NASA Offering Contracts To Encourage Asteroid Mining 153
An anonymous reader writes "Two private companies, Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, have received contracts from NASA to study asteroid redirection and will pursue their plans of asteroid mining. From the article: "Deep Space Industries is planning to build a number of dense spacecrafts called FireFlies, and they plan on sending the satellites on one way missions to gather information about the density, shape, composition and size of an asteroid. They also have plans to build a spacecraft called Dragonfly, which has the purpose of catching asteroids. The asteroid material will be collected and returned to Earth by 'Harvesters'. Planetary Resources, on the other hand, plans to build a number of middle sized and small telescopes that will be capable of examining asteroids near the planet Earth for economic potential. They already have the telescopes Arkyd 300, Arkyd 200 and the Arkyd 100, each having its own specific systems."
For the novelty! (Score:2)
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Space-procured Palladium and Platinum has the potential to make space-based mining possible. If you could put an asteroid in earth orbit containing a couple of tons of platinum group metals and extract them (that's the tricky part) you would own the global market for those materials.
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The global platinum market is only $10 billion/year, which is not a lot of money to fund an asteroid mining mission, and to safely land the platinum ore on the ground.
I think that the "platinum group metals" the previous poster talked about, consists of more than just platinum.
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That's also discounting that the platinum group metals are highly useful for industrual catalyst material, which would be indespensible in space-based manufacturing-- It's necessary to produce bulk quantity nitric acid, and is used to make many kinds of hydrogen fuel cell.
Part of the reason why 'World market for platinum" is so small, is because the metals are hard to extract-- they tend to form in useful deposits only old vocanic areas, which have very hard stone matricies that need to be mined. EG-- it's
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What's it like, being a former Enron accountant
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Space-procured Palladium and Platinum has the potential to make space-based mining possible. If you could put an asteroid in earth orbit containing a couple of tons of platinum group metals and extract them (that's the tricky part) you would own the global market for those materials.
From a medium-term perspective, I think iron, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon would be more useful as they would then be available for space-based construction, allowing us to expand our space resources.
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Every attempt to escape Earth's gravity well, every satellite placed in orbit, every trip to the moon, every science package launched into space, every orbital space station placed in orbit, every lander sent to Mars, and all the other space engineering research and theoretical physics research being conducted by some of the brightest minds on the planet will eventually lead to the new ideas and technologies needed to successfully mine asteroids, colonize the solar system, and expand space exploration. The
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Except the earth does not have an endless supply of things to mine. We are working with finite resources that will be exhausted even faster by the ever growing world population. The newest mining technologies is what has increased the US energy production but even these technologies have some serious consequences if taken to far.
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Unless someone gets fusion working. Anything can be recycled if you've got enough energy to throw at it.
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Every attempt to escape Earth's gravity well, every satellite placed in orbit, every trip to the moon, every science package launched into space, every orbital space station placed in orbit, every lander sent to Mars, and all the other space engineering research and theoretical physics research being conducted by some of the brightest minds on the planet will eventually lead to the new ideas and technologies needed to successfully mine asteroids, colonize the solar system, and expand space exploration.
Unless, of course, it doesn't. I figure most of this tech will have to be reinvented by whoever actually does stuff in space. That means I don't think this stuff is particularly useful in anyone's lifetime, much less our own.
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That's the paradox. Almost all of our fundamental scientific knowledge was created in someones mind at very little cost. It's the implementation of those concepts that cost a lot of money. And while a lot of people will never admit it the vast majority of technology advancements have come from the money spent on military applications. The multistage rockets that got the US to the moon also provided the technology to develop ICBM's. Nuclear weapon development advanced the underlying understanding on how to r
This is how Descent begins (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you!
Light on details (Score:2)
Such a missed opportunity... (Score:2)
Obviously the spacecraft should have been called Serenity.
Sigh. Or rather Sci...Fi (Score:4, Informative)
Science fiction authors have totally solved this problem a zillion different ways. They all share certain features. First you go to the asteroid. Second, you set up some sort of mass driver on the asteroid or ion driver, ideally one that uses solar electricity or heat and not imported fuel, but if you don't mind a bit of radioactivity, propulsion by nuke is OK (Orion).
Depends on the mass of the asteroid as well, and how long you want to wait to get it home, and how much of it you want to have left when you get there. If you don't mind waiting a VERY long time, you could even use an angled light sail for propulsion. Third, you drive it home, or rather, have your fully automated computer tools do it for you. Fourth, you get it into Earth Orbit and then use it to threaten the hegemony running Earth, insisting that they send you dancing girls and exotic foods or you'll drop it on their heads -- it makes you way more money than actually selling the metal.
Optionally, you can have your robots smelt the asteroid in place first, using large mirrors to concentrate solar energy to melt the asteroid rock into slag plus metal, perhaps even collecting the slag (with a thin metal coating) to use in your linear accelerator or solar heated rocket as reaction mass. Some asteroids are really comet heads and might be covered with solid gases and ice and might support making real fuel on the spot as well. And fusion would no doubt shift the plan a bit as well.
But the final stage is always to drop them on Earth, not use them for good. Otherwise there isn't any real plot. Sometimes they don't even bother dropping them per se, they just fall by accident. But nobody can resist an umpty teraton-of-TNT explosion: not invading space aliens, not Dr. Evil, not the asteroid mining company's board of directors, not even the grizzled old asteroid miner whose sainted mother was put out onto the street to starve during the housing riots of 2057.
rgb
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Space Resources (Score:2)
The goal isn't to bring the resources back to Earth.
Sure a astroid made out of solid gold might surpass the break even point at current prices you'd only have to bring back more than 50 pounds of gold per million dollars spent to break even. But there are also diminishing returns, too much new gold and the price will crash.
Water and plutonium, which is what the article says they are focusing on, are worth far less than gold.
Having water and plutonium already in orbit means missions can be designed to use th
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> And putting it into a different orbit would be much more difficult than an Earth launch.
This is factually incorrect. Using electric thrusters, and Lunar gravity assist, you can retrieve asteroid rock for about 2% of the rock's mass in fuel. Since part of what you can extract from the rock is more fuel, the mining operation is self-sustaining until the equipment wears out. A reasonable estimate is you can fetch 200 times the mass of a fueled space tug over it's life.
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"Using electric thrusters"
And about a thousand-year burn? Electric thrusters have crap thrust. Fantastic specific impulse, but crap thrust. And even a very small asteroid is going to be in the multi-kiloton range.
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Worth is dependent upon location. Gold buried under 600 tons of radioactive lava is worthless.
Water in a desert is priceless.
Water and high purity plutonium located in outer space are worth far more than gold in that same location.
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The value of gold is only high for people. Cows don't care about gold.
All valuation assumes that there are people in that same location. If they are not there, then the value is always $0.
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Exactly. There are no people in space
chicken egg
nor is there much use for them
pot kettle black
So the water isn't very valuable either.
things are worth what people will pay for them
Too Short, Didn't Read? Allow me to elaborate. There's not much use for people here on Earth, mostly we stink up the place. Space is maybe not the next frontier (seems like we should finish exploring the oceans first) but it's coming up. We are curious monkeys, and we want to know what's out there. So we're going, sooner or later, if we don't drown in our own waste first. And in order to do that, we're going to have to mine asteroids,
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nasa: my qualifications (Score:2)
I average 10.8m isk per hour. Please consider me as your operator. I only require one main with max anchor and drone op, and at least four alts for hauling. What sec are these rocks located? Thank you.
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Son of a bitch... (Score:2)
Investment in our Future (Score:2)
The amount of solar energy that passes closer to us than the Moon is equal to the whole world's fossil fuel reserves every minute. That's not just energy independence, that's a superabundance of clean energy, as long as the Sun lasts. I think that is worth a small amount of R&D funding. Tapping that energy is easier if you can use equipment made locally in space, rather than hauling it all up from Earth. We have no production capability in space at the moment. If we can reach the "bootstrap point",
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(much typing that borders on wild speculation deleted...) The taxpayer's investment will be paid back many times over from higher economic activity.
In what world will that happen? Maybe you didn't get the memo, but "trickle down economics" has been shown to be just so much B.S.
Just don't stop off at LV-426. (Score:2)
That beacon is a warning.
Asteroid Redirection... (Score:2)
Nope...no military applications for that area of research and engineering.
And in other news, NASA's proposed asteroid missions have just been fully funded in perpetuity.
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uhhh... (Score:2)
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No but you might want those contracts from NASA to subsidize the launch fees. Space isn't a game for the poor.
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The pebbles don't have a substantial gravity wells to escape. With asteroids you can use minimal thrust and exploit orbital dynamics to hit earth's atmosphere and fall in.
Not to mention it's a little easier to target specific ones that have the elements you're interested in. At first that's going to be low-reactive(i.e. easy to extract) rare metals like gold and platinum.
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With asteroids you can use minimal thrust and exploit orbital dynamics to hit earth's atmosphere and fall in.
Where the stuff will burn up and/or crash uncontrollably ?
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Not if your math is good enough.
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And slow enough with good heat shielding, and you do just fine.
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How much energy would that take? What is the cost in creating the heat shielding?
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Heat shielding is not the most expensive part of a reentry vehicle.
Getting in orbit in the first place is.
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To elaborate on Mr Reed's point, why not shoot up a rocket whose payload is a rocket? After you attach the rocket and get the rock stabilized, then you spray on the heat shield where it needs it. De-orbit gently, and fall into a giant mattress dump that you've been building up, just for this purpose.
If that idea sucks, then maybe that's why they didn't hire me. But the point is, it is possible to drop a big rock to the surface at less than species ending speeds.
There is a way. If it's a small mountain made
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The pebbles don't have a substantial gravity wells to escape. With asteroids you can use minimal thrust and exploit orbital dynamics to hit earth's atmosphere and fall in.
I agree. It's as if the OP has never played Kerbal Space Program. [xkcd.com]
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The US government already has the ability to destroy the world, thanks in no small part due to NASA research. :-/
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Beyond helping the military test ICBM designs, what did NASA do that could help destroy the world? Any NASA mission or for that matter any USAF mission to redirect an asteroid would be detected months before it could cause any damage.
Or are you talking the Office of Planetary Protection [nasa.gov]? They are far more concerned about containing life here on the Earth than trying to do something that deliberately causes damage.
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One advantage is orbital construction. Aside from some rare metals, its probably best to use Asteroid material to construct space vehicles and fuel. The expense of bringing materials from the ground up to orbit is $10,000 per pound or so.
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Slowing down a vehicle constructed in space down to Low Earth Orbit velocities (actually reducing potential energy but it does increase in actual speed) from a higher orbit is much easier than sending it up from the Earth. You also have options of using extremely high ISP engines like ion thrust that may not have very high thurst but can be used for months or even years continuously.
Manufacturing spacecraft from a factory in space would be much easier to accomplish.... assuming that the factory is built in
Re: Economics (Score:2)
There are three reasons. The first is the main use for asteroid materials is in space, where they already are. Radiation shielding and fuel are the easiest products to make at first. To get anything from Earth into space is expensive, and gets more expensive the farther you go. The second is certain elements sank to the core of the Earth along with the iron, and are therefore very rare. Asteroids can contain hundreds of times higher concentrations. Even though asteroid mining isn't going to start out
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certain elements sank to the core of the Earth along with the iron, and are therefore very rare
Huh ? Iron is the 4th most abundant element in the Earth's crust with 5% concentration.
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In general the idea is that your primary market is in space, and competes with Earth-launch costs. (Such as fuel.) Then incrementally grows as what is essentially a waste product from the first production becomes a product in the second, then the third... say bulk shielding, then simple bulk metal components, then dishes/antennas/etc, then manufactured products like solar arrays. Each competes only with the cost of sending up that product from Earth into space, but eventually you have enough industry going
Re: Rocket Science (Score:2)
We got that big ol' moon out there doing nothing but moving the oceans around... And we chase after pebbles
99% of Near Earth Asteroids take less fuel to reach than the surface of the Moon. That's partly due to the lack of a deep gravity field, partly due to being able to use the Moon itself to slingshot vehicles towards the asteroids, and partly because with a shallow gravity well you can use all electric thrusters, which are ten times more efficient.
I'm not saying to ignore the Moon, it has it's uses. But we should not ignore an easy to reach resource that is *differentiated* into different minerals and ores.
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the politics of that are unworkable. Everyone claims the moon. Some random asteroid though... it is politically possible to grab it.
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The moon isn't comprised exclusively of lunar regolith, you know. Some useful elements are more concentrated [wikipedia.org] than on earth.
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That article missed mentioning the substantial deposits of green cheese.
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That article missed mentioning the substantial deposits of green cheese.
That's because the Moon Nazis already ate most of it.
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(See also: Wallace and Gromit) https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I'll keep warning you, you won't listen (Score:3)
Also, could one of these new asteroid mining companies get whatever's left of Atari to sponsor them so they can fly under the Atari logo?
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A million dollars as ransom? Why such a paltry and pitiful amount of money? That isn't even worth having an FBI agent bother trying to find you in the first place, where you might as well simply demand a dollar if that is your threat.
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Do asteroids really have a defined legal status? I mean, clearly the US owns the moon (what with its flag being there and all), but I didn't know that ownership of the asteroids had been sorted out yet.
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Articles II and III of the treaty are pertinent:
Article II
Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
Article III
States Parties to the Treaty shall carry on activities in the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, in accordance with international law, including the Charter of the United Nations, in the interest of maintaining international peace and security and promoting international co-operation and understanding.
By Article II, the US cannot make a sovereign claim to an an asteroid and assign mineral rights as it does on other federal lands, unless it abrogates the treaty. By Article III, "use of ... celestial bodies, in accordance with international law", it seems similar to mining on the sea floor in international waters, which is go
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Actually it was just meant as a joke, but thanks for the link and info anyway! :)
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"We came in peace for all mankind"
If you look closely, someone has scrawled 'except the godless commies' beneath it.
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You forgot a few parts of that treaty:
Article VIII
A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed or constructed on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth. Such objects or component parts found beyond the limits of the State Party to the Treaty on whose registry they are carried shall be returned to that State Party, which shall, upon request, furnish identifying data prior to their return.
In other words, sovereign claims can still happen for stuff that is mined. You may not claim the whole Moon, but you can claim stuff you pull off of the Moon.
Another very important part of this treaty is this:
Article XVI
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
In other words, it is a paper tiger that is ultimately meaningless against any real sovereign claims. I think this provision will ultimately be invoked by some country when they try to make a substantial move to make a sovereign claim by actually going to the Moo
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"the legal status of such objects places them in them as international heritage??"
What legal status? There are no courts in space.
Any law or treaty passed by the UN means squat if the UN ain't got no spaceships to enforve them.
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Since everybody who has sent astronauts into space and routinely sends spaceships into space has nukes (except for Japan.... and nobody doubts they have the capability of building nukes), the treaties involving the legal status of objects in space has some real enforcement teeth. The question that needs to be asked though is if any country would be willing to start a global thermonuclear war over a sovereign claim made by another country?
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The question that needs to be asked though is if any country would be willing to start a global thermonuclear war over a sovereign claim made by another country?
The question that needs to be asked though is if any country would be stupid enough to risk throwing nukes when the response is going to come from space. Once you're actually in a position to mine asteroids, you're also in a position to bombard the Earth with rocks.
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Why is the US government, through NASA, funding projects to mine asteroids when the legal status of such objects places them in them as international heritage???
There is no such legal status by most of the serious players in space, particularly, the US, Russia, or China.
The bottom line here, this is not something that can be negotiated by governments, each individual has a stake in this.
The individual doesn't have a stake. Possession is nine tenths the law. And there is no legal or power projection infrastructure for the individual to make a claim on any pebbles in space. This type of bullshit claim is easy to handle by just ignoring it.
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The "Common Heritage of Mankind" principle wasn't enacted, because the US and other spacefaring countries never signed the second Moon treaty. We follow the first Outer Space treaty, which prohibits territorial claims of celestial bodies. Use of a celestial body is allowed, with certain restrictions, like no weapons of mass destruction. Mining valuable resources falls into the allowed use category.
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As it stands now, we are all effectively owners, as is our children.
No, as it stands now, we are effectively jerking off, because none of us are in a position to claim ownership of rocks in space. Only the first person to set up camp there will be in that position, not least because they will have a ready supply of said rocks.
I don't know about you, but I certainly won't give up my rights or claims and anyone with an ounce of sense wouldn't either.
You won't have to. They will be taken from you, just as easily as they were granted. Assuming you even think they were granted, which they actually weren't.
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Hypothetically, how about people who want to assemble things in orbit?
Having bulk supplies of raw materials would be hella useful, because it's even more expensive to launch iron from the ground. Imagine the utility of a programmable satellite factory. It'd save a fortune in launch costs and it would generate less space junk. Win-win.
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Yes, the best use for asteroid mining is the far more economical availability of material for orbital construction.
The big problem is that there is zero infrastructure, and that's going to be incredibly expensive to build in space.
I think the expense is worth it in the long run, but the returns are going to be slim until we've got everything up and running. When it is running, however, it would be a major achievement of humanity.
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> there is zero infrastructure, and that's going to be incredibly expensive to build in space.
Bootstrap from a small starter kit. Use local materials for the self-expansion. See http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/S... [wikibooks.org] for details.
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This is a good idea, but self-generating factories have to be able to be built from local materials and sometimes, the local materials are lacking. Water is something that would be useful, but is hard to transport, and difficult to find on most rocky and metallic asteroids. You may be able to generate water from certain processes, but then the rock has to have those resources available as well.
Think about dropping your seed factory in a desert. Lots of solar energy, not a lot of water, and a lot of dried
Re:Self-expanding factories (Score:2)
> Imagine the utility of a programmable satellite factory.
I don't just imagine such things, I'm working on building them ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/S... [wikibooks.org] ). Instead of trying to launch a whole space refinery and chemical plant, you send a starter kit (a "seed"), and use it to progressively build the rest out of local energy and materials. Since the laws of nature are the same everywhere, the Seed Factory concept works just as well on Earth, so our first generation design is for here. Later version
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...Since the laws of nature are the same everywhere, the Seed Factory concept works just as well on Earth, so our first generation design is for here. Later versions will be for more hostile environments like the oceans, deserts, ice caps, and space. Where it gets really interesting is using an expanded factory to make new starter kits. This is very similar to how biological plants reproduce. An acorn doesn't make another acorn directly. It grows into an oak tree first, then produces more acorns.
Good for you! You are proposing to build an actual von Neumann machine. Such things are obviously possible (given the evidence of living things) - but I have never seen a proposal to actual build one, or even a defensible estimate of what would be required to build Humankind's first one.
Any estimate on when we will see this is more than just an electronic document? Currently the WikiBook about this flys at such a high level that it is impossible to tell whether there really is anything here.
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There are things called lathes and other machine tools that can reproduce themselves. Without that capability, the Industrial Revolution would have never happened. The real question is how many of these kind of tools together with a good smelter do you need before you can be self-sufficient and keep making your own sets of tools out of raw materials?
This is a big deal because it would be nice to get a set of these kind of tools into the hands of people in 3rd world countries, or for that matter have a few
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Welcome to twenty years ago. Please try to use the internet's "search" capabilities. Thanks.
http://www.urbandictionary.com... [urbandictionary.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Welcome to twenty years ago. Please try to use the internet's "search" capabilities. Thanks.
http://www.urbandictionary.com... [urbandictionary.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Just because a word is in use, doesn't make it appropriate for every circumstance. "that's a hella cool bitcoin mining rig ya got there, bra." is one thing, but discussing the relative merits of asteroid mining is another, IMHO.
It's all about context. You are familiar with the concept of context, yes?
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http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/... [oed.com]
Reputable enough for you, you absurd human being?
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but first, the space Escalator.
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Mal. Bad. In the Latin.
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Yes, it is really strange that they do not do that. You have to wonder why they did not just do that with the Shuttle, just a parachute instead of those ceramic tiles. What could possibly be the problem with a parachute going MACH 20? Or more likely MACH 100+, in the case of an incoming asteroid?
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because oops