Interesting article thread

[MrTwosheds]

Nice I'm trying to think of a use for it...

We Americans rule, baby!

You could save a fortune on ICBM's and nukes just by dropping rocks on your enemy, not too much fallout either.
Hey we got ourselves a new arms race! Now who's gona be the genius who can get stuff into orbit for less than a million dollars?

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Moon orbit is the no-brainer for future industrial space mining.

#1 It's close to home.

#2 We can bring large metal asteroids in and place them in a close, but safe orbit for processing.

#3 Underneath you have a low gravity well, no atmosphere to fight to retrieve water, oxygen, and helium-3.

#4 The added benefit of surface mining metals from some very large meteorites and splash fields.

#5 No man made orbital debris field to worry about, so you can build very large structures incorporating centrifugal chambers or possibly even a 'sci-fi' torus for mandatory artificial g.

[Zenophas]

#2 We can bring large metal asteroids in and place them in a close, but safe orbit for processing.

I would never ever want a foreign body near my planet, ever.

[Iron_Maiden]

Lolz:

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/04/ ... asas-home/

[Zenophas]

POMF POMF KIMOCHI

[APCs r Evil]

Hardly the first time the TSA has done something deplorable that brings public outrage, yet people are still surprised when it happens to them...

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Why is it lucrative to consider capturing even one medium-sized asteroid?

Once a workable space industry comes online, THIS single rock could become virtually the go-to source for ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, platinum, cobalt, nickel and iron. The announcement a few days ago a reputable group from the private sector is going to get serious, gives me hope.

Last week Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke compassionately about the dream we've lost and desparetly need to get back. Well worth 40 minutes.

[MrTwosheds]

Security issues aside, I think its a great idea, hollow it out and turn it into a space station and 0 g manufacturing plant. Going to need a better way to get there though, current rocket/shuttle technology is too expensive. I wonder if you could launch smaller craft from a high altitude helium zeppelin, gain speed falling back down a bit and then blast up out into orbit. It would probably require a lot less fuel gaining altitude tangentially, rather than blasting straight up from the ground.
No idea how you would get the stuff down again without making big holes in the ground. I guess you would have to make big wing landers out of it.
Insurance companies are going to love them.

[GSH]

Google zerg rush today.

-- GSH

[Zenophas]

Google zerg rush today.

-- GSH

Oh, I love it.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Security issues aside, I think its a great idea, hollow it out and turn it into a space station and 0 g manufacturing plant.

Oh my, once again, the scale must be considered. Even an industry-level endeavor. . . to hollow out a rough sphere containing hundreds of billions of tons of metal rich ore, roughly a mile in diameter, would take decades. My guess is it would never be "hollowed out", but 'honeycombed' to a point where it is no longer feasible to mine, as it would reach a point where it transitions into more space station than a mined object in orbit around the Moon. Not sure what would be more feasible and useful, to leave it non-rotating as a micro g environment, or spin it to a desirable higher g.

[Red Devil]

throw some zergs at it have to be careful, though; get it out of balance and it'd go careening across the solar system like some coca-cola-crazed 8 year old behind the wheel for the first time.

[MrTwosheds]

Well just how the hell are they going to move a 1 mile diameter asteroid into orbit? It would either take years to get it moving or a seriously feersum endjinn
I expect they would try a small one first.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

I suspect to move a mass of that size would be a milestone in itself. In the hard sci-fi novel 'Heart of the Comet', Halley's Comet , which is several times larger (~9 mile long axis, but probably similar in mass to an all metal asteroid 1 mile in dia.) is moved by mass drivers launching small cylinders (1/2m x 1/4m) of mined mass into space to several hundred meters per second by a dozen or so linear accelerators. It takes a couple years of 24/7 operation, each accelerator launching cylinders several times a minute to alter the orbit by a few hundred meters per second. . .but enough to alter the orbit slightly and put in a 1 AU orbit to be harvested.

Heart of the Comet - Free to Read

[Red Devil]

...then there's the little problem of adding that much mass to the Earth's mass, kinda like adding an out-of-place wheel weight