Asteroid Mining

[gaelic cowboy]

One of the big ideas behind the asteroid mine deal is that they would be able to mind the asteroids for water and hydrogen--i.e. space-ship fuel. The largest hurdle facing space travel at the moment (aside from not being able to go fast enough to make interstellar travel practical) is the immense cost of getting the supplies (including fuel, water, and so forth) out of the Earth's gravity. These mines would be almost as good as a space elevator, since you'd be gathering the fuel in space and transporting it to other ships and satellites that are already in space, thus saving everyone a lot of money and time in the end.

The polluting rockets you're thinking of are such a big deal because they have to be used CONSTANTLY to break the earth's orbit every time we want to send something up there. Once your in space you don't need such elaborate methods of propulsion, at least not until we start looking at farther targets. The fuel provided by these mines would be renewable and cheap for things like the ISS and the countless satellites in orbit. All in all, a good launching point towards cost-effective space exploration.

I understand all that but our problem is that the ore has to come down eventually and in big enough quantities to make it useful. This is best achieved in my space elevator senario rather than using rockets of any kind be they poluting or not.


Of course that still does not mean a space elevator is even feasible, it's concievable allright but the technical details are so big I would say it would have to be a global project.

Failing all that we might build some sort of container that falls down from orbit with the decelaration slowed by simple parachutes, in order to bring down the cost we would probably have to make the container in orbit though. There is a danger though in sending worthwhile amounts down as we would be essentially firing asteroids to earth so it would require no mistakes.