Surface areas: Israel versus the planet Mars

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that would probably change the cultural view of the word apophis, i like it

If we could use probes to park asteroids in earth orbit, I think that would be the most cost effective thing to do rather than go to the moon or mars for resources.

Yeah exactly. Asteroids are really quite useful. I imagine a lot of people get nervous about the idea of bringing them here. So I suggest that instead of Earth orbit, perhaps we could put them into Lunar orbit, at least until such a time that we are confident in putting them close to the Earth. Or they could be put in one of the Lagrange points. That's still a lot closer than the Main Belt region

Yeah, and start with one small enough to blast the crap out of if there is any problem parking it into orbit. That would make a variety of metals available enough to make new technologies and make them affordable.

Today we worry that a near-earth-asteroid will wipe us out like the dinosaurs by slamming into earth. But Three hundred years from now we will probably have dismantled and melted down all natural objects in the neighborhood of earth for raw materials, and they will be lamenting how "we didnt conserve our near-earth-astreroids when we had the chance".

I am not as certain of that as you are. our technology is no where near good enough now and there is no guarantee of progress.

ruveyn

what would make the near earth asteroids that important?
they dont really have much potential naturally, unlike planets.

Reread the last page of posts by the last half of a dozen posters.

Im not talking about living on asteroids. Im talking about stripmining them for their materials.
(although you could mine one first, and then use the hollowed out shell as a residential colony).

For that purpose asteroids have far more potential than full sized planets precisely because of their lack of gravity. Exporting pig iron from the moon is far more costly in energy than exporting it from an asteroid because even the moon has gravity to fight if your trying to send a bulk cargo of product back to earth.

So if for some reason industry on earth is forced to mine extratrerrestrial bodies for raw materials the asteroids would be the most cost effective places to exploit. Asteroids would be exploited before we would exploit even the relatively nearby moon for that purpose.

Further- if your goal is for humans to colonize the moon and mars etc then that goal would itsself likely require the mining of asteroids.

Exporting human civilization to mars, say, would require an infrastructure of orbiting interplanetary bases. We would end up creating an orbiting civilization of space colonies before it would be feasible to have much human settlement on the planet's surface.

To set up this interplanetary support infrastructure you would have to build alot of stuff in space itsself. To do that you need raw materials. To get the raw materials you would need to mine. The most cost effective place to mine would not be either the earth nor any other large bodies. It would be the asteroids. Thus exploitng full sized planets (and even the moon) would likely force us to go through an asteroid mining phase first.

Or, atleast thats my understanding of one vision of the future. The vision outlined in better detail than I can in the book "the High Frontier" by Gerard O'Neil. Though written in the late seventies it still the most thoroughly thought out and practical vision of space colonization that Ive ever run across.

There are estimated to be ~1,000,000,000 asteroids of various sizes, and ~2,000,000 larger than 1 km in diameter. I'm pretty confident we won't run out for a long time
Mercury is a much better target for strip mining than Mars or the Moon. If I'm not mistaken, the Moon is relatively weak in heavy metals, due to the process of its formation. However, Mercury, while being roughly equal to the Moon in size, has almost equal gravity to Mars- implying great density, and a very, very large amount of exploitable heavy metals. Its pretty hot though, but there are ways to get around that...

sorry i meant what would make them important enough to "miss" them if we use them?

but i agree that asteroids hold great potential for mankind, i just mean they dont have much natural value as such if we leave them alone.

@vig
the moon, while not abundant in heavy metals, have a very high concentration of silicon at its surface, it would make silicon production very cheap, it also holds hydrogen and oxygen so it could be used for rocket fuel.

mercury sounds fascinating but i think venus would be a better candidate short term, as it would allow all the neccesary testing for mercury to be done somewhere remotely comparable.
i like the idea of moving closer to the sun as solar power would be able to power enormous devices, provided they can take the heat.

Last edited by Oodain on 17 Apr 2011, 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The current NASA plan is to visit an asteroid in the mid-2020s. But there won't be any mining. That's for another era.

The theory is to improve our long range space capabilities and do a little science as prep for a Mars flyby or Mars moon visit in the later 2030s. WIth surface landings in the future (maybe far) beyond that. But Mars is always 20-30 years in the future. It's been stuck there for 40 years.

I don't know why we would miss them honestly... Its not like they are rainforests, or whatever. They're just big piles of rock agglomerated together through gravity.
Reminds me though, of a trilogy I read (Mars trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson) where there came to be a debate about terraforming, because some people wanted to maintain Mars in its 'natural state of beauty'- they were later referred to as 'Reds'. Honestly I thought that was stupid and selfish. They talked about the 'intrinsic value of rock, etc'. Nonsense to me

@Oodain: we can't land on Venus, unfortunately- but good point about light metals on the Moon, that is worth it. I was just referring to the idea that the Moon would be good for iron mining, which I don't think it is

@simon_says: next year they'll be putting a plasma rocket into space for some initial tests. It takes the trip time to Mars down to about 2 1/2 months. The time is a lot nearer then you think

yeah i agree,
in the case of the "reds" i could understand if there was life, but on a declining planet like mars i really dont see the harm in restoring it to life.

mars does however hold a romantic image in some peoples head so there might be something about that.

sorry for the double post on the last page, don't know if you noticed my second one, gentlemen

venus is quite possible to use but there would be no surface "dwellers" it would all comprice of cloud cities with short or automated trips to the surface, there are a lot of challenges but if nothing else venus has an interesting atmoshpere.