deep sea mining

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>>8950336
I would much prefer space mining

why fuck up the oceans when it would be more profitable and easier to mine somewhere else

>>8950336
This really isn't profitable except a few areas spread around the world where equipment is complex and diving is near impossible.>>8950353
>>8950353
Space mining needs an infrastructure, reliable control, and be able to tell composite of the object.

Mining space objects would cost more than it would take to mine at this point and time.

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>>8950336
OF COURSE!!!!!!!!
IVE BEEN STUDYING MARINE BIOLOGY SINCE I WAS 5 BECAUSE IF YOU AREN'T EXPERIENCING CONSTANT GRIEF YOU ARENT ALIVE
PIC RELATED ONE OF MY MOST BELOVED PLACES CHINA BUILT A FUCKING BASE ON TOP OF IT FOR STRATEGIC CONTROL OF THE SOUTH CHINA SEA THEY WONT EVEN ALLOW ECOLOGISTS NEAR IT ANYMORE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I HAVE COUNTLESS EXAMPLES LIKE THIS
fr though engineers should be kept n an enclosed facility controlled by earth systems scientists, were they can still be rented out to capitalists. except with consequential ethics.
why do they teach them to build such monstrosities but not how to understand the consequences of their actions. Poor kids, engineers are little more than worker bees

>>8950353
I wonder what their math is behind the assay of an asteroid. Sure more than doubling the entire supply of platinum would take a serious chunk out of the price, so the value surely isn't number of ounces of platinum * 1500; however, it surely wouldn't simply halve it due to increased demand for platinum when reduced price makes industrial processes using more viable, so the value surely would be greater than the current market capitalization of platinum * mass fraction of platinum on the asteroid out of the new total supply.

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>>8950358
>be able to tell composite of the object
Some nigga needs to send some remote sensing satellites up into the asteroid belt and start surveying that shit.

Imagine how much that data would be worth

>>8950435
All good and fine till you would have to have a ton of backing just to launch the probe. And even then, you'd have to find enough substance to actually make the trip profitable.

>>8950358
I was told that most of the asteroids on the asteroid belt were the remain of a forming proto planet, so most of them are actually fairly homogeneous on their composition since the elements on them coalesced and sedimented before turning into asteroids.

The question actually is, what would happen to the market if you dump several million tons of an element that is really expensive just for its rarity on Earth

>>8950435
http://www.asterank.com/

>>8950358

>This really isn't profitable except a few areas spread around the world where equipment is complex and diving is near impossible

It IS profitable though thanks to advancements in UUV tech. Offshore oil rigs have been around forever, now they don't even need to be anchored or manned.

>>8950353
>>8950427
only iridium and platinum group metals are worth the expense. a single falcon 9 launch and dragon capsule can bring back enough metal to profit in the millions.

so it is a matter of moving a sufficient asteroid to LEO. then automating the mining and refining in orbit. spreading the cost of the asteroid movement and mining out over decades.

>>8950353
Space mining is more likely to simply massively devalue "rare" metals.

>>8950560
rare earths aren't that rare. they just require a lot of cost to extract them from other ores.

China's control of the market keeps anyone else from starting up profitable rare earth refining.

Which means electronics production stays in China or china friendly nations.

>>8950570
more importantly, their refinement is dirty as fuck. we can pollute space all we want and it doesn't really matter. thats the one real benefit of a lunar or mars industry base.

>>8950558
It may be more profitable to bring back less, or to sequester what is brought back to achieve market control, a la the diamond cartel De Beers

>>8950618
If it was profitable to search for and mine rare earths then people would be doing that on the planet

Asteroid mining is a meme by people who don't understand delta-v costs or travel time in space.

>>8950637
Iridium, rare on earth, a lot less so in space. Used in a lot of modern electronics.

Robots and orbital facilities.
>>8950618
cheaper iridium from space means people will find more uses for iridium, driving up demand. prices will go back up some, but to the pre space mining level.

>>8950547
You would need a team to rocket it, use the probe, have a bunch of scientists study for YEARS of scans, then finally fire another rocket to robotically mine the asteroid AND return safely with a profitable payload worth reinvesting in multiple flights. Oil rigs are low maintenance overall given the amount of goods a single one can produce with relative ease.

>>8950719
you move the asteroid to earth orbit. using the same automated refinery to process the ore.

>>8950336
right now on land mining is cheaper
but offshore mining could be good for the environment, no digging necessary
metals accumulate on ocean ridges in nodules
it's just a matter of going down there and picking them up

i have money invested in a couple mining companies in Alaska that look like they are going to get their EPA permit holds lifted

>>8950737
That assumes
>you find something big enough with enough ore
>spend enough time to get it into a safe orbit
>get the world to agree slinging a meteor towards earth is a good idea
>figure out a way to cheaply and safely mine it

It's just not profitable with the current supplies more easily and cheaply obtained on earth

>>8950748
I think you replied to the wrong person

>>8950698
None of these rare earth metals exist in true scarcity

10 years ago the prices were rock bottom due to an oversupply of iridium

Asteroid mining is a meme, even for rare earths, unless some magic near earth asteroid is found we won't be doing any mining of asteroids.

The sort of mass space launch needed for doing space industries will also reduce the cost of launch to something similar to the cost of an intercontinental plane flight.

>>8950863
>similar to the cost of an intercontinental plane flight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1MAg0UAAHg

>>8950876
Giant multi-billion dollar constructions are the last thing needed for cheap space flight

You build a rocket designed to fly every day, just like a plane, using the cheapest fuel(methane & LOX), thats enough

Next step is some sort of beamed power augmenting conventional rocketry

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>>8950883
the whole point of those constructions are to be the equivalent of an airport
You can't just fly a jumbo jet off the highway, you need a damn good runway to do it
same with space, just more infrastructure to put down, compared to airports, but same thing when you look at it

While it'd be wonderful to get those cheap rockets, the numbers are not in our favour, thus we need to build the megastructures that will ease them as much as possible
Flying through the atmosphere drives those costs up, The point of the launch loop is to give you orbital velocity as well as bringing you above the atmosphere, making fuel costs being just a little bit for that last bit, and what you use in space proper
Unless we get something like metallic hydrogen available, or something of similar power, we'll need to use a launch assist method

>>8950353
>more profitable and easier to mine somewhere else
So prove it fagot. Go mine some ass show me how easy and profitable it is. Meanwhile, back on earth, there are rednecks mucking sand off the bearing sea making millions from gold flakes.

>>8951023
ok, gib some industry to work with an a few dozen rockets
It'll make good money, as there's trillions of tons of everything up there, the startup costs are just a bitch

>>8950900
>you need a damn good runway to do it
The runway is the least cost, you could run jumbo jets off rivers and lakes and ocean harbors if you wanted to(same with rockets)

Any sort of flat real estate works.
A launch pad for a rocket is the same situation, there is no law of nature that says it has to be expensive. Nor that it can't be used multiple times a day.

Nothing involved in space infrastructure NEEDS to be as expensive as it is.

Governments spend big money on airports as pork programs, not as necessary costs.

>Flying through the atmosphere drives those costs up,
The fuel costs of taking a payload to orbit are negligible
So you need something like 20 times your weight in fuel to reach orbit, when you are paying 100 bucks a ton, thats pretty cheap.

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>>8950637
Says the potato who does not understand what a mass driver is or how it could be used to return shit to earth nearly for free.

Mining the moon or mars would come well before any complex asteriod mining. Trying to track down asteriods and harvest them would be silly and overly complex given the limitations facing it currently

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>>8951048
are you being dense on purpose

the runway example was not the fucking runway itself, it was the concept that infrastructure is a good thing to have when you want to do a thing

The launch loop video in question had a price tag of roughly 2 billion, which is hilariously tiny compared to the spending of any space age government, and is good enough at what it does to do it many times, like an airport does

and the rocket costs are not just fuel, but the multiple stages of rocket that you lose, even if you're saving the first stage and reusing it
the whole bloody point was to turn that 20 times your weight in fuel into 5 times, or even less, by taking a hard part, getting up to speed through air drag, out of the equation entirely

Less fuel needed = More payload sent = same amount of launches does leagues more

>>8951062
We don't have such a mass driver on earth today, but it'll be so easy to send it 1 year away in space, to be operated all remotely

>>8950336
>rare earth metals from deep sea mining
Fucking why? Why do something so extremely expensive when there's plenty of good locations in the US on land?

PS: The reason why neither will happen is because such deposits are associated with thorium, which is currently regulated as nuclear waste in the US, which is insane.

>>8951073
You don't NEED to lose any stage of a rocket

You don't spend billions trying to save on a negligible part of the cost of something.
Launch loops are a fucking meme that can't even physically be built

It would be easier to develop effect deep sea mining for rare metal deposits than ever trying to get shit from space

>>8951084
there are no "rare metal deposits"
thats the whole problem of rare metals

Deep sea mining will poison huge swaths of the ocean too

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>>8951081
thank you sir for confirming that you are retarded and do not actually understand how these things work

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>>8951074
First your full of shit, second your retarded, third your wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i737rM6FxqE

>>8950435
We can already get spectral data of asteroids. What we really need are actual physical samples to figure out what the spectra corresponds to.

Only one mission has done this, and two are on the way. Trouble is transit times to asteroids are rather long.

>>8950374
you studied a plant/fish/whatever, the engineer designed and orchestrated the construction of a useful actual thing in the real world.

not sure why you think yours was better.

on the other hand we should save the coral reefs and stuff too.

Whatever the Titanic is pretty much sunk as it is, the worlds screwed, not much anyone can do about it anymore.

Mine the landfills. The older the better, absolutely no recycling. Has all the atoms humanity needs in just the right proportion. Being green makes green. Trump that Trump.

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>>8951048
>Any sort of flat real estate works.

>>8952620
I studied a plant/fish/whatever when I was a toddler. Now I research ecosystems.
>useful
>real world
Naive utilitarian pls go
>screwed, not much anyone can do about it anymore.
That's false. There is plenty to do and we are not doing it, unironically because of capitalism.

>>8950336
This has been looked into before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule#Proposed_Mining
It's only bad for deep sea ecosystems. I wonder how the environmental impact of this compares to current mining methods. I know mines on land can create highly acidic environments.

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>>8953241
>only bad for deep see ecosystems
Ecosystems are abstract objects with arbitrarily defined boundaries. The deep sea is highly connected to the entire ocean.
It would make me cry

>>8953267
But don't we already drag giant nets across the seafloor to catch fish en masse?
This is just a more intense version of that.

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>>8953290
Yes, we do.
I've been crying about that since I was 13.

>>8953298
Greiving is a better word than crying

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>>8953302
Ass hurt is a better word than grieving.
>I've been ass hurt about that since I was 13.

brb, dumping some mercury into salmon spawning streams

>>8953391
savage