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#21 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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As I remember, large salt layers are dried up oceans, so they wouldn't be concentrated like that in asteroids.
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#22 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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No, probably water and other volatiles. Those are easily mined and ubiquitiously useful but bulky to lift from Earth. You'll need a lot more water than you will platinum for catalyts or other industrial uses.
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Fred Brackin |
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#23 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
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#24 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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That scenario assumes high(ish) launch costs and that the prospective buyer is in space. A thriving asteroid mineral extraction industry will kill the platinum mines on earth long before it kills industrial extraction of water and other volitiles. And I've heard it claimed that the best source of nitrogen in the solar system is from titan, once you use a space elevator to get launch costs down (you can do it with steel).
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! Last edited by ericthered; 11-19-2020 at 08:27 AM. |
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#25 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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At TL9, it costs $5,000 per ton to move stuff from LEO to the surface of the Earth, so anything with a value of more than $50/lb will likely be worth shipping down the gravity well. This includes silver, gold, and platinum group metals, as well as advanced electronics, medical instruments, and pharmaceutical drugs. Any TL9+ technology is likely either manufactured in space or using components manufactured in space because the advantages of near perfect vacuum, microgravity, and vibration compensation allow for the production of objects of perfect quality (you end up lacking atmospheric contamination, gravitational defects, and vibration defects).
For example, there are companies that are trying to get capital right now to build growth facilities in LEO for cloned organs because it will be much easier to grow them in microgravity than it will be to grow on the Earth. When they have finished growing, they will be put into a dozen different cloned hearts into a refrigerated drop capsule and send them back down to the Earth. Since a cloned heart will easily be worth $50,000 each, they could make a substantial profit if the space industry was scaled to TL9 levels. |
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#26 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Good observation, but a slight correction: anything with a difference in value of more than $50/lb between earth and space will be shipped down the gravity well. So if you don't get $50 worth of savings from doing it in space, it will stay on earth. The precious metals probably hit the $50/lb of savings, but I don't know if you get those savings on pharmaceutical drugs. At least not most of them, especially because a lot of precursor chemicals will be down on earth.
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#27 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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I was assuming a situation where the main polity had access to the asteroids. Certainly, planetside mining is going to win out when the alternative is not getting any materials at all (or having to pay through the nose to the Baron Lords of the Belt, or whatever). The high cost of drugs is often more closely related to the cost of developing them (note generics tend to be far cheaper than the originals, even when made to exactly the same standards), not to the actual cost of manufacture. Manufacturing them in space may be cheaper (as you note, the precursors may be more readily-available planetside), but once the costs to bring them down the well are factored in, I'd be surprised if they were truly cheaper (at least without something to make space transport dirt cheap). Even if they aren't, of course, you'll probably still have such manufacturing done, as it's likely cheaper to make the drugs there for use in space than it is to make them planetside and carry them up the well.
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GURPS Overhaul |
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#28 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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And if the Federation is imposing environmental regulations created for planets with populations in the billions on start-up colonies, I suspect the colonists are going to be pretty damn disgruntled. Last edited by David Johnston2; 11-19-2020 at 01:46 PM. |
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#29 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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You can probably find them okay in space, but they might not be worth sending planetside. And it's possible the concentrations will be lower due to lack of hydrological activity.
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#30 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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I suppose this was indeed what I was assuming, and you do make a good argument against it.
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