Was there an actual article in there somewhere? I couldn’t seem to find it among the banner ads, video thumbnails, sticky footer, teasers for other content and inch-thick hyperlink underlines.

OP is a karma farming account, so that tracks.

This is some sort of scam.

The projected cost of space mining is obscene compared to what we will actually retrieve from it. It’s not worth it and won’t be until we have massive leaps in technology.

Thanks. For my Reddit education, and as embarrassing as it is to ask, how do you tell it’s a karma farming account?

On the one hand that seems like a great idea. On the other hand this will result in a step increase in space junk that could trigger the Kessler Syndrome and send the world back to the early 1960’s and not in a good way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Check their posting history: if it's mostly submissions with few if any comments, that's a big clue.

Look when we discover Pandora we will need to be ready

You really don't understand what you're talking about on a fundamental level

Aside from collectibles and science, the point of asteroid mining isn't to bring stuff back to Earth. It is to replace the high cost of launching stuff from Earth.

Let's say the Starship rocket works as intended and can fly for $20 million a launch. It takes about five tanker flights plus the cargo launch to get ~120 tons to the Moon's neighborhood. So $120 million for 120 tons is $1 million per ton. If you can mine usable products from asteroids for less than this, you come out ahead.

Metallic asteroids contain about 15-50 parts per million of the "Platinum group metals" (the ones below iron, cobalt, and nickel on the Periodic Table). Parts per million is the same as grams per ton, so 15-50 grams per ton. Average PGM price is around $50/gram, so market value is $750-2500/ton.

They are alloyed with the three base metals as ~90% iron, 1% cobalt, and 9% nickel (the proportions vary by sample). So first, you have to extract the PGMs from a chunk of iron alloy, and second a little added carbon turns the iron alloy into a decent steel alloy. There are other asteroid types (the carbonaceous ones) with carbon, so that's not hard.

Now your ton of metallic asteroid is worth $1 million for structural steel in space, because that's the launch cost you avoid for not launching structural parts from Earth. The value as structural metal is worth way way more than the small amount of precious metals in it.

You can try to separate out the PGMs before leaving the asteroid, or afterwards so you can use both the iron alloy and the PGMs, but I highly doubt you can process it in space for the $750-2500/ton market value. For comparison, the price of hot-rolled ordinary steel on Earth is $775/ton right now.

THAT makes more sense. Thank you for explaining it

Oh really? Please explain how I am wrong then. Every time anything is sent into space there is a risk of something going wrong and causing explosive loss of mission equipment and personnel. Even when everything goes right there is often debris left in orbit.

It is getting very crowded up there. Just wait until some other country like China or Russia decides to shoot at the mining transfer equipment that will inevitably be placed in orbit out of jealousy over the value of the mining yield.

Go ahead and laugh but my points are true and correct. China and Russia have already tested their military ability to shoot and blow up satellites they don’t like. It wouldn’t take a lot of such actions to make a runaway cascade of collisions as described by the Kessler Syndrome a horrible reality.

If that happens, it puts at risk all communications satellites and GPS satellites as well. Yes, I know they are in different orbits but the offshoot debris from explosive collisions have uncontrolled trajectory and could very realistically involve everything up there.

Enjoy it while you have it, this plan is just as laden with hubris as the voyage of the Titanic.

Mining operations in space are in the Sun's orbit. Not the Earth's

Thank you for pointing out the obvious. Consider fora moment how any ship can get from the surface of the earth to the mining location and how the mining material will get back to the earth. My point holds true

I am not a karma-farming account.

You have 1,311,397 submission karma and 6,906 comment karma.

You post the same articles in tranches over half a dozen subs over and over.

Every. Single. Day.

>You have 1,311,397 submission karma and 6,906 comment karma.

As to the discrepancy you see between my submission karma and my comment karma:

Many of the articles I post receive either

1. Self-affirmative comments that often do not have much substance and/or relevance to the article/submission,

2. Are trolls who either reflexively disagree without reading the article, or trolls who have selectively read the article without much thought to the substance, made obvious by their comments

3. Comments I actually agree with 98%+ with and I don't feel much need to add anything

4. Users like you, who seem to have already made a pre-formed judgement about me, and I am usually annoyed enough to not respond

Your history speaks for itself.

Kessler Syndrome has no real bearing on stuff traveling through a orbit.

It's about a cascading series of crashes in an orbit that create a dangerous debris field. This cascade can take decades or centuries. It also doesn't make the orbit unusable, just a bit more dangerous.

Wall-E and Gravity are not real depictions of what it could be like.