can space mining change the world?

>>8437904
Yes if it wasn't so fucking expensive and time consuming currently.

Let's try it when we get better technology.

>>8437926
But we'll be dead by then.

File: Coal_mining_methods_high.jpg (1MB, 1740x1028px) Image search: [Google]

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>>8437904
Not any time soon. It's a distractive ruse like the journey to Mars. Our day to day is a tangled mess of complexity and neglect. We've bought into Silicon Valley's rhetoric parroted by intellectuals making twitter clones. Outer space is really about tripping neurotransmitters like a bunch of junkies who can't deal with reality. Simulation much? Human civilization are the bearers of cavemen tech propped up almost exclusively on exploiting hydrocarbon reserves, and subsequently, all other natural resources.

People who talk about asteroid mining have no clue how mining happens on Earth.

>research and build a giant asteroid net
>catch asteroids to bring to earth
>mine asteroids
>sell for HUGE profits

space mining is a meme
memes have changed the world
thus, space mining can change the world

QED

>>8438505
>>8437926
>>8437904
/biz/ here
There is nothing in space that can't be gotten for cheaper on earth

>>8438554
Helium-3.

>>8438554
Not NOW.

There was a time wood was much cheaper than aluminium, and building forniture and planes from aluminium was insanely costly. Nowdays it's the oposite and decent wood furniture is expensive and a luxury item.

Once rare-earth metals start runing out (Indium, paladium, iridium, etc) and the cost to mine them for lower concentration mines starts to soar space mining will become the norm and more economically viable.

>>8438561
>About this time somebody pops up with the standard talking point : Lunar Helium-3. Wikipedia says: "A number of people, starting with Gerald Kulcinski in 1986, have proposed to explore the moon, mine lunar regolith and use the helium-3 for fusion. Because of the low concentrations of helium-3 (1.4 to 15 ppb in sunlit areas, up to 50 ppb in permanently shadowed areas), any mining equipment would need to process extremely large amounts of regolith (over 150 million tons of regolith to obtain one ton of helium 3), and some proposals have suggested that helium-3 extraction be piggybacked onto a larger mining and development operation ". This was the background of the movie Moon.

Problems include the unfortunate fact that we still have no idea how to build a break-even Helium-3 burning fusion power plant, the very low concentrations of Helium-3 in lunar regolith, and the fact that we can manufacture the stuff right here for a fraction of the cost of a lunar mining operation. James Nicoll systematically enumerates the problems here.

A minor point is that the manufacture of Helium-3 produces radiation; and manufactured Helium-3 is not a power source, it is an energy transport mechanism. It is only a power source if you actually mine it on the moon or other solar system body. And even if you manufacture it, you might want to move the production site into orbit along with other polluting industries.

>>8438554
Yes, of course, let's think short term. Who gives a fuck about 50 or 100 years from now.

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Yes

PREPARE FOR DESCENT

>>8438567
Make a Helium-3 vacuum that sucks Helium-3 through solid rock.

Yes, but Hydrothermal Vent Mining is the new exciting thing in mining right now

>>8438554
>There is nothing in space that can't be gotten for cheaper on earth
>t. Chinese Space Mining Agency