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Asteroid Mining is the Wave of the Future

RaptorWizard

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What kind of energies do asteroids contain, and what can these energies when harnessed do?
 

UniqueMixture

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Sounds cool mal

What kind of energies do asteroids contain, and what can these energies when harnessed do?

They contain minerals like iron etc. There is expected to be a "minerals crisis" similar to the energy crisis in less than 200 years. Only renewables won't be an option : ) )
 

ygolo

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This is very cool.

They are making their big announcement of Planetary Resources Inc. at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. I thought this would be a nice prelude to the Space Elevator Conference, but it turns out I misread the date of the ISEC. It will be in August, not April.

At least, if the government isn't stepping up for space research, private industry is. Maybe better anyways.
 

Betty Blue

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Haha, thats so great, i have a mental imagine of bigwigs in suits floating round space with enlarged...butterfly nets.
 

Mal12345

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Haha, thats so great, i have a mental imagine of bigwigs in suits floating round space with enlarged...butterfly nets.

Well, I'm sure they won't go about it half-cocked.
 

xisnotx

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How do I become an asteroid miner?

Also, does this mean I should pull my (non existent) investments from metals? If they're going to flood the market with them, then they're not going to be worth much anymore...
 
A

Anew Leaf

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Phew. I hope they don't realize that the asteroid belt is where Cameron stocked all of his Unobtanium bars.
 

Mal12345

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Phew. I hope they don't realize that the asteroid belt is where Cameron stocked all of his Unobtanium bars.

Asteroids are mostly made of iron. And since the Earth has enough iron in it to last us millions of years, it's fairly obvious that these billionaires are mining for precious metals.

My other mechanic, who is apparently an ENTP, has been joking about unobtanium for at least 20 years. So I was disappointed to see that unoriginal term used not as a joke in a serious motion picture. But then the entire movie was unoriginal, and kind of a joke in its own right, so it wasn't a real surprise.
 

Qlip

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Oh, cool. It took me a while to read the link because it sounded like another one of those pipe-dream ideas that tend to get hyped and linked on Slashdot with no follow up. Having raw materials to work with in space without having to fight the gravity well would be a *huge* step.

EDIT: Yeah, I groaned when I heard the word unobtanium in that Avatar movie. It has been in long usage to criticize sloppy stories in the Sci Fi community.

EDIT again: I'm curious as to what exactly they are going to use for thrust to move these asteroids.
 
A

Anew Leaf

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Asteroids are mostly made of iron. And since the Earth has enough iron in it to last us millions of years, it's fairly obvious that these billionaires are mining for precious metals.

My other mechanic, who is apparently an ENTP, has been joking about unobtanium for at least 20 years. So I was disappointed to see that unoriginal term used not as a joke in a serious motion picture. But then the entire movie was unoriginal, and kind of a joke in its own right, so it wasn't a real surprise.

This one time at band camp we were talking about things that are difficult to obtain like notes and violin solos and virginal sacrifices culled from Las Vegas' populace, and we started envisioning what it would take to mine an asteroid. And then we started talking about how much fun it would be if one of the asteroids was "mine" and I was going to "mine" it and how perhaps I didn't "mined" if others also mined it.

Good times.

Actually scratch all of the above. I was playing WoW and healing a dungeon run where a guy asked if it was ok if he grabbed an ore node and I said "I don't mined." My friend that I was playing with slapped my character as he should.

True story.

The End.
 

Mal12345

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This one time at band camp we were talking about things that are difficult to obtain like notes and violin solos and virginal sacrifices culled from Las Vegas' populace, and we started envisioning what it would take to mine an asteroid. And then we started talking about how much fun it would be if one of the asteroids was "mine" and I was going to "mine" it and how perhaps I didn't "mined" if others also mined it.

Good times.

Actually scratch all of the above. I was playing WoW and healing a dungeon run where a guy asked if it was ok if he grabbed an ore node and I said "I don't mined." My friend that I was playing with slapped my character as he should.

True story.

The End.

WoW.
 
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