Planetary Resources; grab your pickaxe and look to the sky!

[Ecks]

This sounds cool why isn't it a thing yet. I'd rather they be spending this $50 billion on space shit than on what other rich people do (i.e. expensive toys and bribing the government to pander to their specific wants at the expense of the not-so-wealthy).

[Amake]

I'd rather they be spending this fifty billion on like getting drinking water to everyone, but what are we going to do. At least this shows a little forward-thinking and I guess we shouldn't mock that.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

That will be one of the side-benefits of this venture. Water is/will be available in large quantities as the chief resource sought after first for a few reasons as laid out in their 'road map' of goals.

Water for drinking, water for fuel, water for radiation shielding, water for X reason. Metals and other materials come after extraction of water is successful and a standardized. Up front the cost efficiency may be daunting to get it down here, but when one lands on a 500 meter chunk of mostly water worth, roughly $50 billion in water alone, the returns more than pay off the cost. There'd be further incentive to increase earthbound cargo transport efficiency to reduce the overhead.

Not saying its an easy task, but not impossible and the payoffs for the effort are very high. The money is just sitting up there waiting to be plucked. And yes, I'm being very optimistic bout it. Have no doubts in my mind there'd be setbacks and problems. But setbacks, failures, and problems are only learning moments. Only a damn fool expects perfection on the first try and a damn idiot gives up at the first fail.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Grandmaster_Skweeb

That will be one of the side-benefits of this venture. Water is/will be available in large quantities as the chief resource sought after first for a few reasons as laid out in their 'road map' of goals.

Water for drinking, water for fuel, water for radiation shielding, water for X reason. Metals and other materials come after extraction of water is successful and a standardized. Up front the cost efficiency may be daunting to get it down here, but when one lands on a 500 meter chunk of mostly water worth, roughly $50 billion in water alone, the returns more than pay off the cost. There'd be further incentive to increase earthbound cargo transport efficiency to reduce the overhead.

Not saying its an easy task, but not impossible and the payoffs for the effort are very high. The money is just sitting up there waiting to be plucked. And yes, I'm being very optimistic bout it. Have no doubts in my mind there'd be setbacks and problems. But setbacks, failures, and problems are only learning moments. Only a damn fool expects perfection on the first try and a damn idiot gives up at the first fail.

Pretty sure bringing that water to earth would be a huge huge waste of time. Like no one who wants to mine space wants to mine it for water. That water schtick would be a side thing to actually make space useable.

[shiney]

Apparently the better use of the water would be to break it down to create even more rocket fuel? But it could be very, very, VERY useful toward establishing long-term presences on the moon and Mars etc etc. And would save a shitton of money for humans to not have to transport water FROM Earth?

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Sifright

Pretty sure bringing that water to earth would be a huge huge waste of time. Like no one who wants to mine space wants to mine it for water. That water schtick would be a side thing to actually make space useable.

If you ask me the worth of the water is that it's already up there. Like Shiney and others have said, getting up there is the hard part in all instances. If you can gain and maintain a steady supply of the materials you need to produce while already in space you've skipped the hard part of the battle.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by K-Resh

If you ask me the worth of the water is that it's already up there. Like Shiney and others have said, getting up there is the hard part in all instances. If you can gain and maintain a steady supply of the materials you need to produce while already in space you've skipped the hard part of the battle.

Yea thats what i meant by side schtick to make space usable, but skweeb was saying we would try and bring down a 500 cubic metre water roid to earth which one would be impossible and two wouldn't ever be worth the attempt because we have shitloads of water on earth

[Bells]

Searching for water is just a clear goal that we can build towards. that's all.

We know what water is, we know how to transport it, we know how to get it, we know where it can exist in space. So we can build equipement, train and prepare for THAT.

Once we get up there and go "Hey! There is a chunk of Platinum up here!"

Then we can start working on that. It's a solid hook to get a first step through the door, nothing else.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Originally Posted by Sifright

Like no one who wants to mine space wants to mine it for water. That water schtick would be a side thing to actually make space useable.

I get the feeling you didn't read much into any of this. Water is the goal. Everything else comes after water.

I touched on it with my initial post and Shiney brought it up again. Again, the whole venture lies upon one resource first and foremost: Water. You drink it, it is an effective radiation shield (not advocating using it for that purpose, merely a side benefit by virtue of its very nature), split it and you get rocket fuel, what you don't need when split can be recombined back into water, various other uses for off planet sustainability.

To expound on the fuel portion some more. Lift off Earth. Swing by water fuel supply stationed between Earth and moon. Move beyond moon and stop at another resupply station before Mars. So on and so forth.

If you read my post instead of skimming I never said bring down the entire 500 meter chunk of rock and ice. That's a ludicrous notion not even worth entertaining. Break off smaller manageable pieces, cut off the waste material, sell bits to X bidder when it becomes efficiently cost effective to bring stuff back to earth. There's plenty of water down here, yes. Where there's man, there's need of clean drinkable water. I'm sure agricultural areas stricken by large periods of drought would love extra water regardless of if it came from earth or space. But again, another topic for another day for people with more knowhow on sustainability than I.

Bells is right in that water is the hook, even if underplayed. It is the hook.

In short:
No water-> no mining -> no metals/other goodies -> no water = no point.

[tacticslion]

I think Sifright's main problem is that - to him - it seems like a waste, compared to say, Clean Water for the world. In which case he kind of has a point. He wants to make the world itself a better place, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And yet, just because someone could theoretically do something "better" (now) with the finances they have, doesn't actually negate any particular use of their own finances, so long as it isn't blatantly immoral (as in knowingly harming others). And this is doing more or less the opposite: this is finding out how we, as a species, can expand beyond the limits we currently have. This is literally our first step toward long-term, consistent space travel.

A reason this is so exciting by way of analogy? The space program before now is basically that of a new born learning how to get up on hands and knees and rock back an forth. We've built muscle, proved that we can do it, and actually shown that there is a reliable theory of space travel that can happen. Nothing's actually occurred out there (although many, many important things have been built down here), but we've now just shown the viability of actually crawling. And once we get things up there, we can begin crawling. And then one day we'll take our first step. That first step will be clumsy, and we'll need a lot of safety nets, but it'll be there. And then one day we'll walk on our own. (And so on.)

Despite the massively amazing things we've done, the space program is still basically in its infancy. But this is the proof that we're finally starting to grow up!

(Yes, I know. I'm a father! What?)