[AALee]

It was a huge deal. A lot of discussion about who would descend the ladder first.

[TiepayWrary]

Free Earth!

[astonmartinrx371]

It's a shame. I'd love to say that my parents generation were the ones that took the inspiration and ran with it and continued on with space exploration, but sadly, that's not the case. They've had what, 40 years to act on the same dreams that the grew up with and done nothing.

I only hope that mine can do better.

There was only so much they could learn from moon rocks, so NASA turned its attention to orbital work. We now have weather satillites, a Global Positioning System, etc.

Still, a moon based would be nice. Or an L-5 base. Or a base on one of Mars's moons. Or a mining base in the asteroids. Something. We need to go boldly where none have gone before.

[ArraryTauTDew]

It's much more efficient to keep fusing lighter elements until you get iron, or to keep splitting heavier elements until you get iron. Throw enough energy at enough matter and you can't not get iron.

[avaiftBoara]

one of those mega asteroids thats like a mini moon has almost 10x the amount of iron resources than Earth as a whole has. I wonder how scientists know how much iron is inside an asteroid without ever having been there to run tests.

[lalffibra]

You bounce various kinds of light off the surface. Signals that you get are compared to known samples, and you can figure out the surface composition. The process is known as spectroscopy. And the surface would tend to be less dense than the interior (for energetic reasons), so treating the composition as the surface should give you a rough lower bound for the whole.

[Enrivaanonock]

Hey, I didn't pull that stuff out of my ass it was what I saw. There are minerals that we could get from asteroids, that isn't hard to believe. And a plus side, as I see it, is that all those mines we have on Earth now can be shut down, then teach those workers that want to how to mine in space, the Earth heals itself, areas for people to live open up, etc. But thats just me.

How about the other benefits of space travel, like say an extra-orbital solar power plant. There was something I saw, it was that crazy Japanese scientist with the big hair, about solar energy being beamed via radiowaves *like charging your phone wireless-ly*. So image these power plants orbiting out of Earth's true orbit but still synchronous with us to always be generating energy from direct orientation with the sun. Set up enough to power the planet and boom, no fossil fuels for power plants. *This wouldn't work because big oil/gas/etc. would lose money*

[foltdan]

In a pinch, kittens make excellent lintbrushes. -FACT!

[jojocomok]

Hey, I didn't pull that stuff out of my ass it was what I saw.

Elemental abundance of iron on Earth (by mass) ~32%
Mass of Earth 6*10^24 kg
Mass of the largest known asteroid in the belt (1 Ceres) 9*10^20 kg
Mass of all known asteroids together: 3*10^21 kg

zakudl:

[hubua990]

"Minable iron" using what definition?

Current tech? Because iron in the Belt isn't exploitable economically for use on Earth with current tech either. Not even close.

There is no current shortage of iron on earth that can be solved with iron from space.

If you want to talk about using space-mined iron to build **** in space then that's a different story. But it's not a story that has anything to do with the Earth not having enough iron. It's a story about the fact that the Earth's iron is deep in a gravitational well. The lift costs far exceed the mining costs. By many, many orders of magnitude.

And none of this detracts from the fact that what zakudl was patently ridiculous (he's a thinking man's version of Wiggy, after all).

[Mister.levitra]

Free beer!

finally, some sense out of you.

[RBJamez]

as little as I pay attention to your posts I do pay attention when they have merit

advanced mathematics, physics, astrophysics

zakudl

[Vmysobfi]

I suppose that my post involved "advanced" concepts the same way that it's not elementary that states cannot make immigration laws and that the value of fiat money in its own units involves no special faith in the issuer.

[Alkanyadela]

I'm not real. I am a manifestation from the Matrix sent forth to cause chaos, devastation, and confusion...Come on man, you aren't still thinking I am a dl...I can make one if you would like.

[Alkanyadela]

I'm not a DL.

[JakilSong]

Indeed he is.