Spaceport Co's GatewayStation etc Moon and Mars Colonies! But ultimately we need too so space-elevator(s) & drop stuff down in Orion style capsule(s) and the capsules can be carried back up on a starship etc; to repeat the process.
Let's just start with the 2 moons around mars, they would be the most important if mars would be colonized and we would learn alot from them so future projects would be easyer.
Asteroid mining should start out looking for rare earth materials. Advanced semiconductors, superconductors, batteries, and magnets are all dependant on these materials, that are all as so named "rare" on earth, and are considered of critical strategic importance. Enough to gain government interest in obtaining a supply of those resources. Concentrating the materials found will be a key requirement. Where more than 50% of the desired material is what is returned with secondary materials (not tons of tailings).
Also, we can do space mining .. on the moon, it's safe it's millions of kilometers away and we can work out a safe way using a rail gun to drive the refined materials to leo from where we can pick them up with a starship
I think we need fusion energy first, then we can build fusion powered engines, which fixes the fueling problem and also allows for lots of thrust. I heard a fusion engine could half the time it takes to get to mars.
Neat vid. I can see asteroid mining in the reasonable future. I doubt there will be a business case to bring the material to Earth but it depends.......
Use the moon. It's uninhabited. bring all the asteroids to the moon and just drop them there for processing and storage. Then launch the processed version back into orbit and send it down to earth in a ship safely. The other option was to just drop it on earth in a safe uninhabited area. without using a ship. You can get a large amount down to the surface fast and cheap that way. But many would object to that.
Would drilling a hole and injecting an expanding compound or just water be enough to break up asteroids surface matirals. Still, the metals you could melt on the spot and extract with a liquid metal vacuum and containment vessel. water would be less messy but I'm sure better pressures could be made with compounds (see great stuff chemical tech) perhaps if you could use an inflatable in a borehole and use a gas to expand and brake it up.
We like the idea of saving the Earth
So, they can just make a mining base on the moon and decelerate and deposit the asteroids in the moon or orbiting the moon for the big ones?, then payloads could just be shot back to Earth with a cannon to land on deserts as meteorites with really low speed so there would be no big crater or things like that, just the payload of metal chunks impacting the ground to be later collected.
Space elevators don’t necessary have to be massive or build like a giant skyscraper, probably the best design is a tether actually. You just need to build it high enough for the centrifugal force from the Earth’s orbit to cancel out the pull of gravity. Now you only need a material strong enough to not tear apart. Could be very practical since you can build two main stations on the tether, one where the centrifugal force is equal to Earths gravity to simulate 0 G, and another at double the centrifugal force to simulate 1 G for more long term human dwelling.
Same
I like Giant Robots 🤖
We don't we just should live in space near earth's orbit and take in minerals
In orbit mining and refining, along with in orbit manufacturing, are all KEY to getting us out into the solar system. Without that, we are stuck here in low earth orbit.
Yeah, I guess the gravitational differential is worth the subpar purity and expertise that “offshoring” manufacturing in space would produce. The downsides would quickly be worked out at the pace technology is moving
@@scienceisall2632 It will have to be worked out. The infrastructure will have to be built, and it will.
What if being "interplanetary" is meaningless? Being "stuck" on Earth is many times better than being "interplanetary" on cold, dead planets where humans need more to live than is worth it.
@@davidsoom1551 Then what is your interest in this topic? Humans, some of us at least, have throughout our history taken on hostile environments to find out what was out there in those wild places. I think we still have a lot of that spark still with us. It might not be YOUR cup of tea, but it's real for many.
Yeah, if you build a fully fueled Spaceship, its range would multiply its Capability by a lot
Because you don’t need to escape its major Gravity
12:00 The problem with the space elevator isn't that it would fall down over its own weight... because that's not how they would be engineered to work. You need an anchor, teather, and counter weight and than from there it's tensile strength holding it together with centrifugal force. The problem is we don't have materials strong enough to make it out of that won't snap.
Backminsterfullerine...nano carbon tubes..
Just watched Foundation on Apple TV and the space elevator fell and killed 100 million ppl 🤷🏽♂️ seems like a bad idea
Active support like spraying it with a scaled-up high pressured hose or something like pumping liquids throughout the structure to sustain maximum force on all parts while reclaiming it through the same process. This is explained better in Isaac Arthur’s video about the subject. It is pretty cool 😁.
Japanese have been working on mass production of those nano fillaments to start their 2025 Space elevator project.
*then from there, not "than from there."
I'm glad asteroid mining is getting more attention lately. Perfecting this technology is a crucial step in establishing a self sustaining space based economy. It's good that so many recognize here that returning minerals to the earth isn't the real goal here. Asteroid mining should be focused on sourcing water which can be used for both rocket fuel and air. We should be able to obtain such basic resources at a fraction of the cost of the mineral water shown in your video. The delta V needed to travel in micro gravity is relatively insignificant. We can also source building materials from asteroid mining enabling construction of massive space ships and later O'neill cylinders for habitation/manufacturing. It's possible high value precious minerals could be economically returned to earth. Hoping we establish a permanent presence on the moon asap and begin developing new technologies to achieve these goals. Can only hope Sue Origin reverts to Blue Origin pulling off the legal attack dogs delaying moon missions.
Yeah it would really be beneficial and necessary for us 🙂
Yes and they can take the hydrogen particles ⚛️ from the water 💧and press them into each other and squeze out electricity ⚡⚡⚡ from it with Fusion power ⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡✒️🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paul Birch, a scientist/engineer/author that died in 2012, made space elevators obsolete. The video Orbital Rings over on the YT channel Isaac Arthur explains them in detail, but I'll describe it here. It's basically a ring like structure occupying a leo orbit. It would be attached to the earth using something like kevlar. The reason it stays up, and why you can have a direct connection to the ground is because inside an orbital ring is a tube lined with magnets. A magnetic cable would be hurling down this tube and around the whole planet at faster than orbital speed. This creates centrifigal force that lifts the orbital ring out to the limits of the ground connected cables.
These can be built to any inclination or height and would make it possible to even abandon the entire planet if we had too. It would also serve to allow resources to be brought down or lifted away.
Long winded post here: I do believe that a small habitat could and will be built on Mars to house scientific studies, and perhaps some kind of resource station for mining companies and manufacturing companies to work from, that would have likely rotating personnel staying for a few months at at time, and going back and forth from Mars to an orbiting large space habitat that spins and creates its own artificial gravity. This huge space station would likely be at least 1 km in diameter so that it doesn't need to spin too fast to create the gravity humans need. This space station would have been built in space, from space mining and from manufacturing in space the building materials, such as steel structures, beams, trusses etc. The science says this type of gravity would work, but we really need to study an actual built system operating in space close to the earth. I think the chances of success are good in that regard. The hull of the space station could be designed very heavy duty and thick with materials that would stop or limit exposure to radiation from space, and solar flares etc. Water works as that type of shielding but the outer shell of the Space station would have to be very thick, like perhaps several feet thick and filled with water! Maybe other materials might work and not need so much thickness, but definitely way more thickness that is available to have on a Elon's Starship, or any other Space Ship that has to enter a planet's gravity well (such as the earth's, and fly out of it again. I think that we need to start building these large rotating Space Stations as soon as possible. I believe most harvests from space mining will be used in space, and likely never taken down to our planet due to the high cost of bringing it down, and that fact that we have more than enough that we need on earth at this time in this century. Perhaps very rare minerals and metals and such that might assist in something like the future of nuclear fusion might be worth bring down to the planet, where only small quantities are needed to do great things. One of the biggest things with this overall scenario of ideas, is that the building is space and creating large permanent space habitats with gravity etc. will save our dear planet Earth. Every major country and society on planet earth survives from growth of economies. Economies survive from constant growth of manufacturing, building etc.. We are running out of the ability to continue with this growth model of existence on planet earth without destroying it and ourselves. Let us hope that our technology advances enough very soon to outpace our destructive ways of life, and allows these kinds of plans to move forward to take the growth that we will always need into space.
well said, I agree with your way of looking at the future. It's true a great deal of infrastructure will have to be built in space and on the moon, before space mining can get into full swing, which probably will not happen till later in this century.
Paragraphs are a thing you know.
I don't think that Mars will require a nearby 1G habitation area, but if it does, tethers from the poles of one of Mars' two small moons would probably be the best solution. Converting part of one of those moons into space ships will probably happen anyway, so those tethered communities will be needed. No reason you couldn't have several sections, with one being for people whose work didn't take them outside, and the innermost for people commuting to zero-g. Centrifuges will probably be necessary on the Moon, but not on Mars. Why? People on Mars will tend to use their Earth gravity muscles. (No wasted space on stairs, at least not to go up or down one floor. Figure it out.) On the Moon though, jumping several floors will be likely to result in broken bones, often not those of the jumper. Once someone jumps, people, pets, and other things can move into your planned landing spot. I expect a pole with rings or some other grips will allow people to move up and down without risk--and without exercising their Earth muscles. Also on the Moon, you can take long gliding steps, much less energy than on Earth. Go too fast and need to stop? You had better have a wall to run into. The amount of speed you can lose by shifting your weight had better be restricted to one or two steps.
Benu:
You are overlooking the cost of moving steel from the Earth Gravity Well into a space orbiting manufacturing station. That makes the iron on Benu very valuable indeed if you plan to do do interplanetary ship building (for example) in orbit..
Again, I think dropping things back into earth is less necessary. Once we are genuinely space faring, earth based resources become irrelevant.
the rarest of minerals and metals may be worth sending to the earth
@@ne1cup I'm sure there will be some but, I don't think that is the prime objective. To be space faring we much live in space. To live in space we need massive space structures. The way to make these is not by lifting them of terrestrial planets.
They are still, by an impossibly massive margin, the most accessible resources to us in the entire universe. They will never be irrelevant as long as they exist.
Figuring out how to mine and build in space will solidify us as a space faring civilization because you won’t have to depend on earth and can maintain yourself with what’s already in space without having to land and launch from earth.
Exactly.
Economic survival is necessary for a colony so it will have 3 choices 1.. mining 2.. manufacturing 3..agriculture. All of these will support not just one colony but all colonies with trade agreements.
"getting those materials to the surface."... that's completely missing the point. this is an example of "frame of reference thinking". but there is hope, since you do talk about the use of resource from space in space. and there you go; once we can scale in space, then we will have the resources and capability to build things like space elevators. but until then, what's mined in space, stays in space... and that's the key to the whole enchilada. space is the ultimate highground. productive and meaningful tech operations in space means both wealth and power. most likely, hegemony over earths' surface activities.
There may be good strategy that can be derived from the concept of "what's mined in space, stays in space", but to think about space travel and investment without regard to Earth and it's inhabitants is elitist and negligent. We should be looking for investments of space travel to benefit Earth, not to escape it or dominate it.
@@damiangreen299 Why? Looking to Space is the exact opposite of "elitist and negligent". It is looking to secure the future of Humanity as a species. Looking ONLY to benefit Earth and its population ignores the bigger picture, is selfish, and narrow-minded.
MrGunderfly brings up a meaningful point about wealth and power, whether I enjoy considering it or not. Do you have a logical reason to believe that the Rich and Powerful of Earth won't (relatively) soon migrate off-Earth into climate-controlled Habitats where they can look down upon "The Masses" and feel superior ... as they already do while living down here with the rest of us???
Do you think that Military Powers would "think about space travel and investment without regard to Earth and it's inhabitants"? They're already thinking about "hegemony over earths' surface activities", as MrGunderfly mentions, and have been for decades!
Would you prefer to wait until competing Military Powers establish a winner in the race to dominate Space ... and by doing so dominate the Planet Earth? Or would you put your hope in an independent endeavor to get mankind out of the bottom of this gravity well before some Military presence forbids it?
You talk of what we SHOULD be doing, without consideration of what those who seek power WILL DO, whether we like it or not.
That’s a good point. Maybe industries which require rare materials like semi conductors and batteries can be made in space and then sent to earth.
@@randyinchesapeake8129 Ok, let's analyze this. First of all, I didn't say: "looking to space is elitist and negligent", I did say: "to think about space travel and investment without regard to Earth and it's inhabitants is elitist and negligent". I concede that my original statement was flawed; it would have been more precise for me to say: "to largely invest Earth's resources in space travel without regard to the effects it has on Earth and it's inhabitants is negligent, and for now at least, also elitist."
I agree with you that it would be wise to look to space "to secure the future of Humanity as a species", however, it should be recognized that securing the future of Humanity as a species is really the underlying goal; that does not require us to go to space anytime in the near future. (I would expect that most people would agree that it is also about preserving other life on this planet as well). The point of looking to space as the method of securing our future is merely to help give us options, however, we should only act on those options if they do not jeopardize the underlying goal of preserving life on this planet. That was my initial point.
And, as you point out, there are some other reasons people might want to go to space: 1) the wealthy might prefer to inhabit a location where the less wealthy can not venture to, that is the essence of elitist behavior. Is there anything wrong with that? If it is done at the expense of others, then yes. 2) Space tourism may also be ok, if and only if it is not done at the expense of others, and climate change is a real effect we must consider. 3) Militaries may also want to dominate particular locations by means of a presence in space. (Frankly, I am not a fan of the idea of Imperial forces dominating space.) 4) Finding profit in space may also be ok, but again, only if it does not harm or take from others.
Anyway, it is clear that you believe that it is inevitable that people are going to find ways into space for less than the most benevolent of means, and I suspect you may be correct in that belief, and that is exactly why we are talking about what we SHOULD be doing about that. We must first recognize what forms of space travel may be beneficial to all, support those that are, and then also find ways to hinder ventures that are exploitative.
With respect to your statement: "Looking ONLY to benefit Earth and its population ignores the bigger picture, is selfish, and narrow-minded", I admit I am perplexed. I did not mean to imply that all distant space travel must benefit Earth, rather that immediate, Earth related space travel must not harm Earth. The picture I envision is probably similar to yours, one in which space travel exists, but where minimal harm is done to Earth and its inhabitants. I recognize that the concept of "minimal harm" is subjective and will continually be widely debated, but I believe that is the essence of the discussion we are having and that the video was focused on: a cost vs benefit analysis for going to space.
As far as I can see it now, the costs outweigh the benefits for building a colony on Mars, for space tourism, and for all conceived space mining concepts that I have seen as well. That's not to say that won't change in the future though... If we come up with a really good plan, the benefits might outweigh the costs.
Mine in space, use in space. Earth have to big gravity well. On the other hand, mining from asteroids and moons is good idea for quicker human colony growth in other planets and satelites like Mars and Moon.
Realistically that’s the most probable future for space mining. Building a in space infrastructure to take advantage of the resources and build bigger more useful spacecraft etc that couldn’t be built in earth. So many possibilities for just keeping collected resources in space
Just to say, nice video presentation. Some other channels go a tad overboard on the stock video clips (“this would not end well” .. insert video of random person crying. And so on) which i find very distracting. This channel does well at skipping the fluff. Well done. Keep rocking.
Bringing resources and manufactured goods down to earth should be very easy...
Drop Pods - Compact heat shield, big parachutes, air bags...
Gravity powered...
Or Space-planes with heat shields that glide..
Depends if you need a gentle landing or not...
Only the rarest, most valuable elements will be brought to earth
@@richardmcclung6710 Yep, most of it is needed up there...
Zero-G made goods would come down too.. :)
Though nuclear powered engines will really be a big help!! So come on Space X
shape the stuff you want to return into something that will simply glide down, it would require a little abrasive material to survive re-entry but returning stuff from space in gliders is the way to go, the space shuttle was essentially a glider after all.
not a glider... rather I think a copter like vehicle that floats down could be an option... once it gets into an atmosphere anyway. Until it gets into an atmosphere, regardless of the shape, it will be a falling burning rock. That is the issue. Once you get into an atmosphere is much easier. Its while its still in space, falling towards earth, that is the problem, that gliding or any another type of tech besides antigravity would be a big issue, especially where you have lots of weight as in metals. You cannot glide outside of an atmosphere.
Space mining is a no brainer for many reasons. With so much excess liquidity, this would spur on a lot of development and would receive trillions in investment within a few decades
Regarding how we extract/collect minerals on an asteroid- a "vacuum machine" will not work in a vacuum!!!
We wd need fine mesh sieves/nets.
They got it right in The Expanse.
or electro magnets, it being mostly iron and nickel...
We could seal off the machine and the ground, then pump the probe with air so that it starts the vacuum. Gravity is pretty weak, so pebbles and rocks will just float up exponentially.
Actually you can own astroids according to the logic real world law which is: "if you hold it you own it"
Actually space elevators could work in theory, once they get out of the Earth's atmosphere the tip will be in orbit, the centrifical force will be enough to stop it falling over, which means it will not need a missive base. I think kurzgesagt has a video on it
There's no known material that won't break under its own weight at the distances required for an Earth space elevator
@@louishermann7676 ik, we're getting close tho, I don't think that will be the limiting factor
Weight is not the only problem heat radiation cold space it would have to be space worthy 🙌 I to would like to go after asteroids and mine them to build a bigger space colony that mine water and other materials using robots to mine and collect the materials and I'm constantly pursuing ideas because it's an adventure that's different from any other explorer we know what's out there we just need to do it before we won't have a choice because of world politics or some unidentified natural destructive something comes are way
@@Jessiesuain One of the best plans for asteroids is to put one into an orbit that comes close to Earth, then close to Mars. There are some asteroids where a solar-powered ion engine could improve the orbit, but they are useful already. (You probably don't want to come too close to Mars, but it has an elliptical orbit that would require the (ion) engines burning most of the way to Earth, so that it got thrown onto the right next orbit by Earth's gravity. Obviously you want rooms for paying passengers deep inside, a lot of cargo could sit on the surface.
Would it save time on going to Mars over the direct transfer orbit? On occasion, but passengers would be exposed to less radiation than on Earth. (If I was planning the colony on Mars, I would put it in coprates chasma or some similar deep location. Much less radiation.)
09tuna, we don't only need to get out of Earth's atmosphere with a space elevator. That would not help anything and it would crash down to the surface immediately.
It would need to go out until the geostationary orbit of around 36.000km height or a bit higher than that to permanently stay there. And there you can push a satellite into space by hand ;-) But it would only stay in the orbit of the space elevator upper station. So to be a low earth satellite it would need an engine and some propellant to adjust it's orbit. That's not free of cost, but rather cheap compared to a launch from Earth's surface.
But it would be expensive to build the space elevator. The cables would still have to be invented, maybe made of nanotubes. And no one knows if it would snap and crash to the surface if there was a hurricane or if it just gets old. Who pays for the damage on the ground?
What about satellites or space junk crashing into the cable and snapping it? While you are going up and are therefore crashing down? That's nothing that anyone would want.
They could send robots to an asteroid to build space ships and stations. Sending raw materials back into the Earth gravity well, and then launching them back out into space as a ship/station seems wasteful.
your first sentence was spot on. And they will but far in the future, will they have manufacturing on choice asteroids. that is a mind boggling thought.
Again, a great video. Thanks! Here's my two cents: As you point out, bringing space ore back to earth would be prohibitively expensive. But we can afford to build orbital factories to build the ships needed to haul the freight and we can build orbital processing plants to turn the space ore into the resources needed to continue expanding. These processing plants and factories could also be mobile. We could send them out to the asteroid sites to do the work until the resources are gone. Hey, does that sound just like what we have done on earth? Of course, out in space there won't be any aboriginals to complain that we are destroying their homes.
The mining is one thing but the refining process is just as polluting once you manage to get the materials back to earth and the burning and natural break down of the end product also usually has it's polluting aspects left in the earth environment.
You make a good argument for doing the refining in space.
They're not going to be bringing stuff to earth, except in miniscule exceptions.
seems to me that the most valuable thing to mine first would be fuel to make transport much easier. so ice asteroids would be the most valuable to the space mining industry. after that the robotics could collect in order of value.
Easy to access fuel is a game changer. It allows you to leap frog from asteroid to asteroid to asteroid.
Shape the mined space resources into ablative heat shields, large and thin. Aim them in intervals at desert locations. Ablative waste material on the front, valuable material on the back. There are all kinds of variations on this theme including wing shaped manned or instrumented structures that could fly from the back side after is slowed to a safe speed. Endless possibilities.
Hollow it out and build a larger version of Raptor engines!! Along with large solar sails!!! Nicknamed Cookie Monster!!! It would have large & small bays for small and large rocks along with a large crew section!!!
5:29 add two Falcon 9 boosters to each Starship. Reduce the size of onboard fuel capacity, increase loading. Recycle each Falcon 9 boosters. Remount them onto the next Starship going up.
Excellent excellent discussion.
It seems like everyone is so excited about building ships that go to space, and I think that's great when there is a practical reason to do so, but too often people don't really give it as much thought as was presented in this video. More discussions like this need to be had.
I think the next discussion that needs to be had is about the ethics of building a self sustainable colony on mars as Space X is planning. I might argue that it would probably never be self sustainable...
There's no reason it couldn't. It would need industrial and robotic capital, and its growth would be limited by the growth of its artificial biosphere, and it's more vulnerable to cascading systems collapse, but Mars isn't really lacking anything, just the supply chain to get things is different.
@@louishermann7676 I like your optimism, but in order for a colony on Mars to be self sustainable (a true backup planet for humans), it would need to be able to thrive and grow on it's own with no space flights between Earth and Mars bringing it fresh supplies. So lets think for a minute about what it would take to get it to that point.
A self sustaining colony would need to be able to not only grow food for it's inhabitants, but would also need to have the ability to perform maintenance on it's structures and robots by mining, manufacturing, and replicating absolutely everything on the planet that keeps things operational. That means it would require many of the same sorts of advanced factories that we have here on Earth such as microchip manufacturing facilities, pharmaceutical facilities, transportation manufacturing facilities, construction hardware and materials manufacturing factories, machine shops, etc... It would require an unfathomable amount of investment of Earth's own resources and expense to achieve that. However, I'll concede that IF mining on Mars could be done profitably enough, and environmentally friendly enough, to support continuous transport missions that not only brings materials back to Earth, but also helps to bring supplies to Mars to build some of these more advanced factories, then that might make sense. But to build such an expensive colony on Mars without having a method of providing any net resources back to Earth does not make sense.
In summary, Mars needs to be able to provide Earth with something of nearly equal value to the investments from Earth necessary to establish a colony there. To this day I have not seen or heard any evidence that there is any realistic way of mining or manufacturing anything of significant value on Mars to the benefit of Earth and so building a colony there does not make sense at this time. If I am wrong about that, I would certainly like to know what that source of value would be.
Special note; it is commonly argued that value to Earth would come in the form of technological advancements learned from building a colony on Mars, however other technological advancements that benefit Earth will still be made on or near Earth for very different reasons, so any claims that technological advancements from building a colony on Mars would provide any significant value to Earth without having a clear idea of what those advancements may be, can not be legitimized as an argument for building a colony on Mars. Mining, or terraforming and harvesting, are about the only things I can think of that might offer real significant value, but I just don't think we've developed good enough plans for either of those yet.
It will be sustainable, just not in your lifetime.
@@damiangreen299 As someone with an antique Sci-Fi book collection reaching back to the 1930s, the most logical progression I recall had Earth being supplied with large amounts of food grown in huge caverns on the Moon and launched to Earth magnetically in floating containers which were towed to port after splashdown. (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress / Robert A Heinlein)
The economical viability of a Martian colony doesn't really come into play until you need to resupply a Lunar colony, which can be done more economically from a Martian colony; even though it is further away, due to the lesser gravity and the potentials which that implies.
The Moon is conveniently close, but lacks resources found on the Planets. And its very low gravity is both a blessing and a curse, depending on what you're trying to accomplish
Building a Space Elevator on Mars is a far more technologically feasible project than building one on Earth, which could lead to Mars becoming a primary trading hub in a Solar Civilization.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy; "Red Mars", "Green Mars", and "Blue Mars", is an excellent read about a fictional colonization and terraforming of Mars ... beginning with 100 colonists landing in 2026. That's not too far off from what Musk has in mind, so it doesn't propose technology of the far future that doesn't yet exist.
In fact ... I've just decided to read it again!
Meanwhile; I haven't properly considered which would make more sense to do first. A Martian colony, a Lunar Colony, or an orbiting Space Habitat. But to do none of them is foolish.
You really should have a look at Isaac Arthur's megastructures series, especially on the subject of space elevators. They are actually held up by having the middle of the cable in geosynchrounous orbit, so they have a very small ground footprint.
The biggest issue is actually atmospheric turbulence, and the tensile strenght of the material that pretty much requires carbon nanotubes to work on earth.
However, steel would be good enough to build one on the moon.
What a great line..."What's the point of mining an asteroid if we can't utterly humiliate Jeff in the process?". Amen!
I have a good idea 💡 but I will try to make use of it at right place and right time 💲💰
Having something become more common makes it less valuable but our uses for it increases dramatically. If titanium became dirt cheap, we would all be driving around in titanium cars.
I've never made a youtube vid but I wanted to explain this to people, well done, good job.
My idea: create a canal from the Mediterranean to fill up the qattara depression in the Sahara desert, to make a lake, turn crash land asteroid chunks into there to mine. The lake will prevent dust from shooting everywhere and the resulting tsunami will not harm anyone. The minerals can then be loaded up from ships accessed by the canal.
Love that you covered all of the scenarios!
As always, you cut straight to the point re the practicalities of these speculations. Great stuff!
You've proven me wrong, thinking asteroids would be beneficial to get right now, which they are. You have shown me exactly how hard it really is to attempt asteroid mining
Difficult, yes, but so was bringing cloves and nutmeg to Southampton not so long ago. Small steps, more often, that's the ticket!
Around 11:50 you spoke of a space elevator. If any viable elevator is ever built, it will not be "standing", it will be "hanging" from a center of mass at or above geosynchronous orbit. This means it would be anchored to the ground, not resting on it like a conventional building. There has been much speculation and probably a few serious designs (none of which this layperson has seen) that would accommodate solutions to all of the challenges associated with such a large structure, even were is possible to actually build with existing materials what amounts to such a long cable.
The only way it will get cheap enough and that is if robotic and artificial intelligence greatly improves. It only costs a lot because you have to send humans and expend a lot of energy just keeping them alive.
Maybe 3, 4 hundred years from now there will be more humans living permanently in space than on earth. Lets face it planets are not a safe place, oh, sure on a nice day, yes it's beautiful. But those condition can be replicated in space. And you won't have to worry about forest fires, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning, volcanoes, earthquakes or landslides.
We already have the tech, we're waiting on starship. A lot of tech and innovation will have to mature in space, it will not happen on earth.
I am a Skeptic when it comes to building a successful colony on Mars with a population over 100 people who will be able to live there permanently and not have to leave after spending a couple of years there. There are just way too many problems to overcome.
It would be easier to create a colony under the ocean. At least there would be food. There is none on Mars.
Mold the metals, silica and water ice into giant V-wings, using aerodynamic properties to negotiate safe, profitable and productive recovery. Use the earths deserts such as Egypt's too recover the formerly distant mining substances.
We don’t bring resources to the surface of earth. We begin building our own habitats that exist in space. Makes the most sense for our transition to space faring.
one proposal for recovering platinum group metals from space was to use concentrated solar to ablate off waste materials. A husk of platinum-group metals would remain and could be reformed into a low-density metal foam. This metal foam might be shaped as a 1m diameter sphere massing only 200kg or so. Thanks to the high melting point of platinum group metals, these low density balls would be able to survive atmospheric entry. They would be deorbited over some sparse landmass (probably the Mojave desert) where they could then be collected by ground teams. Even without onboard guidance systems, they could be deorbited precisely enough to land within 1km^2 and easily tracked using ground or airbourne radar.
2:03 nop, actually some came from volcanic eruptions too, and iron deposits were actually living being in the past that died due to oxygen poisoning, the iron in the oceans oxidized and deposited at the bottom.
Man-ual labor & building of supply, is a traditional bureaucracy, however, AI servant and surrogate robotics, would undermind that tradition, yet exponentially reduce the cost, at unbelievable savings to reach the trillion+ earning performing these task, the phobia is whats holding back the service.
I like your way of narrating. Nicely humorous, to many others try way to hard to be funny with dry comments. Thanx
I believe space mining will be a necessary part of space exploration in the future. It's likely more practical to mine for resources to be used in space for space. I also believe in the possibility of having a space material processing station in synchronous orbit with earth which can use an elevator to transport materials to and from earth. The idea of a carbon fiber elevator is decades old. Trying to land a large, fully loaded with dense material, ship on earth would be costly beyond comprehension.
For the record, I am a huge Space X fan and I have big hopes for Elon Musk and his goals. He is and likely will continue to be a big player in the Space Race. I just don't think big cities will be developed on Mars in our life times if ever. Science will continue and expand on Mars, but it will be mainly a learning process for humans.
Unfortunately that just won't work.
Obviously, you can keep sending probes to Mars and do science that way, but once you decide to send even ONE human there, you will need to send hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of people there.
Mars just is too far away for something like a Antarctic Base with just a handful of scientists to be even feasible.
Therefore, SpaceX' plans are designed to make ANY kind of habitation on Mars possible as even the smallest step will automatically mean it has to be a HUGE step.
@@Junyo You may be right Edward. My thoughts about having hundreds or perhaps 1 or 2 thousand people there are that they would generally be there for business such as mining or some kind of support service for that industry. They would also be there for Scientific studies. They would likely have to rotate crews every 3 months or so due to the lack of technology to enable humans to stay on Mars for extended time beyond just a few months. That kind of technology and implementation on Mars wont likely be around for centuries. Forget about genetic engineering enabling humans to withstand that vast change in gravity. Forget about mega structures on Mars allowing artificial gravity and protection from radiation. Forget about using the poisonous regolith being cleaned on a scale that would support hundreds of thousands of people or millions. Forget about many of the ideas to support humans on a large scale city plan for centuries.
On returning stuff to earth; at first it doesn't have to be a lot, you can get quite a bit of money for selling space-diamonds, probably enough to outweigh the price of relatively small parcels
You can do a Space-x reverse thrust landing that just makes the stuff stay together as much as possible while not worrying about keeping the rocket functional; you let the rocket crash, let the ground be the primary slowing mechanism, but you slow it down as best you can. The landing zone will probably be in a desert...
I think you may need to build spaceships at the asteroids to avoid the huge costs of gravity and fuel, but maybe send a shipload of gold or platinum once in a while to help pay the bills.
If we take practical steps, I don't think it is necessary to deliver any raw materials back to earth.
1) learn how to grow enough food to live continuously in space
2) learn skills to build in space from scratch (start initially with raw materials sent from Earth)
3) Extract resources from where they are most economical and practical
4) Build near the extracted resources
5) Become Self-sufficient in space
There is no way for us to easily re-enter thousands and thousands of tonnes of materials that might only be worth $10/lbs. It's quite possible that a) the materials have to be refined very pure in space before returning, b) only gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium, He-3, ruthenium, etc. might be profitable to return to earth surface during our lifetimes and c) cheaper elements from the asteroids like nickel might only make sense if used in space industry and most of the end products being used in space and only very highly refined and finished end-products worth a lot more than $10/lbs being returned to earth.
If you found heaps of 24k gold bars on the lunar surface, I doubt that it would be profitable returning them on the Lunar Starship at least not until the numbers of Starships goes up significantly. The Starship might be able to return some tonnes of payload back from the moon's surface and a metric tonne of gold is only worth $56M. A program costing billions and billions of dollars cannot be easily paid back by a few flights each returning even $250M worth of gold. The gravity well of Earth is a huge problem for space mining and space industry.
I don't recall who I initially heard the idea from, but the cheap way to to it (for solid metals at least) is to process the material into very porous nodules with low mass and high surface area.
Assuming you could either shoot them from the moon via a mass driver, or drop from orbit of Earth without them totally vaporizing, the next issue is a solvable one, which is targeting and recollection on the surface.
I think the most plausible method of doing so would involve several hundred or thousand square miles of unpopulated, equatorial land with no vegetation.
The nodules would only be dropped periodically in huge quantities to ensure airspace is kept clear of planes/spacecraft/satellites. After dropping, some kind of combine could sift through the sands and pickup the nodules.
The Achilles heel of all this however, is the potential to create a absurd amounts of space junk if improperly targeted. It might require transporting the nodules within a coherent vehicle to orbit and THEN directionally jettisoning them.
They would be dissipated by the atmosphere, but not by more than a 50 mile diameter, one would imagine.
@@michaelvanbogaert7888 Not only space junk but a space weapon. Deorbiting thousands of tonnes can already be problematic in the case of technical faults but a lunar mass driver would easily be dual use technology.
good show. .i also love spacex too. we went to Boca Chica from California to see the starship getting built. i went ahead & bought the S dual motor long range till my tri motor fsd cyber truck get here. i have lost of solar & backup battery system to charge them both at home
I've always thought that quantum entanglement would be the best way to mine in space. We have made it work before, so if we could scale it up to take the atoms from the asteroid and send them to Earth to be reconfigured we wouldn't need to be shipping back and forth. What do you think?
This would work. Beam me up. Problem solved.
@@ssravernal4185 totally!
Can you point me to some material on the practical use (particularly successful experiments!) of quantum entanglement? Genuine request, not a passive aggressive insult.
@Personality Malfunction "In a 1935 paper, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen examined how strongly correlated quantum states would interact with each other. They found that when two particles are strongly correlated, they lose their individual quantum states and instead share a single, unified state."
And "In three independent experiments in 2013 it was shown that classically communicated separable quantum states can be used to carry entangled states. The first loophole-free Bell test was held in TU Delft in 2015 confirming the violation of Bell inequality."
@Personality Malfunction all I know is if they did it ten years ago, they are only understanding it more as time progresses forward. I think this will be the key. Imagine if we can beam shit from an asteroid back to Earth 🤷♂️
I mean 100 years ago landing on the moon was a ridiculous notion, I think we can do this 😄
The simplest solution to Space Mining....
....What you mine in space, you use and/or keep in space. Do not try to bring it back to the surface of Earth.
Set up ore processing on the asteroid or on Mars. Use that ore to build habitat, more spaceships, and use the precious metals of gold, silver, platinum as currency. However, Gold makes an excellent shielding, from cosmic rays, for electronics, platinum and silver make excellent electrical conductors (better than copper). Cobalt, mixed with aluminum, is a very strong but light construction metal. Mix Cobalt with Iron, and you have a metal so heavy and strong, Mars is the only place humans can work with it.
Processed gold and other metals can be molded into huge wings, having their undersides sprayed with heat tiles.
at around 13:00 you say that it would be more cost effective to mine water in space than to haul it up from Earth. Very true! Any resources that you must have in space are likely to be cheaper to gather from "small" rocks already "in space" than to drag up from deep in a planets gravity well. All this assuming that a feasible technology to collect and purify asteroid/comet water is developed. Please note, however, that though the cost you gave per pound to take water into orbit and beyond might be fairly accurate at the present time, if SpaceX's new rocket fulfills its promise, the cost* will be closer to $1000 per pound than $43,000. *- note that the cost to SpaceX will be that small, the price of hiring SpaceX to haul it could still be "astronomical" -- depends on the market.
We would want to use most of it for manufacturing in space. First to build the space manufacturing infrastructure, then to manufacture space habitats, ships, etc.
I think we have got to start thinking of this mining in space before we all destroy this planet . This is a great topic and i am glad you made this video. Nasa should really starting thinking of this.
On the subject of water if you refer to available information regarding the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud it will become apparent that water is one of the most abundant substances present in space in our solar system.
While the two former locations are currently virtually unattainable relevant obstacles will probably not persist for very long if we focus on developing and establishing habitation in space and performing research relevant to improving survival and travel there.
THANKS4GIVING
Excellent discussion
Hundreds or thousands of small AI drones go out into the asteroid belts and find specific asteroids that seem to have the correct material properties for mining. Then once they find one within the correct size parameters, they push it and then pull it with a specific force just to move it ever so slightly. This gives the AI the specific gravity or mass of the asteroid. The AI then calculates exactly what force in what direction will send the asteroid on a clear path to Earth so that it enters the atmosphere and partially burns up landing in a specific part of the desert or ocean where it can be retrieved. The drone could send a signal to Earth stating exactly the time it would land in the designated area. Once the drone reached it's life expectancy it would use it's last bit of propellant to settle into an asteroid to be out of the way for other drones.
It's actually a pretty simple system. And once it starts happening regularly the mass leaving Earth to go into space will off set and balance out the materials coming down to Earth.
1. We do not need to bring all the resources back to earth. We already got plenty of resources here. Most manufacturing will be done in space or in the bases on moon / mars.
2. If you want to get materials to earth, just form a big solid block of them and drop them on earth. Use some rockets to slow them down just enough not to burn during reentry and create some nice impact craters in the desert, from where you can recover the block of material.
12:00 It neither requires foundation the size of Mexico nor would it fall over if it was relying on predominantly tensile strength as such an elevator is closer to a tether than a tower.
The very asteroid in question could be parked in geostationary orbit and then lower cables into the atmosphere as foundation for building up the space elevator that will funnel segments of it down to Earth as it is methodically broken down by solar powered drones, using pressurized water + sand to tactically bore tunnels. Digging them out for the sake of fragmenting the whole thing into appropriate blocks for transport down the tether system.
Space trucking ! I'm all in !
The only way I can see we can get the mined ressource on earth is to do all the refining and manufacturing up there and you ship a full product down to earth. Eventually, most people will move in space close to their work, this will free space on earth and we will learn how to colonize a whole solar system. But Mars is the first step, living/mining in space will come after once the starship legacy come of ages with new ships, engines, techs, etc. etc.
Mining the Asteroids makes no sense for Earth, but does make a lot of good sense for the future colonies on Mars,🖖🏻✨
A space station with a tether could work. Using the orbit of the station would keep a cable tight tied to Earth. If you find a mecheane to travel up and down
Capture, stabilizing, and orbital manipulation will not only allow earth new precious metals to build clean energy systems, but it’s good practice to stop potential asteroid impacts.
Asteroid mining/manufacturing is generally more appropriate for things that stay in space - like e.g. O'Neil cylinders / space stations; or items used to colonize/explore other planets/moons
the moon is also covered with minerals from asteroid impacts would be easier to mine that first to start a infastructure for asteroid mining
this is the best sci-fi youtube channel :- 1
Future video on Rocket Lab?!!
The elevator isn’t a bad idea, it’s plausible. But it requires some advances in material science. It is also anchored in orbit, therefore the burden isn’t wholly on the earth. Falling is not likely.
Space elevators from my understanding stand up not because they have deep foundations but because of centrifugal force of the earths spin, they are more tethered by cable to the earth to stop them floating off. I think they are also proposed to be located around the Lagrange point between earth and the moon. Where the forces cancel each other out. That is a layman’s understanding, I am sure there are many mistakes in that simple analogy.
Thanks for a great video, lots of interesting facts that I didn’t know.
seems to me that it would make more sense to manufacture goods at the source of the raw materials and just ship the goods home.
attach two Falcon Rocket boosters on the outside of the Starship, reduce its interior fuel capacity, increase payload capacity.
Please do a video on Processing these materials in space. What will it take to turn that iron ore into the billions of tons of steel needed to make space colony habitats?
Mar's colony using materials mined on Ceres and other asteroids sounds practical.
This would also push technology forward. A win for the planet and a potential win for humans, provided we do it right
To land the starship with the 100t load, you coul refuel it in orbit and do a short deorbit burn, then reverse land it, possibly using all 3 sealevel raptors or even have a specific version with 6 sealevel raptors.
To get material from orbit to earth is not that hard. No monster parachute needed. You can make big bags that can carry around 5 tons from fire-resistant material. The same fabric used for the shields. Add a parachute system to it, and you can just let it free fall into some desert. 20 x 5 tonnes is also 100 tons, but the parachute does not need to be that big. For ore you might even consider slowing the speed down to just 50 or 100 km per hour. It is metal that can not be damaged. Higher speed is a way smaller chute.
Space mining is a very viable business. Olympus Mons is the best place to begin mining. Advanced technology will play the biggest part in space mining. So what are we waiting for, let's get on with it.
This is a great video, and I think you bring up an important point. Billionaires and billion dollar corporations will attempt to create artificial scarcity when they access the big asteroids like Psyche. Just like the Debeers do with diamonds. If they just let those resources flood in, they will be pricing themselves out of operation. It is going to be very, very interesting on an economic level. Will we allow space monopolies to flood the market with resources and, in effect, devalue the industries they're doing business in should they choose to? Once Mars has infrastructure sufficient to self-sustain; will the Martian colonists just fly over to the nearest asteroid belt and start mining, or will they have to pay some "tax" to "the people's Solar System"? :) Interesting time to be alive.
Agreed. Unless it is a valuable rare earth mineral, everything should be done in space.
We might not have many options to work within our current standard model of economics, but I believe when we crack Nuclear or Cold fusion the abundance of energy produced will enable us to construct space vehicles in orbit, or on the moon.
Space mining is one of those interesting spaces where it only makes sense if you have a space economy but since it is the basis of the space economy it's a little bit chicken and egg. It's one of the few places where I agree with Bezos's approach to wanting to build Dyson spheres (or whatever works) to move industry to space. I don't think you mentioned it but ULA (I think) offered a price for space water or O2 if delivered from a space source.
More common materials, like iron, nickel, water, that sort of thing should be mined for operations in space (like building big habitats.) There's no way it would be more cost effective to bring them to Earth than to obtain them on Earth. If space settlements are to start growing and becoming self-sufficient, that's when space mining could be more cost-effective than launching from Earth.
Maybe platinum-group metals could be worth the trouble of bringing home
One way of sending and receiving things to and from space could be tethers orbiting around earth.
To mine in space is more for building things in space like Gateway Spaceport Co's GatewayStation etc Moon and Mars Colonies!
But ultimately we need too so space-elevator(s) & drop stuff down in Orion style capsule(s) and the capsules can be carried back up on a starship etc; to repeat the process.
Let's just start with the 2 moons around mars, they would be the most important if mars would be colonized and we would learn alot from them so future projects would be easyer.
2:00 incorrect, volcanic a ti ity has brought heavy metals, including iron closer to the surface. Not just meteorites.
Asteroid mining should start out looking for rare earth materials. Advanced semiconductors, superconductors, batteries, and magnets are all dependant on these materials, that are all as so named "rare" on earth, and are considered of critical strategic importance. Enough to gain government interest in obtaining a supply of those resources.
Concentrating the materials found will be a key requirement. Where more than 50% of the desired material is what is returned with secondary materials (not tons of tailings).
For Mars or any other colony to be self sufficient it must be able to support it's self economically and at this point mining is the only way to go.
Also, we can do space mining .. on the moon, it's safe it's millions of kilometers away and we can work out a safe way using a rail gun to drive the refined materials to leo from where we can pick them up with a starship
I think we need fusion energy first, then we can build fusion powered engines, which fixes the fueling problem and also allows for lots of thrust. I heard a fusion engine could half the time it takes to get to mars.
the space race will take off when this begins because the companies will get more money back
Neat vid. I can see asteroid mining in the reasonable future. I doubt there will be a business case to bring the material to Earth but it depends.......
I think tether has biggest potential in this problem. Its like space elevator but its rotating around earth and it self
I loved it. We need to think about these things.
Use the moon. It's uninhabited. bring all the asteroids to the moon and just drop them there for processing and storage. Then launch the processed version back into orbit and send it down to earth in a ship safely. The other option was to just drop it on earth in a safe uninhabited area. without using a ship. You can get a large amount down to the surface fast and cheap that way. But many would object to that.
Would drilling a hole and injecting an expanding compound or just water be enough to break up asteroids surface matirals. Still, the metals you could melt on the spot and extract with a liquid metal vacuum and containment vessel. water would be less messy but I'm sure better pressures could be made with compounds (see great stuff chemical tech) perhaps if you could use an inflatable in a borehole and use a gas to expand and brake it up.