Third time is the charm.

Ian is still going on and on about platinum mining in the asteroids.
Ian still has not responded to this post, which is now being put up
for the third time.

For someone who claims to want rational discussion, Ian Parker is real
short on the 'rational' part and his idea of 'discussion' apparently
means that he spews what he wants and disregards anything anyone posts
pointing out that he's wrong.

Ian claims not to have seen the following, so I thought I'd submit it
again. The very first paragraph demonstrates Ian's ignorance of fuel
cell technologies and it's downhill from there.

Personally, I think Ian claims not to have seen it because if he
admitted to seeing it he would have to respond to the questions raised
in it and he is simply unable to do that.

Ian Parker wrote:
:
:Actually I would have a number od selling pitches. The first of these
:would be Platinum. Mr. Obama - you want green cars. A fuel cell
:demands a platinum catalyst.
:

No it doesn't. Use an alkali anion exchange membrane and replace the
platinum with nickel. What would you like to use your other nine
minutes and forty-five seconds for? I hope whatever it is is better
informed than this.

:
:Lithium - well that powers electronics
:but there ain't enough lithium for cars. Imagine every car in the
:world with a hydrogen fuel cell. Figure too that in a developing world
:there will be many more cars. Is there platinum? I don't think there
:is. What you need therefore is for NASA to be given a priority in
:emergent technology. That priority should be PLATINUM.
:

Asteroid mining is too far out. You need a nearer term goal. There
is also the problem of cost. If you go straight from nothing to
platinum mining in the asteroids you need to show cost recovery
numbers that include all your development costs plus launch costs plus
equipment costs plus....

Now price your platinum. You'll find that there's no way you can sell
it at the prices you'd have to charge for it.

:
:Now asteroids are the richest source of Pt. The abundance on Earth is
:the same, but it is all in the center of the Earth - not very
:accessible. Genetic engineering, nanotech. This approach could help
:you to get it.
:

So might magic and wishing real hard, Ian. Just how does "genetic
engineering, nanotech" help you in getting to the point of asteroid
mining for costs that aren't preposterously higher than those on
earth? You must be specific. That it "could" just doesn't cut any
ice in a real discussion.

What do you need? How does it help? What's the development timeline?
Why is it better than other paths?

And I DON'T mean your usual gibberish about nonexistent technologies.

:
:SSP - can be sold but I think Platinum should be the number one. This
:is what I was hoping someone or other would say. One you have an
:asteroid with galleries (technical mining term) you can then think
:about human spaceflight in the linger term. Galleries give wonderful
:radiation protection.
:

That's not how you'd mine asteroidal platinum, Ian. There wouldn't be
any 'galleries'. What's the radiation flux that far out? Why do you
think you need massive rock shielding to block it?

SSP is closer to practicality than mining platinum in the asteroids
and it isn't quite economically viable, either.

:
:This is what people really should have been saying. I was in fact
:hoping someone else would come out with that before I did.
:

Answer the preceding issues. I think you're obviously wrong, which
you will learn for yourself if you run the numbers involved. I
suspect no one has "come out with that before you did" because they
know that wanting to leap from essentially nothing to platinum mining
in the asteroids is a silly and unworkable idea, no matter what 'magic
technologies' you care to imagine.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw