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Old 11-19-2020, 07:18 AM   #21
Anders
 
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Salt. Not generic salts, but Sodium Cloride. its been mined for centuries, and I don't think it forms in massive layers on asteroids like it does on earth.
As I remember, large salt layers are dried up oceans, so they wouldn't be concentrated like that in asteroids.
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Old 11-19-2020, 07:35 AM   #22
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post

We mine a lot of different things. Heavy metals are probably the thing asteroids are best at providing. ]
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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Old 11-19-2020, 08:08 AM   #23
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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The main virtue of asteroids is that most siderophile elements on Earth are trapped in the core; hence the reason people talk about platinum-group metals (most of the group 4/5 elements are common enough that being relatively rare is still not a huge issue, though palladium might be of interest).
Having a source of materials (both raw ingredients and building materials for infrastructure) closer to where they are needed is worth a lot. And in space travel terms, the asteroid belt is closer to low Earth orbit than the surface of Earth is. So asteroid mining will be very appealing to space based industry, even if less efficient than terrestrial mining.
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Old 11-19-2020, 08:21 AM   #24
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
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.
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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Old 11-19-2020, 08:37 AM   #25
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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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Old 11-19-2020, 08:47 AM   #26
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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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.

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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Old 11-19-2020, 09:29 AM   #27
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
You speak of "concentrations" and "deposits" and asteriods probably lack those due to a lack of geological processes. It's probably easy to mine for water ice or similar things but if you're going to grab all those precious metals in those M-type asteroids be prepared to take the whole thing apart atom by atom and then sift those one at a time.
Yeah, I largely envision asteroid "mining" as consisting of basically having machines that chew up (probably mechanically and thermally, possibly chemically) the asteroid, and then process the resulting slurry to pull out the desirable bits and concentrate them. Geological concentration does a lot of your work for you planetside, but I wonder if the issues I noted associated with planetside mining are enough to offset this advantage.

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Possibly no metal mines, but sand and gravel are naturally created and partly sorted by weathering processes. They are used in such vast quantities for construction that bringing them down from orbit is unlikely to be worth the cost.
I failed to consider such materials. Stone of various types - as well as dirt, now that I think of it - would almost certainly be sourced locally. In my defense, I think such places aren't called "mines" per se, but rather "quarries."

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Something often forgotten in these anslyses is the human factor.
Given the level of technology I assumed (original thread was about a TL10 setting), mining of either flavor is likely more-or-less fully automated. My thoughts on the human element was more "Nobody wants a mine in their backyard" - and certainly, environmental regulations are one of the things likely to be in favor of asteroid mining.

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Likewise, the political factor has been ignored so far.
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).

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
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.
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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Old 11-19-2020, 10:09 AM   #28
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Y

Given the level of technology I assumed (original thread was about a TL10 setting), mining of either flavor is likely more-or-less fully automated. My thoughts on the human element was more "Nobody wants a mine in their backyard" - and certainly, environmental regulations are one of the things likely to be in favor of asteroid mining.
Unless you've got environmental regulation on an interplanetary scale, that's mostly going to start being a thing as the population gets denser. It's not something people are going to worry when about the planetary population is numbered in the millions or less. And it's in the earlier periods of development when people are more liable to use more human labour because they don't have a local industrial complex churning out automated machinery.

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.

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Old 11-19-2020, 12:26 PM   #29
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
[*]Phosphates. We mine huge amounts of phosphates every year
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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Calcium Carbonate. Otherwise known as limestone and the primary ingredient of concrete. I'm fairly sure calcium is fairly abundant in asteroids, but I don't know that calcium carbonate is, and I don't know how much extra work is needed to transform it into the most common TL8 building material.
Transforming calcium to calcium carbonate should be quite easy, but extracting calcium metal from minerals would be pretty expensive.
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Old 11-19-2020, 01:42 PM   #30
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Default Re: Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

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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 going to be pretty damn disgruntled.
I suppose this was indeed what I was assuming, and you do make a good argument against it.
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