Asteroid Mining & Orbital Settlements
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ย. 2020
- Asteroids represent a threat to Earth, but in the future they may be a boon, serving as sources of vast wealth and resources, and as orbital settlements and keystones of interplanetary trade.
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Credits:
Asteroid Mining & Orbital Settlements
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 265; November 19, 2020
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Jerry Guern
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier
Graphics:
Bryan Versteeg spacehabs.com
Fishy Tree www.deviantart.com/fishytree/
Jeremy Jozwik www.artstation.com/zeuxis_of_...
Kristijan Tavcar
Sergio Botero www.artstation.com/sboterod?f...
SpaceResourcesCGI
Udo Schroeter
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.com/creator - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Sorry to hear about Prospero
Your cat was called Prospero. That's so cute. RIP.
(Pwosperwo)
Meow RIP
Was he attacked by a wolf?
I'm psyched about Psyche's colonization.
Psycho! :P
You're a real psycho
and I'm nuts for planet Marbles
@@acerba
And that is what inhabitants of Psyche will be called in the future.
@@DocWolph are we sure they won't be called psychonauts?
RIP Prospero, we should name a space colony after the fellow
It will be the name of the Planet of Sorcerers
Prospero and the Prosperans
There's a fictional planet in my stories called Prosperina, with the inhabitants known as Prospers, though it's named after the goddess, Proserpina.
RIP Prospero.
My immediate destiny seems pretty set - mine my fridge for a snack and a drink and settle in to orbit around another awesome SFIA episode
Take care to adjust orbit to the regular mass gains after that.
Uncontrolled de-orbiting is such a pain.
@@nilesbutler8638 though it would be more to do with mass distribution, as the mass I brought in snacks/drinks would already be accounted for in the initial orbital equation. I will however be converting that into personal mass, rather than external lol.
@@littlegravitas9898
I was of course considering you would be having regular supply pods delivered via railgun from your fridge.
If you only consume what you brought, you are right, of course.
Not even - you´d loose mass via carbon outgassing in digestive processes. Only a small percentage can be converted to body mass.
But that would probably keep in your life support athmo system.
@@nilesbutler8638 I cant believe i didnt consider refueling! I guess added bonus could be to gain momentum from influng care packs to keep orbital velocity and avoid retrograding?
@@littlegravitas9898
Well done!
That would be a sensible use of all that kinetic energy.
Your fridge would need stronger station-holding thrusters, though, to compensate. You dont want it to become untethered and crash into the bathroom.
Sorry to hear about Prospero. His episode did him justice. Good Job.
Man this makes me think of a future where the earth has rings that are made of orbital settlements!
L5 will be full when the moon is waning.
Think once things get sufficiently saturated in cislunar space, we might even opt to construct a topopolis that stretches around Earth's orbital path and links up to the L points for the Earth - Sun partnership. The future of travel in such areas might literally be interplanetary trains.
I think you might have no idea how wild Earth orbits are going to get
@House of El probably no giant mechs in our future though. I do imagine something with hands to manipulate large objects for construction projects in space but those darn engineers always like pointing out how inefficient a giant robot actually is for combat.
@@kenshy10 Maybe, but I do think we will at least get cool Ellen Ripley style power loaders.
I always did love the idea of asteroid mining.
I'm sure that Prospero lived very happy life with you. Rest in peace sweet furball!
Thank you for the upload Issac! SFIA is the only thing getting me through my online College learning because of Covid!
I also used a few of your Upward Bound series as resources and inspiration in writing a paper on the future of Space Colonisation.
Glad to hear it on both counts :)
I have used Isaac's show as a resource as well in school and in conversation with people. When you hit people with some of this info (even teachers) they just light up it's the coolest thing and that's how we feel when we watch his show.
Now: planes flying into buildings
Future: dwarf planets flying into earth
Future martian doing a terrorist attack by flying an Oneil cylinder they hijacked into the earth shouting: "Musk Akbar!!!"
@@josephreagan9545 the unsettling thing is in a society of quintillions, if we don’t have a better education system (somehow?), there’s bound to be a cult of people worshipping not just the big names but even random usernames on the internet like you and me, and do extreme things over it allowed by their advanced technology (unless we have better security).
The darkly humorous story being our distant descendants receiving death threats from cults because we ourselves had a TH-cam comment shouting match.
Or entire orbital colonies flyng straight into Sidney...
@@arx3516 you say that like its a bad thing
*Marco Inaros smiles crazily*
Wakes up and makes eggs and coffee *sfia has a new ep* makes bacon and more coffee
Issac *doesnt tell me to get snacks*
Me "ah an overachiever today"
Man, I don't know if you're familiar with tabletop role-playing games, but I'm a game master running a sci-fi campaign with some friends for over a year now, and ever since I discovered your chanel I've been using your videos as inspiration for worldbuilding. Last session was the end of a big story arc, and talking with my friends after the game they congratulate me for the world and stories I've created.
I feel like an impostor because 99% of my work was directly inspired by you, so I wanted to thank you for your dedication with the chanel and for the passion you put into making every video.
I'm exited to see what you'll talk about next!
Goodbye, Prospero. So sorry to see you go. Isaac, sorry for your loss.
Somewhere in the 42nd Millenium...
Orks: heh, dose humies wuz amateurz!
I claim this feeble rock in the sovereign name of Marvin the Martian, our one true king!
All hail!
Too bad the little rock is a kingdom of one.
Marvin's mom says leave the rock where it is and wash your hands before coming to the table.
All hail Marvin!
There should have been an Earth shattering Kaboom.
I suggest that settlers on Psyche be called "Cupids"
not psychos?
There is already an asteroid named Cupido (763) and another using Cupid’s Greek name, Eros (433) so I think residents of Psyche would probably not choose that name for confusion’s sake-especially with so many obvious puns like “psychos” or “psychics” or “psychonauts” on the table-but I like reference.
PSYKERS!
[Inquisition intensifies]
These videos sometimes make my eyes water. From both the awesome beauty of our future, and the meloncholy realization that it's beyond any of our lifetimes. Still, i'm grateful we live comfortably enough to dream about such things
No it's not beyond our lifetimes. You'll soon see what am talking about.
@@mainamaina2578 Yeah and then we can look at the few young people who will be the first pioneers and even that group is maybe 1% or less of earths population. For the average human space will be unreachable even in 50 year (I would be 82 years old by then :/ ). Don't think they can use grandpa me up there.
how do you know it is beyond your lifetime?
We need more science fiction settings based on life in a colonized solar system, from Mercury to Neptune.
We already have The Expanse, Cowboy Bebop and Lucky Starr from Asimov, BUT WE NEED MORE!!
I'm assuming you've read 2312 by kim Stanley Robinson?
I'd love to see a cooperation between you and Economics Explained on this topic!!
🤩
When i hear his voice it makes me think of my nephew,Julian,he died at 27 years old 3 years ago and he had exactly the same speech "problem" and when i showed this to my older sister(his mother)she burst into tears
I was hoping this was going to show how we could mine and process the resources from an asteroid. It hard for me to imagine what a space foundry would look like.
Isaac's channel always has the best comments
We are pretty fortunate in the overall level of quality and courtesy in the comments :) I've seen a lot of my peer's comments sections
@@isaacarthurSFIA Peers'
I would love to live on astroid right now
Untul the interplanetary tax collector arrives and demand 75% of your asteroids production...
@@michaelpettersson4919 there are far bigger things than gaining personal wealth lol money is happiness in the abstract
@@Junksaint And there are always those that hate happy people and as such will do anything in their power to ruin the fun.
And not one that will hit earth or another planet
For like a week...
The idea of humanity sprawled across a million worlds within our solar system rinds me of the Revenger series
Maybe the best episode i've ever seen !!!
Looking for random "belter" comments from the Expanse.
Remember the cant
Oye Beltalowda..
Don't be a wellwallah eh?
"What about Venus? Want to go to Venus?" - Miller, saving Earth
I do not understand the reference, but what I do know is that one day a man will marry a woman from one of the belts and he (while she rolls her eyes) will introduce her to everyone as his "Belter half."
What is the possibility that for a mining operation on an asteroid that the habitat will be tethered perpindicular to one axis of rotation a sufficient distance to keep the tether taut. The habitat then rotates around the centerline of the tether*. I expect almost all operations on the asteroid to be down by remotely controlled or semi autonomous equipment. The human operators are there mainly to solve problems, make crucial decisions etc. Plus the habitat also functions as their transport to and from the asteroid. As to viable elements to mine either highly valuable elements needed for industrial purposes or those needed for space based agricultural uses.
*the habitat could be a fairly simple cylinder attached to a truss work boom with its power supply and drive at the other end. The tether also functions as an "elevator" for accessing the surface. The "elevator" being a simple powered drive that clamps on to the tether the person doing the EVA simply attaches themselves to.
That would certainly be a viable way to do it in some cases. It seems to me that each asteroid, depending on size, spin, composition, richness, etc, will call for a custom solution.
@@animistchannel2983
A lot would depend on just how much tumbling the rock is doing
@@mpetersen6 Yah, and if you're using an O'Neill Cylinder mother ship as a mobile mining base, you could basically just scoop up and grind down the smaller ones on the fly. If they are solid enough but still too big to fit in the front door, you could tether THEM to the ship and keep going, and chop them up into manageable pieces to feed to the processors on the way to the next one... like Pac-Man in space :)
Sure. A bit oversimplified, but a wokable outline.
@@lukasmakarios4998 Sorry, but every time I give what I consider a "concise but adequate" answer to one of these things, a bunch of people complain and go "Too much text bruh!!!!" I just can't fit an entire freespace mining operations textbook on a post-it note for the braindeads from twitter.
If you ever do need such a manual, though, I could do a 10-20 page extract for one. I do contract writing, up to dissertations and journal submissions, at very reasonable rates.
I seriously love the ships from the game Homeworld..
I wonder what kind of cultural differences will arise in the belters population and if they will live such different lives they'll want independence.
“We are creatures of space.” Camina Drummer
In short, probably THE manufacturer and mining center of the galaxy largely due to empty space and vast resources.
Another thing the Expanse does well is the implication of water and air, while not rare per se, is rarer and more valuable for the belters then the Inners.
I would imagine a quick way to get a belter to love you is getting them some water and maybe some air while buying finished products from them
At least that is my guess
TANSTAFL!
Tax someone enough and they will feel motivated to demand independence. Then, they have to wait for the expeditionary force to arrive from Earth. The belters can produced faulty signaling devices while they wait for them.
Suppose each habitat (or group) has a self-sufficient ecology.
Since communication is cheap and free, dominance by information control seems futile. In such a situation, what sort of "dependence" would "independence" be about? Hint: Finance.
- Recent history: "Colonies" and "imperialism" was based on resource extraction. There were whole continents for the Europeans, with their superior weapons and organization, to exploit via resource extraction and taxation. Eventually, the sheep resisted the fleecing and the enterprise of physical subjugation became onerous and was displace by financial inter-dependence. To profit from resources (material, labor, location) one needs a market. So there is inter-dependence between supplier and consumer. Newly "independent" nations often lack the technological resources of more "advanced" nations. To bootstrap their economies, they need to trade resources for technology. To become independent, this bootstrap process needs to lead to equality of knowledge and R&D capability.
- Future history: Even when you have robots building robots from a huge supply of materials, everything has a price because "ownership" (capitalist or socialist control makes no difference) creates scarcity via *prioritization*. In a truly "post scarcity" ecology, so much resource is available that "prioritization" becomes personal rather than social. At that point, "dependence" has disappeared. The only remaining priority might be physical safety (the interplanetary equivalent of air traffic control).
@@richardgreen7225 Governments tend to have a "pay or else" stance o taxes regardless what those resources are used for.
Shower thought;
how much mass of the Moon could be safely minded away without affecting its orbital mass
You'd start messing with earth's tides too which would likely have some interesting outcomes
The asteroid colony reminds me of the book series "Troy Rising" by John Ringo
I get so happy on Thursdays when I get home and see one of these videos in my notifications :D
And now my charms are o'er thrown...
Condolences sir, condolences.
Thank you! Thank you for this episode! This is the preferred path to expansion that some of us have been pushing for years, the self-sustaining and self-funding path. This is the true diaspora that puts the reins of the future in the collective judgement of the most able and adventurous, instead of centralized control by the most corrupt. Out there are a million cantons of freedom and growth!
uh... what?
@@Exquisitec0rpsy That's called "English, by someone who knows how to write it." Stay in school.
@@animistchannel2983 okay...
Lets hope megacorps dont exist...
Got my starbucks, got my Nanowrimo project open and Isaac in the background
Lets do this yall.
God I wish I was a Beltalowda right now.
@Adymn Sani “You know the average lifespan on Earth? 123 years. It is even better on Mars. You know the average lifespan on Ceres? 68!!!!!”
Oh yeah built a lada listen up this is your captain and this is your ship
Nah. I'm good
Mi pensa ke beltalowda are mogut!
Quick get the popcorn! this is gunna be a good one
🍿
Earth better remember to keep the people there happy as they may stop sending asteroids back to Earth for materials and start chucking them at Earth.
if only someone told me to get a drink and a snack
@Incorruptus ok man its just a joke
this is the kind of thing i like to see him talk about. he could just make videos getting into more and more detail about colonizing the solar system as far as i'm concerned. that's the goal our whole nation should have been focused on, for decades already.
Has a method been invented to smelt metals in zero, or near-zero gravity? Current smelting methods rely on gravity. Inventing zero-g smelting could make someone incredibly wealthy in the future.
You grind everything down to grains or powders in the raw and centrifuge it, and just scoop off the layers one by one. Then if you want you can use lasers to heat the separated powders in a "crucible-steel" type closed container method. A tungsten tube & screw-cap as a crucible won't melt until over 3400°C, so you use that to hold whatever else you want to melt. Or you can do combinations and variations on those.
For basic on-site prospecting, you could just do the grind & centrifuge part on location and send sealed containers of each type to market according to whatever's worth sending. The bulk "tailings" of base mineral grains can be formed into construction & shielding blocks of various densities like concrete or foam/sponge material and used or shipped in bulk.
Of course, if you send an O'Neill Cylinder mother ship to manage the mining expedition, you can do each process in whatever amount of gravity you want, at your convenience. That also means miners don't have to live in micro-gravity, but come home at the end of each shift to pleasant conditions and family, etc.
Not to mention that huge amounts of energy are required to generate smelting-level temps. This makes me think they'll need a central smelting operation that they send the ores to. Or even cluster harvested asteroids around. Trying to do it rock-by-rock seems excessive. But that's "The Great Trench" for you.
@@dsnodgrass4843 Yah, I agree. That's why I figured you'd want a big Cylinder mother ship refinery on-site to process stuff. At our current tech, it would probably be powered by thorium nuclear. Solar might do to run the lights and vents if you are close enough to the sun, but to melt rocks you need the "oomph!" :)
@@dsnodgrass4843 It's likely some places will utilize solar foundries to do that. Why bother if you can blast a metal with a bunch of mirrors?
I'm really liking the episodes of late! Thanks for the inspiring content guys
This is the future I've been waiting for. This is when we get true democracy and eutopia, as defined by the locals who actually live them in each place.
Love each episode I catch . Good job.
Newly discovered Amish settlement, inside asteroid, is asked how long they've been churning.
While many concentrate on settling other planets, I think the real rush to settle off-Earth will be to go to habitats built from local resources.
Excellent video, very thought provoking, thanks.
Inspirational and a true public service. Well done Isaac!
This is my favourite Chanel on TH-cam by far. thanks
If we can have a billion worlds like our Earth (surface) in our own solar system, then even if we are not the first ones in the galaxy, we are the first ones in the solar system... Which is not a small thing to be part off!
Happy Thursday all! great video and already can't wait for the next one
Feeding the algorithm.
Smile excited educational
Emoji 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😜😜😜
Human emotions
Relaxing 🙂🙂🙂
Consumer friendly
Thank you Isaac, you have no idea how much I needed this escape today
RIP Prospero. So sorry for your loss, but I'm glad you had more than a decade together. Brought a tear to my eye.
There's no machine designed "mine" solid iron or stone asteroids. As a matter of fact, most probes and space equipment is designed with lightness and precicion in mind. A seriously tough, capable mining machine for asteroids is still sci-fi.
true, but with spaceX's starship projected to get price into orbit down to $20/kg in just a few years, its very very near scifi
Well, luckily there are those "gravel glob" asteroids to work on first.
"You dont just accidentally hit a planet"
Us: Holdeth my beereth
Sorry to hear about you cat Prospero. May your memories of Prospero always be fond memories.
So sorry to hear about Prospero Isaac. All the best to you
The focus should be 100% on colonisation of our own solar system, step by step, from the earliest rotating orbital Earth habitats to Moon and Mars bases and on from there.
All roads lead to Rome
All cyclers lead to.Earth
I'm really sorry about the loss of your furry friend.
wonder how many O'Neil cylinders can be built if mine all the asteroids
Probably a couple million.
There is only one way to be sure so let's start mining.
If your cylinders weigh 2.39 million tons you have enough mass for a trillion of them. Some parts of asteroid mass like the sulfur and oxygen are not very useful for cylinder construction so you might only get half of that.
About six. Trust me I have done the maths.
@@stefanr8232 We can find uses for that oxygen and sulfur as well.
Awesome videos my bro!
Moving from a rock to another rock. Count me in.
I've been thinking for a while about the possible solution to the Fermi Paradox that's basically: interstellar travel is hard, and why bother when you have a whole galaxy worth of colonizing space and materials in your own back yard if you just look at more than planets.
Yah, I've pointed that out before too. The universe is "only" 13 billion years old, and with starlifting technology you can make home stars last for trillions of years. A few exploratory interstellar colonies might form just for the novelty of it, but this channel has already described a ton of reasons why that's problematic. Even if our solar system started feeling dull and you did start a new one on the next star over... now you have another bunch of eternity to fill up there.
Given the actual likely time scales like that involved, you wouldn't see a galaxy "getting full" with civilizations for hundreds of billions, even trillions of years in the future. We really are still at the beginning.
These videos are always so awesome
Awesome stuff. Thanks man.
Loving the new graphics for this.
Thank You Isaac. In conversation of future scientific goals I often reflect on your videos and reference them. As I talk to people about why humanity would wish to explore outside of the earth I find that many think it is just for the desire of adventure. I speak out and bring up that the main reason would be to mine and utilize the resources to expand and safeguard humanity. Thank you for your contribution.
Happy Arthursday!
A thought about your comment about space stations around heavy metal rich asteroids like psychi. Depending on its structural composition. Tunneling might be less viable then simply picking up iron rubble chunks from car to shopping center size and lifting it to a orbiting smelter. Or drilling out ore and taking it to a orbital smelter. But you wouldn't want the hot smelter in tunnels with you. Further, zero G offers some very attractive options with metals.
My main point though is given one of the biggest users of bulk steel might well be constructing big stations, say O'Neil colony stations. Liquid E steel from smelters could go straight to ship yards (station yards?) building stations that would be shipped to the customer desired location. The liquid metal injected into "mills" sliding along the edges of a O'Neil hull edge, depositing multi deck layers in ring layers from one end of the drum to the other, and along any other structures edge.
Shipping it to site would be a bear, but the idea of delivering major oil derricks to points around the North Sea would likely freak past Scottish lord as well. And yould need to give it a while to cool down afterwards. So a leasurely delivery timely could be fine.
Another excellent episode. Great for doing RSI prevention exercises before really tackling work. Also, sorry for the loss of your fuzzfriend.
Sorry for your loss, mate. All the best.
Much love for Prospero, I'm sure he was a great research assistant and will be missed!
I feel better about life after watching that. Thank you
Arthursday! Making every Thursday lunch times educational.
I just love this channel..❤️
I absolutely love your videos! Everytime I watch one I feel a light bulb go off lol!
It's the smaller worlds and asteroids that actually most interest me unless we uncover new science or other ways around the speed and travel issues of space. Many things may not be in the cards but having a low gravity well aids development of the space future I want
Amazing video
16 psyche, interstellar cycler castles & 1000000 planets 🪐 in our very own solar system. Brilliant episode, Isaac! Thank you 🙏🏽
Great vid.
this was a good one
Sorry for your loss Isaac.
As brilliant as your content is, and I do believe it's brilliant, getting more than half way through any segment is difficult for me because I can't keep up with the rapid-fire way you speak. So, _my_ brilliant, yet trivial, solution is to slow down your audio to 85% or 90% of normal. Now I'll have to go back and re-view most of your content. I'm looking forward to that, because I've sure missed some great work. You keep 'em coming, I'll keep watching and recommending.
No more rocks for earthas and innerlowda, have more than enough rocks on earth and mars , belt only for beltalowda.
Interesting. Which reminds me, after I get rid of my explorer rig its time to do some mining on Elite Dangerous...😎
22:18 RIP, Prospero. You had a cool name. "My library was Dukedom enough!"
i was just wondering what are you’re thoughts on jump gates as a possible form of faster then light travel?
Excellent! This corrects several of what I thought were misconceptions and even reeeealy bad ideas about asteroid mining. I have a feeling the Martians will soon be leading the charge there.
So sorry to hear about Prospero.
Good stuff
Colony founding is a likely holiday too.
NICE!
Thanks for the upload! Your ideas in the Upward Bound and in this series are really thought provoking and I've been following for over a year now! Watching this episode I was wondering the entire time where would the conies get fuel for their rockets. Even if it's as common as liquid methane and oxygen that SpaceX uses, would you still need to go down to a large planet with an atmosphere to refuel every so often?
That moment when you realize these ambitious projects are so immense in scope and therefore so far in the near future that none of us will get to see it. :(
Started writing a novel about this kinda thing, heard about The Expanse, got angry and am now old and bitter
Imagine being a space settler, on a self-suficient space truck, picking one asteroid and building a home in it, mining, turning it into a hollow, spinning farm colony and selling the left over raw materials to other colonies.
That would be the dream.
You will be fondly remembered, Prospero