beltstrike
- Thread starter flykiller
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Selective plague and computer virus.
The Chinese aren't the only ones running on empty and waiting for a technological revolution to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.
The Chinese aren't the only ones running on empty and waiting for a technological revolution to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.
yep. heard of "pigmageddon"? funny how that just shows up out of the blue after thousands of years of pork production ....
well that's actually kind of universal. heh, read that the u.s. government ordered all huwai equipment removed from all government facilities, and they can't because there's so much of it ....
no, no they are not the only ones by any means.
"the revolution will not be televised" ....
When is it going to be cheaper to invest hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars into asteroid mining than to invest hundreds of millions to exploit resources on Earth? "Rare earths" aren't actually that rare, they're just difficult to exploit at the prices the market for them wants. China sells rare earths like crazy because 1) the government subsidizes mines to undercut competition and 2) environmental issues are largely ignored. It's not because they have the only deposits of them.
There's also many tons of such materials sitting in landfills. When aluminum was first refined it was crazy expensive, not because bauxite is rare but the amount of energy to smelt the aluminum is significant. It remained expensive until the advent of induction heating. Now we make drink cans out of it and throw hundreds of millions of them into the trash (or profitably recycle them).
Asteroid mining makes sense in a sci-fi universe with cheap nuclear fusion and reactionless drives. In the real world it is highly impractical and viciously expensive. Pulling minerals out of seawater, deeper terrestrial mines, and landfills is orders of magnitude cheaper and actually feasible.
The Earth is fantastically large and we've only exploited a relatively small fraction of its surface. The real limited and non-renewable resources are fossil fuels. Again though, exploitation is often economic rather than a question of raw quantities. There's a large number of unexploited stores of oil that just aren't profitable at $100 a barrel. If actual rarity of oil brought the price to profitable levels those expensive fields would be hit. However energy prices increasing would also make alternatives feasible.
Terrestrial mining responds to paper market manipulations. The precious metals, in particular, exhibit this tendency. Paper trading in multiples of real supply keeps a rein on mining. I suspect there's more than enough to be had locally if only the manipulations were to go away. I think that a truly interstellar society with an attendant population explosion would arise before wholesale belt mining would become a thing.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Article about NASA's plans to mine the moon:
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/tech...-moon-this-century/ar-AAEAJYU?ocid=spartandhp
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/tech...-moon-this-century/ar-AAEAJYU?ocid=spartandhp
There's a sort of chicken-and-egg problem here. In an OTU style 'verse, as in many sci-fi settings it's assumed that space travel and space habitat technology is cheap enough that exploiting resources in space is economically viable. That's fine as far as it goes. You can drive it off rule-of-cool.
If space travel is more expensive - and in particular getting up out of a gravity well is expensive - then you can have a setting where mining stuff in space to make space infrastructure is more cost effective. You can ascribe whatever motivation to this that you want. Perhaps support for large, unstreamlined jump ships supporting colonisation efforts (think Alliance-Union 'verse, for example). It may be that your space industry simply needs a whole lot of infrastructure to function and it's just not practical to lug it all up a gravity well.
For example, if you wanted to make something in the moon's L4 or L5 point and didn't want to postulate a two or three order-of-magnitude improvement in the specific impulse of drive technology then a plant processing lunar regolith for titanium, aluminium, oxygen and various other odds and sods and firing them into an orbital rendezvous with the construction site could easily make sense. Mining hydrocarbons from Titan is perhaps a bigger stretch unless you're building something in orbit around Jupiter but I wouldn't characterise it as egregious mcguffinite abuse.
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My issue is more on the specific statement Mike made about "dwindling resource of Earth" being a thing and asteroid mining being a solution. First I posits that "dwindling resource of Earth" is not a thing and even if it was asteroid mining is so impractical the opportunity cost is orders of magnitude beyond the next possible solution, of which I think there's several. Both ideas I think are very hyperbolic.
In a sci-fi setting you're right on both counts. In a space travel is easy setting space based mining and manufacturing is also easy. Stuff might be slightly more expensive but the economics would end up with stuff making sense to make in space being made in space and everything else made on the ground. In a space travel is "hard" setting (but easier than IRL) space manufacture only makes sense for stuff that really can only be built in space but then it's still expensive because space travel is hard. As you said, the space built stuff is the domain of large organizations (likely only governments) due to the infrastructure and cost requirements.
BRJN
SOC-12
Two books that would be of interest here
Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of Earth
The Case for Space
Both authors explain that when you finally send a basic tool shop up to orbit (or the Moon or wherever the ores / resources are), the cost of building things there drops quickly.
Also of recent note: SpaceX and its eccentric genius have covered more ground in a few years than NASA has in decades.
Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of Earth
The Case for Space
Both authors explain that when you finally send a basic tool shop up to orbit (or the Moon or wherever the ores / resources are), the cost of building things there drops quickly.
Also of recent note: SpaceX and its eccentric genius have covered more ground in a few years than NASA has in decades.
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large portions of the resources of earth are inaccessible.
What is accessible is limited by
- Depth. Earth may be 30% iron... but the crust isn't.
- extractability ... The Fairbanks uranium ore deposit is too low quality to be useful, for example.
- environmental impact: the Pebble Mine project is standing still due to environmental regulations.
- contaminants: a large number of mineral deposits have dangerous contaminants. Portions of the Usibelli Coal Mine site have contaminants that preclude extracting the coal)
- under habitation: can't remove the ground underneath the cities safely.
- competing non-mining needs: If the area is used for farming, you aren't mining it
- under ice or deep water: extraction isn't practical
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Nope. It is a real bottleneck that will start to be felt in about ten years for some of the minerals and at current rates of demand. Demand could fall and new deposits and extraction techniques developed so lets say twenty
Go do a bit of research on rare earth reserves - its grim reading for a lot of them.
Note that the Nasa statement pretty much mentions that the USA can not risk being held to ransom by foreign governments over rare earths and the like - so war or asteroid mining, take your pick. They will do whichever is cheaper.
Or internet billionaires... Musk, Branson and Bezos are in the space business to make money, not for altruism.
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File Under: Magnificent Obsessions
Nope. It is a real bottleneck that will start to be felt in about ten years for some of the minerals and at current rates of demand. Demand could fall and new deposits and extraction techniques developed so lets say twenty
Go do a bit of research on rare earth reserves - its grim reading for a lot of them.
I hate to disagree with Mike, but I have to say this reads just like the "peak oil" crowd who have been predicting we would begin to feel the results from falling oil output in ten more years. Problem is, there has been someone sounding off about "peak oil" since the 1950s and the peak still hasn't come.
When you predict something 10 or 20 years out, you aren't really claiming much. Certainly Earths resources are finite, but we should have little confidence that identified fields of oil or rare earths deposits have much relationship to total supplies. We really just don't know how much is out there. And as you mentioned, not only can new supplies be found but technology and prices can make some supplies economical in the future that are not today.
It's a real big leap to say the next best source is an asteroid rather here on Earth.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Go look up Indium, among others. There have been serious concerns expressed over scarcity. Rhenium is another.
My materials science friends are not doom mongers or peak oil naysayers. At current production and recycling rates and assuming demand for flat panel displays and the like there will be more money to make in the rare earth mining business. There will be a bottleneck until new reserves can be identified and exploited, mining companies like this because prices go up and they make money. Run out (as in none left) is probably the wrong expression
At some point space launch costs will be reduced to a point where space industry is a thing. Once space industry is established space resource exploitation becomes competitive if not cheaper than resource exploitation her on earth - especially if you consider the environmental impact of resource exploitation.
My materials science friends are not doom mongers or peak oil naysayers. At current production and recycling rates and assuming demand for flat panel displays and the like there will be more money to make in the rare earth mining business. There will be a bottleneck until new reserves can be identified and exploited, mining companies like this because prices go up and they make money. Run out (as in none left) is probably the wrong expression
At some point space launch costs will be reduced to a point where space industry is a thing. Once space industry is established space resource exploitation becomes competitive if not cheaper than resource exploitation her on earth - especially if you consider the environmental impact of resource exploitation.
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Nope. It is a real bottleneck that will start to be felt in about ten years for some of the minerals and at current rates of demand. Demand could fall and new deposits and extraction techniques developed so lets say twenty
Go do a bit of research on rare earth reserves - its grim reading for a lot of them.
Note that the Nasa statement pretty much mentions that the USA can not risk being held to ransom by foreign governments over rare earths and the like - so war or asteroid mining, take your pick. They will do whichever is cheaper.
Or internet billionaires... Musk, Branson and Bezos are in the space business to make money, not for altruism.
Musk has stated his altruistic motivation many, many times. The only way he can afford to do it, however, is by commercial success. His goal of Mars is entirely about ensuring species survival.
Aeon Interview of Musk said:
https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation
One can argue enlightened self-interest, but in either case, the commercial side is to pay for the improving the planet motive.
Yep.
The Rare Earths shortage is well documented. It's not readily available, and is hard to process from the ores available, as well.
The thing is, the elements are pretty much common. Cerium is about as common as copper.
The US has a couple sites with good ores. Only one has been commercially viable. One's been a political boondoggle, and hasn't gotten off the ground. There are unspecified rare earths in the copper+gold+molybdenum ore samples... unspecified because rare earths are damned hard to ID from each other in small quantities. (Alaska Division of Natural Resources doesn't mention them. Pebble is adjacent to an area that has abundances, according to USGS maps, and which wasn't surveyed by USGS for Rare Earths.)
In Alaska's case, the abundances are problematic because the extractable locations are not on readily accessible parts of the state, and the neighboring native corps don't want CIRI risking fish (which they get income from) for CIRI getting stinking rich on metal mines. (Note that the profits get shared to the folk whose tribes traditionally lived and hunted there. See ANCSA 1974)
But, given the Prince Edward Island mine, and a Kenai separation plant, Alaska's just about set to crack open the floodgates... assuming anyone grants the permits.
and they were all (including malthus) correct, given their assumptions that the technology and economics of their day would continue unchanged. but things change. attended an exxon researcher's lecture back in the '90's - there's oil everywhere, the only issue is the cost and profitability of extracting it. now, that said, it must be pointed out that all of the easily-extracted oil is already use up - the days of drilling ten feet and striking oil are long gone. nowadays oil extraction requires vast expenditures of money and time and professional effort. so, while things do change and technology does advance ...
... is a very big point. it's all out there, we just can't do it and pay for it. it would be like burning two gallons of fuel to obtain one gallon of fuel, and ...
... no amount of technical progress can get more energy out of a system than exists within it. as some battery physicist/engineer elsewhere said, "the periodic table is what it is." without some new magical source of energy, we're stuck.
magnificently funded obsessions.
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I don't think anyone would argue with THAT. Assuming continued technological progress, what you have written is a capitalist tautology.
I think the only thing we disagree about is how near we are to such a day that space mining is more practical than terrestrial mining. I don't think that day is on a 10 or 20 year horizon. I don't think it is foreseeable at all right now, though technological progress can surprise you.
Aramis actually makes my point.
So what will it take to be viable?
When push comes to shove, isn't Alaska's least accessible part a heck of a lot more accessible than an asteroid?
When prices rise are high enough for rare earths, this political problem is likely resolvable.
"Shortage" is really the wrong word to use here. We are not supply constrained in the electronics industry. When Rare Earth are a "bottleneck" (Mike's term) or in "shortage" you will see the price of iPhones and flat pannels and other consumer electronics rise. Instead we still see them fall 10% per annum or more.
well what happened is that "china" (the chinese communist party ruling class families) decided to monopolize "rare-earth" production by 100% as-needed subsidizing their "rare-earth" industries, making such industries unprofitable everywhere else and thus shutting them down thus making china the sole source. good short-term tactical ploy on their part, but once the subsidies stop then "rare-earth" mining will become viable everywhere else again.
subsidies, justified by the data obtained from the users of the products. "when it's free, you yourself are the product."
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