Asteroid Mining

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

Solar power is too inefficient at this point in time.

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I saw a while ago that the Dutch were working on a solar collector that collects energy from all visible wavelengths. Once that's done it will be a major breakthrough.

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Originally Posted by Vladimir

I saw a while ago that the Dutch were working on a solar collector that collects energy from all visible wavelengths. Once that's done it will be a major breakthrough.

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There is already a solar collector that collects energy from all visible wavelengths.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.../Solar_two.jpg


It's not all that much more economical than other methods of energy generation. If you are talking about photo voltaic cells then you got some problems. I am not an expert in the technology, but my understanding of it is that if you want a wider range of wavelengths to be absorbed you are going to need compounds that either absorb wider ranges or you are going to need multiple different compounds to each be turning the photons into excited electrons.

Obviously this problem is evident if we are talking about a world where the rare earths are held hostage by china. Also, it says nothing of its economics simply by being able to absorb the spectrum. What will matter is how efficiently it will do the job. Off the top of my head, I think commercial solar panels are...30% efficient? If we had solar panels that were 70-80% efficient that would suit our needs just fine for many applications without trying to branch out the spectrum absorbed.

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I think commercial solar panels are...30% efficient?

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Currently the best achieved sunlight conversion rate (solar panel efficiency) is around 21% in commercial products,

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

Currently the best achieved sunlight conversion rate (solar panel efficiency) is around 21% in commercial products,

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Ouch, I must have been thinking of some of the experimental stuff in labs. So obviously, we can see where the problems of solar comes in.

I feel like commenting on the subject of asteroid mining and space exploration, even though I'm a total noob and amateur fan of the subject.

Feels ranty, so I'll toss a spoiler around it. Sometimes I just feel like typing I guess.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think I will always be a video game geek, and it's warped my brain forever.

When I think of Earth, and I think of how we run it, I sort of feel like we're playing Civilization IV. While we've seemingly settled into a sort of diplomatic victory mode (by far, the best kind for real-world applications...) I've noticed that we've made not nearly enough progress turning our cities around and pushing them toward cleaner and alternative energy sources, and if we think about the great projects, our last major achievement was the internet. As great as that is, we could be doing something with our advanced and prosperous civilization besides the obvious Hit Singles for Oil trade. We make music and tv, and the world gives us other resources. Is that it? Can't we do something else with our supposedly greatest civilization in all of human history, and if you believe we're the only intelligent life in this universe, the most powerful civilization in the whole of the universe? If we're number one, why can't we do more than shoot robots at space objects?

Come on, space victory is the way to go from here. I want my grandchildren to be able to tell me about how cool it is to work on a colony ship. Even if they're just building one.

I'm going to be dead far before anything truly interesting happens, but I still vainly wish for some part of me to spread through the COSMOS, you guys. And I'd like to see some part of the rest of you join me up there.

The NASA space program is not why we're broke. Not even token respect for the simplest budgeting practices is why. What NASA and similar projects have given us is a far greater understanding of the universe, and the possibility for formulating a defense against life-obliterating asteroid collisions with Earth. Now there is even the possibility of altering such a fate. How about the useful technology we got from all the research?

Asteroid mining, for some people, means finding gold and stuff that is precious in the asteroids and bringing it down to Earth.

I think that's a line to sell to the gullible masses. Finding a thousand tons of gold in space isn't going to make it any more valuable here on earth, it will make it less scarce and less valuable. The point of mining in asteroids is likely to get things that will be useful IN SPACE, like water. And oxygen.

Water will be about a billion times more valuable than gold in space, because it sustains life and can be turned into fuel. Gold is not even close to as useful. It will be one of the more forgettable, somewhat useful things we get up there. We don't value water because it falls out of the sky here on Earth. But it's stupid to make rockets to shoot our water into space. It's much smarter to look for ice out there. How about building materials for space stations, vehicles, cargo containers, infrastructure.... we going to shoot it up into space at the cost of how much per rocket, which can only carry so much weight, or taking it from asteroids where we don't have to worry so much about escape velocity.

You will never get anywhere in space until you develop a spaceborne infrastructure and a spaceborne economy. You cannot build a civilization without an economy, and when you're in space, you need to self-sustain. Everything's a hundred times more expensive getting it from Earth. Earth's resources will also be needed on Earth by the people who live there.

Asteroid mining is how you make everything else possible in the first place. Asteroid mining makes it realistic to build a colony ship, because you have a hope of making it go somewhere. You cannot build a colony from space shuttles. They take a few people and some materials. You need to have something hundreds of times bigger, and you're not going to take off from Florida in that thing if you've got any sense. You build it in space, from materials you found in space. Which means you need miners, processing centers, construction centers, living quarters....

Let me tell you guys something. It's all pie in the sky science fiction stuff. But so was human flight, and although there was never a pressing need for people to be able to fly, once it was possible, all of a sudden everyone wanted to be able to fly. Now our economy would die without it.

There's presently no demand and no need for building an economy in space. But once we do it, there will suddenly be a very big demand for building an economy in space. This is one of those things were supply creates demand. Nobody needed a computer before there were computers. Now, if you don't have a hundred different kinds of computers in your life, you're WEIRD. They're in every single bleepin' thing.

You know how the government, in a down economy, might create projects where people dig ditches just so they've got a job? Busy work?

How about instead of digging holes and filling them up, you invest in paying very, very well-educated people to create the ability to be spacefaring, as a society. Because once you do, humanity will never be the same.

The up-front cost is intimidating, but you know, we spend a lot on coming up with ways of obliterating people we don't like from miles and miles away. We spend billions of dollars on making absolutely sure that we can make fart noises come out of our cell phones, and that it is now possible to tell the entire world precisely what mood we're in and what we're doing at all times and the color of our bowel movements, because someone out there might be bored enough to read that really important information.

Asteroid mining: Really really rich people might spend lots of their own money, to probably end up losing money on the deal. Why? Because as much as they think they matter here on Earth, they don't matter. Imagine having their name in the history books during the pivotal moments on making humanity truly spacefaring. But the again, I am not sure I want the history books written by Donald Trump, nor do I want the future of humanity riding on how generous the Coca-Cola corporation feels like being. Can't we do better and fund it ourselves, like the NASA program? We're spending a lot of money doing far stupider things, let me tell you.

I think we could spend some money on stuff that might matter more than two days from now, or at all. And given what a tiny pittance it is compared with some of the rest of the silly things we spend our money on, and the exceedingly well-paying and well-educated jobs it creates, I have to wonder what politicians are smoking to abandon space.

We spent how much money so that we could plant a flag on a rock before the Russians? Is that all that was?

Because if so, that's going to make our other government expenditures seem reasonable. Ten thousand dollars on a hammer, twenty thousand dollars on a toilet seat. Trillions spent developing weapons, ordering weapons to be built, then realizing we're broke and stupid and ordered too many, sold the weapons, then had to start wars to clean up the mess we made arming people who intended to use those weapons in a way that we would have to use our weapons to solve. Also, lives.

If all we ever achieve is that flag up there, that will be a mind-numbing embarrassment, to let the flag be our legacy. Our until-the-sun-explodes monument to how dumb we are. So dumb that we're smart enough to have possibly been the species on this planet that actually escaped its own extinction, but too stupid to have done anything about it once we made ourselves capable of doing so. What happened? Jersey Shore was on?

That :daisy: was too important so we couldn't be bothered I guess.

There had better be an attempt at some kind of orbital processing facility before we kill ourselves in a giant nuclear cluster-something, so that passing aliens might laugh, but say hey, at least some of them tried to do something positive before idiocy killed em all. If we can't even end up mining a danged asteroid before we succumb to medieval fanatics armed with modern weapons, I don't want my name associated with this civilization. I will hold up a sign that says "Originally from Nebular IV. Ran out of dilithium, crash landed on under-developed planet with no hope of escape. Natives seem obsessed with nacho flavoring, fake tans, and making each other die. It's obvious I am doomed. Farewell, universe."

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

Solar power is too inefficient at this point in time.

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yes but the suns rays are free and that is the only saving grace, plus we would be takling thousands of collectors positioned to to give 24hr powersupply.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

Currently the best achieved sunlight conversion rate (solar panel efficiency) is around 21% in commercial products,

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obviously the efficiency would be poor to middling but with clever positioning of say 2-3 different solar farms in orbit one could have power 24hr a day.

Space-based solar power

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Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

obviously the efficiency would be poor to middling but with clever positioning of say 2-3 different solar farms in orbit one could have power 24hr a day.

Space-based solar power

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These are terrible ideas.

1. Relying on less than 12 power "plants" to provide our energy is the height is naivety in our dangerous world.
2. The solar beams have to be perfectly positioned, pointing at the target as they are flying around the earth at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Any deviation would cook the earth and any humans standing there very quickly.
3. Low earth orbit has a metric ****-ton of debris that is mostly untrackable due to the small sizes. A micrometeorite or piece of space debris the size of a quarter going a couple hundred miles faster than the solar station would bring it down.

Just to give you an idea of how dangerous space debris is: Columbia was compromised not by a piece of metals breaking off and striking the ship....but by a piece of foam. And this wasn't even in space but during the shuttles ascent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suniiico7z4

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

These are terrible ideas.

1. Relying on less than 12 power "plants" to provide our energy is the height is naivety in our dangerous world.
2. The solar beams have to be perfectly positioned, pointing at the target as they are flying around the earth at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Any deviation would cook the earth and any humans standing there very quickly.
3. Low earth orbit has a metric ****-ton of debris that is mostly untrackable due to the small sizes. A micrometeorite or piece of space debris the size of a quarter going a couple hundred miles faster than the solar station would bring it down.

Just to give you an idea of how dangerous space debris is: Columbia was compromised not by a piece of metals breaking off and striking the ship....but by a piece of foam. And this wasn't even in space but during the shuttles ascent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suniiico7z4

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eh in reply I would have to say

1: Who said anything about power for the earth?? remember I was talking about powering one piece of equipment

2: the collectors merely harvest energy there are a number of ways that could later be used to power equipment.

3: low earth orbit is hardly where we would place such equipment now is it

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Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

1: Who said anything about power for the earth?? remember I was talking about powering one piece of equipment

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Then you don't even need the collector. Just attach solar panels to the equipment in question.

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2: the collectors merely harvest energy there are a number of ways that could later be used to power equipment.

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Not feasible. You are now talking about putting giant batteries in space. Battery technology is woefully lacking as well, otherwise a lot of issues regarding power consumption would not exist today. Plus they would be very heavy and cost a ton to ship up there along with the solar panels.

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3: low earth orbit is hardly where we would place such equipment now is it

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Then you have higher transportation cost and the efficiency of transporting such energy through a beam would go down, because the inverse square law will apply.

ATPG sums it up nicely.

Until you actually use space to its potential you are shooting blanks; if you create in space, you have given birth to something exceptional.

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

Then you don't even need the collector. Just attach solar panels to the equipment in question.

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If you remember the original idea was collecting energy for a space elevator sometimes it would be in shadow so it would require IF you wanted 24hr energy more than one harvesting site.

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Not feasible. You are now talking about putting giant batteries in space. Battery technology is woefully lacking as well, otherwise a lot of issues regarding power consumption would not exist today. Plus they would be very heavy and cost a ton to ship up there along with the solar panels.

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No need for batteries at all ACIN although you could do it by that method if you liked or you could also use microwaves sent to a central collection point or lasers or you could reflect sunlight to a single solar orbiting farm there are lots of possibilities. There is no need to send the energy to earth which I think is where we getting crossed purposes here.

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Then you have higher transportation cost and the efficiency of transporting such energy through a beam would go down, because the inverse square law will apply.

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I never said it would be highly efficient but it is the only free or at least free-ish source of energy in orbit.

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Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

I never said it would be highly efficient but it is the only free or at least free-ish source of energy in orbit.

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Solar wind? And no, I have no clue where they have managed to get with that idea so far. It just seems that an infinite source of highly charged particles ought to be persuaded to share some of that energy.

It does share Fortunately, we have a magnetosphere and distance to protect ourselves from that: round our parts the Sun's power output is diluted by a factor of 1.5 * 10^9 due to distance alone, diluted further the farther we get from the Sun. Which means within the Earth's magnetosphere it's not at all a useful source for propulsion. To be sure that is better than the alternative, without such protection solar storms could fry the electronics of the craft before it even got going.

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Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy

If you remember the original idea was collecting energy for a space elevator sometimes it would be in shadow so it would require IF you wanted 24hr energy more than one harvesting site.

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A space elevator is going to be one long rail from earth's surface into low/high earth orbit. It is going to look like an orange with a pin sticking out of it. The earth is going to be rotating and thus the space elevator is going to be whipping around 360 degrees every 24 hours. You are not going to have a single solar collector be able to harvest energy and beam it directly to the elevator at all times, I don't think it is possible to maintain the orbits I am imagining in my head. Yeah, I don't think it would be physically possible. You would need at least two such solar collectors, which means at any given point, one is sitting there doing nothing, just being expensive to maintain its orbit.

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No need for batteries at all ACIN although you could do it by that method if you liked or you could also use microwaves sent to a central collection point or lasers or you could reflect sunlight to a single solar orbiting farm there are lots of possibilities. There is no need to send the energy to earth which I think is where we getting crossed purposes here.

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What I am saying is that all energy harvested by the solar collector(s) must be consumed immediately, otherwise the energy is wasted. Any sort of "collection" or "storage" involves batteries. You need to take what ever energy you are not using and immediately turn it into potential energy somehow or you just lose the energy outright. A storage of potential electrical energy is practically the definition of a battery. So unless we want all excess energy wasted, or we somehow managed to have the space elevator maintain a constant energy usage at all times, we will need batteries up there.

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I never said it would be highly efficient but it is the only free or at least free-ish source of energy in orbit.

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I don't see anything wrong with what NASA has been doing with its long range space craft for decades. Putting a small-medium size nuclear reactor to power the equipment for decades. Voyager 1 and 2 are still active, albeit with many systems shut down to conserve what it left.

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

There is already a solar collector that collects energy from all visible wavelengths.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.../Solar_two.jpg


It's not all that much more economical than other methods of energy generation. If you are talking about photo voltaic cells then you got some problems. I am not an expert in the technology, but my understanding of it is that if you want a wider range of wavelengths to be absorbed you are going to need compounds that either absorb wider ranges or you are going to need multiple different compounds to each be turning the photons into excited electrons.

Obviously this problem is evident if we are talking about a world where the rare earths are held hostage by china. Also, it says nothing of its economics simply by being able to absorb the spectrum. What will matter is how efficiently it will do the job. Off the top of my head, I think commercial solar panels are...30% efficient? If we had solar panels that were 70-80% efficient that would suit our needs just fine for many applications without trying to branch out the spectrum absorbed.

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I can't remember what the percentages were but it was a multi-layered cell. The problem was in getting the hexagonal "pixels" to align perfectly on each layer. That is a reflecting concentrator; different.

I saw Die Another Day again this weekend, maybe we should make it out of diamonds.

Meh basic 3D geometry means that something at a sufficient distance from either pole can view the space elevator at all times.

I wouldn't bother as it isn't a stable position. I'd use Lagrange points as main distribution hubs.

I'd look at trading some of the materials from asteroids to pay for components needed in the mining. But the real end game would be using materials in space to create habitats on asteroids, planets, moons and then colony arks to take us into the Oort cloud and beyond.

Right now we are a single cell immobile creature called earth stuck in the petri dish called our solar system.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

Meh basic 3D geometry means that something at a sufficient distance from either pole can view the space elevator at all times.

I wouldn't bother as it isn't a stable position. I'd use Lagrange points as main distribution hubs.

I'd look at trading some of the materials from asteroids to pay for components needed in the mining. But the real end game would be using materials in space to create habitats on asteroids, planets, moons and then colony arks to take us into the Oort cloud and beyond.

Right now we are a single cell immobile creature called earth stuck in the petri dish called our solar system.

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Wait where are you picturing the space elevator being built? Anywhere between......like the arctic and antarctic circles and the space elevator is going to be blocked from the solar collector by the earth itself as it is rotating.

The optimum position for the space elevator would be equatorial. From a purely geometrical not practical point of view you could view the space elevator like the hands of a clock from a polar aligned position in space with a high enough altitude.

I wouldn't bother with a single collector for a number of reasons. I would use a mix of Lagrange points, geostionary and polar orbits with redundancy built in to a series of micro power relays and maser the energy to it. I'd look at using frequencies that would be easily absorbed by the atmosphere to minimize accidents and/or weaponisation.

This way the elevator becomes not only a transport mechanism but a way of increasing energy to earth.