Study: Everyone hates environmentalists and feminists

[Dogtanian]

The most detailed study of an asteroid shows that it contains precious metals worth at least $20,000bn

Space flight not worth it? My arse, one space mission to get one of these asteroids could easily pay for several, forget selling them, the materials alone could be used hugely in construction efforts.

No one is going to buy $20 trillion worth of precious metals. So the real value will be much lower. And considering that this asteroid is several light years away, it will take tens of thousands of years to land a space-ship on it. And the mission will probably cost more than $20 trillion.

I'm sure the current costs would far outweigh the benefits and is it even realistically  possible to land on an asteroid?

[Wilikon]

"Why don’t people behave in more environmentally friendly ways? New research presents one uncomfortable answer: They don’t want to be associated with environmentalists."

Yeah, it's a huge problem: when you start doing something, for example, to save city's ecology and people hear the word "ecology" they in 95% cases think you're mad activist who gonna handcuff himself to trees or something((

Google who created Greenpeace. Then Google why he quit Greenpeace.

[Lethn]

About 'space flight' we disagree.  It is absurdly wasteful to put the life support systems needed to sustain human life into space.  Even if the human life is expendable it would still be the case.  The cost/benefit simply isn't there from an engineering perspective at this point in our development of technology.  IMO.

People who say that kind of thing about space flight simply haven't done their research.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm

The most detailed study of an asteroid shows that it contains precious metals worth at least $20,000bn

Space flight not worth it? My arse, one space mission to get one of these asteroids could easily pay for several, forget selling them, the materials alone could be used hugely in construction efforts.

I'm sure the materials on it are worth it but is it technically feasible and cost effective not to mention actually even safe to actually land on an asteroid and mine it? Seems like a momentous task on all fronts.

Yes and it is momentous but that's a momentous load of precious metals, you also have to bear in mind there are possibly thousands of those things hurtling through space and one day might also hit us, so it's not only going to benefit us with prosperity it's also going to be needed for our survival if we don't catch those asteroids before they hit our planet, you also have the mathematical fact that this planet simply can't support our population anymore and we are running out of raw materials to dig out of the earth.

Gold for example is becoming more and more scarce to the point where companies are having to mine several miles below the surface in order to come close to breaking even and you have gold mining companies that specialise in re-opening old mines and finding the scraps left behind by the big gold companies because it's become that scarce.

[tvbcof]

About 'space flight' we disagree.  It is absurdly wasteful to put the life support systems needed to sustain human life into space.  Even if the human life is expendable it would still be the case.  The cost/benefit simply isn't there from an engineering perspective at this point in our development of technology.  IMO.

People who say that kind of thing about space flight simply haven't done their research.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm

The most detailed study of an asteroid shows that it contains precious metals worth at least $20,000bn

Space flight not worth it? My arse, one space mission to get one of these asteroids could easily pay for several, forget selling them, the materials alone could be used hugely in construction efforts.

I should have been more clear and said 'manned space flight'.

There are a variety of reason to explore and exploit space, and somewhat less so, matter other than what is currently classified as planet earth.  Mining gold is NOT one of them.  The main reason gold has anywhere near the value it has today is because it is scarce.  If you hop into your spaceship and come back to earth with a golden asteroid in tow, gold would not be scarce and the value would go down to a tiny fraction of it's current value.

Mining silver (no matter where) is a lot more promising since it is a much more generally useful element.  Even so, most people are wholly out of touch with the technical and economic issues associated with working in space (and the general physics of such an endeavor...or the physics of pretty much anything else for that matter.)  Watching 'Alien' does not really help people develop a good understanding of such things.

[Lethn]

There's other stuff in space besides gold and silver, oh and then there are the distant planets with possible atmosphere that have been found and then there's the water on Mars and the Moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potential_habitable_exoplanets - < Only a matter of time before we find a planet with other beings on it or a whole new planet to colonise that just has animals in it

Amazing even with all this evidence there are still people who would argue against space flight at all

[Spendulus]

About 'space flight' we disagree.  It is absurdly wasteful to put the life support systems needed to sustain human life into space.  Even if the human life is expendable it would still be the case.  The cost/benefit simply isn't there from an engineering perspective at this point in our development of technology.  IMO.

People who say that kind of thing about space flight simply haven't done their research.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm

The most detailed study of an asteroid shows that it contains precious metals worth at least $20,000bn

Space flight not worth it? My arse, one space mission to get one of these asteroids could easily pay for several, forget selling them, the materials alone could be used hugely in construction efforts.

I'm sure the materials on it are worth it but is it technically feasible and cost effective not to mention actually even safe to actually land on an asteroid and mine it? Seems like a momentous task on all fronts.

This does not look accurate to me.  Gold deposits on Earth are the product of aggregation through sedimentary (water action) over millions of years.  In a space rock it would likely be mixed in with copper or other things.  Extraction would be near impossible in a vacuum.  Vacuum means no liquid processes, just gas and solid....

Anyway, most things that can be said about an asteroid can be said about the Moon.  But there are always, always exceptions and there could be some particular rock out there that was of major interest....

The difficulty of mining an asteroid versus Moon would be orders of magnitude harder.

[Lethn]

http://www.space.com/22764-nasa-asteroid-capture-mission-candidates.html

[alani123]

Somehow I feel bad for liking the post in the OP.

[tvbcof]

For whatever reason, there seems to be a correlation between Bitcoin fans and those mesmerized by outer-space travel fantasies.  Who knows why that is.  A while ago someone was trying to get people to send him BTC for an outer space mission which he was working on in his spare time because his day job was 'setting the standard' in ASIC Bitcoin mining.

[Spendulus]

http://www.space.com/22764-nasa-asteroid-capture-mission-candidates.html

I feel bad for having to trump space.com and their midget friends at NASA.

From your link-

The space agency's plan aims to bring a 23-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock into lunar orbit using a robotic space lasso. Once the asteroid is in a stable orbit around the moon, astronauts can visit as soon as 2021 using NASA's Orion space capsule and the giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

There are no "stable lunar orbits".

There is no Orion space capsule.

There is no giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

[tvbcof]

I feel bad for having to trump space.com and their midget friends at NASA.

From your link-

The space agency's plan aims to bring a 23-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock into lunar orbit using a robotic space lasso. Once the asteroid is in a stable orbit around the moon, astronauts can visit as soon as 2021 using NASA's Orion space capsule and the giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

There are no "stable lunar orbits".

There is no Orion space capsule.

There is no giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

Maybe if we all kicked in a few BTC there could be.  "Let's roll!"

[Spendulus]

I feel bad for having to trump space.com and their midget friends at NASA.

From your link-

The space agency's plan aims to bring a 23-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock into lunar orbit using a robotic space lasso. Once the asteroid is in a stable orbit around the moon, astronauts can visit as soon as 2021 using NASA's Orion space capsule and the giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

There are no "stable lunar orbits".

There is no Orion space capsule.

There is no giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

Maybe if we all kicked in a few BTC there could be.  "Let's roll!"

no amount of money will create a stable Lunar orbits - that cannot exist.

[tvbcof]

...
There are no "stable lunar orbits".
...

Maybe if we all kicked in a few BTC there could be.  "Let's roll!"

no amount of money will create a stable Lunar orbits - that cannot exist.

That's what they said about cell phone connectivity in airborne commercial aircraft at altitude.  How wrong they were.  Anyway...

I'm not up on my celestial mechanics, but I thought that some moons of some of the larger planets had satellites of their own.  I don't see any description of them in a brief search, however, so maybe I am wrong.  But anyway, if such a thing is impossible in principle (because, say, the largest body will steal the smallest) then it seems that we ourselves would have no moon because the sun would have nailed it long ago?

Also, I remember that in the case of our lunar expeditions, the LEM descended while the main spacecraft went into orbit around the moon until the guys came back.  That would seem to indicate that it is possible for an orbit around the moon to be stable enough to accomplish some sorts of missions at least.

[Lethn]

I feel bad for having to trump space.com and their midget friends at NASA.

From your link-

The space agency's plan aims to bring a 23-foot-wide (7 meters) space rock into lunar orbit using a robotic space lasso. Once the asteroid is in a stable orbit around the moon, astronauts can visit as soon as 2021 using NASA's Orion space capsule and the giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

There are no "stable lunar orbits".

There is no Orion space capsule.

There is no giant Space Launch System mega-rocket.

Maybe if we all kicked in a few BTC there could be.  "Let's roll!"

no amount of money will create a stable Lunar orbits - that cannot exist.

I love ignorant people like you, it just makes it so much easier for me to make money and I realised this thread has derailed a bit, but it was getting boring anyway

[Wilikon]

Somehow I feel bad for liking the post in the OP.

We all do... 

[Spendulus]

....I thought that some moons of some of the larger planets had satellites of their own.  I don't see any description of them in a brief search, however, so maybe I am wrong.  But anyway, if such a thing is impossible in principle (because, say, the largest body will steal the smallest) then it seems that we ourselves would have no moon because the sun would have nailed it long ago?

Also, I remember that in the case of our lunar expeditions, the LEM descended while the main spacecraft went into orbit around the moon until the guys came back.  That would seem to indicate that it is possible for an orbit around the moon to be stable enough to accomplish some sorts of missions at least.

The Moon has internal gravity anomalies, creating an orbit that lasts a couple of years is very difficult and like "threading a needle".  Can be done, couple years is the most.  Look at the LRO mission for example.  That's not a "stable orbit".

[tvbcof]

....I thought that some moons of some of the larger planets had satellites of their own.  I don't see any description of them in a brief search, however, so maybe I am wrong.  But anyway, if such a thing is impossible in principle (because, say, the largest body will steal the smallest) then it seems that we ourselves would have no moon because the sun would have nailed it long ago?

Also, I remember that in the case of our lunar expeditions, the LEM descended while the main spacecraft went into orbit around the moon until the guys came back.  That would seem to indicate that it is possible for an orbit around the moon to be stable enough to accomplish some sorts of missions at least.

The Moon has internal gravity anomalies, creating an orbit that lasts a couple of years is very difficult and like "threading a needle".  Can be done, couple years is the most.  Look at the LRO mission for example.  That's not a "stable orbit".

WTF is an 'internal gravity anomaly'?  I'm not defending the poster who produced the BS that you enumerated, but I'm just sayin'

[Spendulus]

....I thought that some moons of some of the larger planets had satellites of their own.  I don't see any description of them in a brief search, however, so maybe I am wrong.  But anyway, if such a thing is impossible in principle (because, say, the largest body will steal the smallest) then it seems that we ourselves would have no moon because the sun would have nailed it long ago?

Also, I remember that in the case of our lunar expeditions, the LEM descended while the main spacecraft went into orbit around the moon until the guys came back.  That would seem to indicate that it is possible for an orbit around the moon to be stable enough to accomplish some sorts of missions at least.

The Moon has internal gravity anomalies, creating an orbit that lasts a couple of years is very difficult and like "threading a needle".  Can be done, couple years is the most.  Look at the LRO mission for example.  That's not a "stable orbit".

WTF is an 'internal gravity anomaly'?  I'm not defending the poster who produced the BS that you enumerated, but I'm just sayin'

Mascons.  Short for mass concentrations.  One place a guy in a space suit weighs say, 25kg.  (moon gravity 1/6 of earth, assume suited guy at 150kg).  Another place he weighs 25.2 kg.

Think in terms of heavy metal asteroids impacting the Moon and creating local mass concentrations.

Affects orbits, obviously. 

I have to admit though I can't even see the logic in the entire scheme.  Somehow put an asteroid into lunar orbit so that Astronauts can go to the moon and look at it???  We can put robots and sensitive instrument packages on asteroids and gather boatloads of information, without needing to move the asteroid at all.  The base concept had to be that for men to get to the asteroid it had to be anchored somewhere closeby, ergo, lunar orbit.  Better would have been L4 or L5 point, but still....it's all about getting meatspace cans to the rock.

[tvbcof]

WTF is an 'internal gravity anomaly'?  I'm not defending the poster who produced the BS that you enumerated, but I'm just sayin'

Mascons.  Short for mass concentrations.  One place a guy in a space suit weighs say, 25kg.  (moon gravity 1/6 of earth, assume suited guy at 150kg).  Another place he weighs 25.2 kg.

Think in terms of heavy metal asteroids impacting the Moon and creating local mass concentrations.

Affects orbits, obviously.

It's not obvious to me.  Intuitively I would think that an orbit would be established around a centroid (of sorts) irrespective of internal differences in density.  I could, with effort, visualize some harmonics if the orbit was not synchronous and the orbit was close I suppose.  Especially if the anomalies were significant (and I would not thing they would be on our moon.)

I have to admit though I can't even see the logic in the entire scheme.  Somehow put an asteroid into lunar orbit so that Astronauts can go to the moon and look at it???  We can put robots and sensitive instrument packages on asteroids and gather boatloads of information, without needing to move the asteroid at all.  The base concept had to be that for men to get to the asteroid it had to be anchored somewhere closeby, ergo, lunar orbit.  Better would have been L4 or L5 point, but still....it's all about getting meatspace cans to the rock.

That I agree with.

Since we are well off-topic...I read of an idea of changing the earth's orbit (say, to effect the global climate) by appropriating a large body then cycling it around one of the larger planets and Earth.  This to effectively transfer energy from (or to) Earth.  I did a few wild calcs and it seems like it would take many many many thousands of years to have much of an effect though.  And I suspect we'd have some tides of biblical proportions   Fun thought experiment anyway.

[Spendulus]

http://www.space.com/21364-moon-gravity-mascons-mystery.html