No blood for oil...how about lithium?

[Cephius]

Just because it isn't feasible in the next 2-3 decades doesn't mean it isn't worth mentioning.

And these ridiculous NASA budget cuts don't help. The officials have forgotten that it takes money to make money - yes, NASA is extraordinarily expensive, but the long-term benefits far outweigh the short-time costs.

If Max's context were "I wish we invested more in space mining in the next 30 years" that's one thing. What he said was "why are people focusing on a 1 trillion dollar deposit here on earth when there's a 20 trillion dollar asteroid out there!!!!111"

So no, it's not worth mentioning in that context. Long term, obviously space operations will become more viable as resources here becomes increasingly more scare and expensive to mine. The technology and the investment:reward ratio have a LONG way to go, though.

[tyven]

because space mining is the future bro

[Priran]

is there any particular reason why this thread is now about space mining

because the moon is like .5% asteroids

[Antithesis]

Wait, people care about a measly trillion dollars worth of minerals, particularly iron, gold, nickel, and lithium?

http://miningasteroids.com/


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/401227.stm

Why is it a big deal if it's $1,000,000,000 in Afghanistan... but it isn't a big deal if it's $20,000,000,000 in a single asteroid in space, exactly?

Spoiler: show

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rSystem-en.png
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~hal/tal...eroid_belt.gif

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/13/7/14/belt.jpg
http://www.evula.org/solarsystem/Res...eroid-Belt.gif

I'm sorry, maybe I'm just missing something here... I mean sure, it'll be comparitively easier to get the minerals we just found are near the surface there than, I dunno... send some asshole to the moon or whatnot... but it isn't really that much mineral wealth in the long term.

Are we waiting til we use everything up, and THEN we're going to head outwards?

lol

[Shenrien]

because space mining is the future bro

http://www.adoptabeard.com/images/ar...wboy_thumb.jpg

edit - fuck now I need to find a torrent of all the episodes ._.

[Kuya]

here we go again with a new round of the resource curse? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse )

As if Afghanistan weren't cursed enough as it is.

[tyven]

As if Afghanistan weren't cursed enough as it is.

maybe they should stop being fucking terrible and get their shit together

[Max™]

Uh, we had the ability to start setting this shit up when we landed on the moon, you know.

I'm just saying, if resources are what you're interested in, particularly the metals mentioned in this article... no matter how much you invest in digging the shit out of the ground, no matter how much you get in the long run from the mine, it will never amount to a piddling little fraction of the material wealth available just from near earth asteroids. So what is so exciting about this find exactly?


Are we using it to build a space fountain, or lofstrom loop? Pretty sure studies based on construction using current technologies place the prices for those well under $1 trillion ($10~30 Billion) last I checked.


NASA is about developing technologies, they're good at it, but they fucking suck ass at applying them... probably because that is NOT their job.


Anyways, back to being excited over little piles of shiny rocks, hurray Afghanistan!

[Zoolander]

Yea I'm not so sure this is good news. There are several instances of states with awesome natural resources that fail to capitalize on them and instead tear each other apart to obtain them. I guess we'll see where this goes. Has potential to be great for them, but I'm not getting overly excited for them just yet.

Oh and a BBC link as well:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/sou...a/10311752.stm

[Jojothemidget]

Huge pic

Spoiler: show

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2Vwa1iA4tP..._3596394_n.jpg

pic is shitty but the only one i could find....

so when do we enslave the zerg?

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

So now the question for liberals is, "What did Bush know? And when did he know it?"

Edit: Now we know why like 30% of libs think 9/11 was a guberment conspiracy.

[Priran]

[Kuya]

Edit: Now we know why like 30% of libs think 9/11 was a guberment conspiracy.

Why do they believe that?

[Cephius]

So now the question for liberals is, "What did Bush know? And when did he know it?"

Edit: Now we know why like 30% of libs think 9/11 was a guberment conspiracy.

lol grasping at straws just a bit aren't we Swampy? I'd love to see you pull a source that says you didn't pull that out of your ass.

P.S. libs don't think 9/11 was a conspiracy, they think we were deliberately mislead into invading Iraq under false/invented pretenses. BIG difference.

[Kerberoz]

Ron Paulfags = libs now?

[Max™]

Huge pic

Spoiler: show

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2Vwa1iA4tP..._3596394_n.jpg

pic is shitty but the only one i could find....

so when do we enslave the zerg?

http://threegirlsfourfistsfifteenway...02/aldaris.jpg

[Vuitton]

My prediction:

USA will never leave Afghanistan now that there is a financial incentive to stay. The moment we leave the country, China, who shares a border with Afghanistan, is going to march right over and annex the country and turn it into "West China" or something, and you know they don't fuck around (see: Tibet and also the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Xinjiang literally means "New Frontier").

So now the USA has to stick around or forfeit Afghanistan to China. Then who knows what Russia will try to do.

[Kuya]

Uh huh

[Vuitton]

There are some good comments on Slashdot about this:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06...stan?art_pos=8