cdevroe
cdevroe

So many are teeing off on the billionaire space race. I get it. It’s easy to juxtapose their expensive flights against poverty or hunger. But in a few decades we’ll be glad someone spent enormous amounts of capital to get humans back in space affordably.

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renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@cdevroe Also, most billionaires give to charity, a lot.

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@cdevroe Why will we be glad about that?

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cdevroe
cdevroe

@jeremycherfas I believe there will be many practical reasons to make travel to and from orbit, and in near space, affordable. A few immediate things come to mind such as raw materials but also to harness much more solar energy than we do now, etc.

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@cdevroe Going off earth for raw materials will, in my opinion, further perpetuate human disregard for ecosystem carrying capacities, the main reason we need more solar. Sending nuclear waste into the sun works for me, but needs 100% reliability, which there will never be.

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cdevroe
cdevroe

@jeremycherfas Mine asteroids not earth! At least, my no doubt shortsightedness makes me think that'd be better?

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renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@jeremycherfas Orbital mechanics, it’s so unintuitive. It’s very costly to slow down a garbage vehicle so it falls into the Sun.

Equally economically unsound it is to mine asteroids for Earth consumption. It makes more sense to mine carbonaceous asteroids in space for space industry.

Metals just aren’t worth the investment, not even Platinum or Gold. As soon as you bring it to Earth the value plummets, making the endeavor pointless.

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@renevanbelzen why do you need to slow the garbage vehicle down? I thought, probably naively, that if you got it close enough, the sun’s gravity would reel it in. Or just, let another galaxy deal with it, like on Earth but larger scale.

@cdevroe

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@renevanbelzen I find it hard to believe that the technology to mine asteroids even for local consumption could be bootstrapped with having to get tonnes and tonnes of stuff out of Earth orbit.

@cdevroe

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In reply to
renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@jeremycherfas You can’t point a rocket at the Sun and expect it to reach it. That’s not how it works.

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renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@jeremycherfas You export knowledge inside a small craft and let it do its thing autonomously. Robots making robots out of local materials. Then let those robots mine the asteroid. It’s still an expensive proposition, finding asteroids, getting there, setting up infrastructure.

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cdevroe
cdevroe

@renevanbelzen @jeremycherfas my surface knowledge of physics tells me that it is very easy to hit the sun with a barge of garbage.

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cdevroe
cdevroe

@renevanbelzen @jeremycherfas the value of the materials is in the things we can create without pulling those materials out of earth - batteries being a big one.

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cdevroe
cdevroe

@jeremycherfas I believe slowing down an asteroid enough to mine it is totally doable in the next 60 years.

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renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@cdevroe Sure, as easy as pie 😉

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@renevanbelzen I’m genuinely interested. How does it work, if not like that?

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@cdevroe I guess you’ll see. I probably won’t.

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renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@jeremycherfas Read It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun - NASA

TL;DR:

Why is it so difficult? The answer lies in the same fact that keeps Earth from plunging into the Sun: Our planet is traveling very fast — about 67,000 miles per hour — almost entirely sideways relative to the Sun. The only way to get to the Sun is to cancel that sideways motion.

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renevanbelzen
renevanbelzen

@cdevroe I believe it to be better to capture asteroids that threaten to impact Earth and eliminate most (complex) life on Earth, and turn a threat into a huge benefit for humanity for the next 1000 years. Plans for Apophis are already drawn and possible with current technology.

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@renevanbelzen Thanks. I will.

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jeremycherfas
jeremycherfas

@renevanbelzen many thanks. I withstood the terrible music mix and now I understand the problem.

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