Past Perfect, Future Misleading

Hop David wrote:


Rand Simberg wrote:

I have some more commentary on the Gehman report, and why we should
not build "the" next generation launch system.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95930,00.html


At the end of this essay Rand writes:

"We want, and need, a space transport industry, and it will never occur
as long as NASA remains in charge of developing manned launch systems.


I've seen vague speculation on a space tourism industry. But is this the
killer app that will capture public imagination? It's hard to image Joe
Taxpayer writing his congressmen to give incentives to Carmack, Boeing
or whoever to establish LEO resorts.



Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space
transportation would leap a century into the future.

But, unless China makes plans to plant a flag on Mars, there's not much
out there other than the public imagination to give manned spaceflight a
purpose. And that's mainly driven by romantic musings of the Apollo
program.

In article , stmx3 wrote:

Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space
transportation would leap a century into the future.

Or not. The problem with relying on "valuable minerals" is that the
market can glut; the world produces some 2500 tonnes of gold a year. A
10m diameter gold asteroid would have about four years worth of that
production; it scales up from there. IANAEconomist (I mean, I can do
sums g), but you get the idea... that'd do really weird things to the
market.

The oceans contain some $1.5 *quadrillion* worth of gold (or so my
slighlty hyperbolic-looking source says; this number seems inherently
WAG); about ten million tonnes, or four thousand years of production.
I'm not drawing an explict analogy, just making a point; "valuable"
resources are really only valuable should it be possible to make a
profit on them. No-one's made a profit evaporating seawater to get it...

If there's an economic reason, it won't (I suspect) be precious metal in
the Belt, or the discovery of diamonds on Enceladus, or the like...

--
-Andrew Gray

stmx3 wrote:
Hop David wrote:



Rand Simberg wrote:

I have some more commentary on the Gehman report, and why we should
not build "the" next generation launch system.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95930,00.html


At the end of this essay Rand writes:

"We want, and need, a space transport industry, and it will never
occur as long as NASA remains in charge of developing manned launch
systems.



I've seen vague speculation on a space tourism industry. But is this
the killer app that will capture public imagination? It's hard to
image Joe Taxpayer writing his congressmen to give incentives to
Carmack, Boeing or whoever to establish LEO resorts.



Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space
transportation would leap a century into the future.

I understand there are asteroids rich in metals, metals not bound up in
oxygen, sulfur etc. like the ores we can get at at the top of earth's crust.

Wouldn't delta V expense make even a solid gold asteroid unprofitable?


Hop
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

"Hop David" wrote in message
...
Wouldn't delta V expense make even a solid gold asteroid unprofitable?

Delta V does not cost money. It costs energy. Which in turn cost close to
nothing in dollars.
The issue lies designing a space vehicle with maximum deltaV per buck.
Nobody has tried that yet. All sorts of rockets have been optimized for
maximum ISP, minimum GLOW and what not. Nobody has tried to optimize for
deltaV per dollar.

-kert

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 19:50:07 +0000, stmx3 wrote:

Hop David wrote:

Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space
transportation would leap a century into the future.

By the time you get to it you'll haveve spent a good portion of it.

By the time you haul back a few thousand tons to Earth and safely
land it you'll have spent most of the rest of it.

By the time you get paid for the gold you brought back word of the
gold's arrival will have flattened the gold market... and you'll be
broke.

Industrial materials in space will stay in space to be used in
space by folks who work in space.

And that's what a gold asteroid would become... gold foil, gold
conductors etc.

The only exception would be materials that are _only_ produced or
procured offworld... that are wanted on Earth.

--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"

Chuck Stewart wrote:

By the time you get to it you'll haveve spent a good portion of it.

By the time you haul back a few thousand tons to Earth and safely
land it you'll have spent most of the rest of it.

By the time you get paid for the gold you brought back word of the
gold's arrival will have flattened the gold market... and you'll be
broke.

Industrial materials in space will stay in space to be used in
space by folks who work in space.

And that's what a gold asteroid would become... gold foil, gold
conductors etc.

The only exception would be materials that are _only_ produced or
procured offworld... that are wanted on Earth.


All interesting analyses...blows my whole idea out of the water. Now,
if and when we go to Mars, we can describe the cost in "solid gold
asteroid" equivalents. I would guess the asteroid would be smaller,
based on MARS being closer than the belt. Maybe I'll look at the
current price of gold and the expected cost to Mars and see what I get
in asteroidal equivalent.

Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space
transportation would leap a century into the future.

By the time you get to it you'll haveve spent a good portion of it.

By the time you haul back a few thousand tons to Earth and safely
land it you'll have spent most of the rest of it.

By the time you get paid for the gold you brought back word of the
gold's arrival will have flattened the gold market... and you'll be
broke.

ISTR somebody mentioning a paper, about three or so years back, that took
these effects into account, and concluded that such an enterprise would
still be profitable under reasonable assumption (even about the cost of
getting to the asteroid etc.) Henry?

Jan

ISTR somebody mentioning a paper, about three or so years back, that
took these effects into account, and concluded that such an enterprise
would still be profitable under reasonable assumption (even about the
cost of getting to the asteroid etc.) Henry?

Here are some cites which were posted to usenet a few years ago.
These are also at http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/space/mining.html
along with a few online links.

* M. McKay, D. McKay, M. Duke, eds., Space Resources:Materials,
NASA SP-509, v. 3, US GPO, 1992 (P. 111-120 cover asteroid
mining).
* J. Lewis, T. Jones, W. Farrand, "Carbonyl Extraction of Lunar
and Asteroidal Metals", Engineering, Construction, and
Operations in Space (eds. Johnson & Wetzel),
p. 111-118. American Society of Civil Engineers, New York, 1988
* J. Lewis, M. Mathhews, M. Guerrieri, eds., Resources of
Near-Earth Space, U. of Arizona Press, Tuscon, 1993. (Too many
good articles in this one to list).
* J. Kargel, "Metalliferous Asteroids as potential sources of
precious metals", Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 99, no
E10, p. 21129-21141, October 25, 1994. (The first attempt I've
seen at developing price elasticity curves for raw materials)
* C. Meinel has a nice article from the 1985 IEEE EASCON on mass
payback for various asteroidal return scenarios.
* Lewis and Lewis, Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of
Earth. (Don't have a complete citation for this).

Chuck Stewart wrote:
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 19:50:07 +0000, stmx3 wrote:


Hop David wrote:


Find a solid gold asteroid...then you'll have the killer app. Space
transportation would leap a century into the future.

Chuck, please be more careful with your attributions. stmx3 proposed the
gold asteroid, not I (Hop David).



By the time you get to it you'll haveve spent a good portion of it.

By the time you haul back a few thousand tons to Earth and safely
land it you'll have spent most of the rest of it.

By the time you get paid for the gold you brought back word of the
gold's arrival will have flattened the gold market... and you'll be
broke.

Industrial materials in space will stay in space to be used in
space by folks who work in space.

And that's what a gold asteroid would become... gold foil, gold
conductors etc.

The only exception would be materials that are _only_ produced or
procured offworld... that are wanted on Earth.



I agree with most of the above but believe there's another possibility.
If an accessible, volatile rich asteroid is found, delta V might become
much cheaper. The asteroid's water and fuel could be exported to a depot
in earth orbit. Then it would be much cheaper to excape LEO. It would
also become much less expensive to export stuff to earth from various
locations.

I happen to believe "The Killer App" will be an extinct comet (Nereus or
1979 VA? Maybe even Deimos - it possibly has interior volatiles and is
easier to export from than Mars). Then when delta v is much cheaper,
metal rich asteroids will also become Killer Apps.

Hop
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 15:30:06 +0000, Hop David wrote:

snip much previous

Chuck, please be more careful with your attributions. stmx3 proposed the
gold asteroid, not I (Hop David).

How'd you get left in there?

I happen to believe "The Killer App" will be an extinct comet (Nereus or
1979 VA? Maybe even Deimos - it possibly has interior volatiles and is
easier to export from than Mars). Then when delta v is much cheaper,
metal rich asteroids will also become Killer Apps.

Hmmm... iffy, but possible.

Hop

--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"