Thursday, May 25, 2017

Hauling an Asteroid to the Middle East for Big Bucks - Science

Maybe you recall some Sand Capital said it was going to tow an iceberg into its harbor so all would have plentiful fresh water.  They announced that like it hasn't been suggested a hundred or so times already.

Similarly, we have the Asteroid Fantasy in which we will tow an asteroid to Earth orbit.  That one hasn't come as often as the Iceberg Myth but this isn't the first time.  (RT:  Asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion ‘could transform global economy’)


©  NASA / Arizona State Univ.

Unknown why the pic of that Space Explorer since it can barely tow itself.


NASA scientists are outdoing themselves yet again: by reworking the planned route for a robotic mission to a giant asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion, they’ve managed to cut costs, launch sooner and arrive four years earlier than planned. Not bad.

The Psyche planetoid, measuring 240km (149 miles) in diameter, is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is made almost entirely of iron and nickel.

At current market prices, such an asteroid, a truly unique object in our solar system, is estimated to be worth $10,000 quadrillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000). That is, if you could successfully tow it into orbit and then mine it (and find someone to buy all of it, of course). For scale, the entire global economy is worth over $74 trillion.

- RT

Well, ain't that grand.  Everyone will have plentiful fresh water.


Breaking out only a four-function calculator how high do you estimate that cost relative to mining the asteroid in-place with robos and shipping the product back to Earth in drone supply / return ships.

Elon Musk could put that plan together in, oh, fifteen or twenty minutes.


Some of you don't want to hear about the Age of Robos but it's coming anyway.  The ones they're not making insufferable with these phony AIs for being congenial will be digging up rocks in space as good robos should be doing.

Ed:  why?

Because we don't want to do it.  Space is cold, dirty, and we don't wanna do it.

Ed:  dirty?

Did you ever see anyone on Star-Lord's ship taking a shower?


The work is perfect for robos since it's miserable, incredibly dangerous, and far harder than we're willing to work.  Down here, if you tear your shirt, you only need to get another shirt.  In space, you fuckin' die.  Definitely send robos instead.

There's no way you will be able to build a Mars colony without them since it would croak too many astronauts trying to get it started and, splat, the funds dry up.  People aren't going to pay big bucks just to kill astronauts.

Ed:  NASA doesn't cost big bucks!

I know but take the point as it stands, if you please.  It doesn't matter what it costs when people see it yielding dead astronauts.  That will go for a little while but not long.


Of course, you could try towing that asteroid here, possibly miscalculating and crashing it into Earth.  Some say that's the same way the first Moon got created and, congratulations, now Earth has another one.  Too bad no-one will see it.

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