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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday December 05 2017, @10:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the hard-to-swing-a-pick-in-zero-G dept.

So, you want to be an asteroid miner?

So [Williams] started talking to Christopher Dreyer, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines' Center for Space Resources, a research and technology development center that's existed within the school for more than a decade.

It was good timing. Because this summer, Mines announced its intention to found the world's first graduate program in Space Resources—the science, technology, policy, and politics of prospecting, mining, and using those resources. The multidisciplinary program would offer Post-Baccalaureate certificates and Masters of Science degrees. Although it's still pending approval for a 2018 start date, the school is running its pilot course, taught by Dreyer, this semester.

The focus seems to be on space colonies mining what they need in place, more than bringing material back to Earth.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:18PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:18PM (#606298)

    > I see no reason to believe that the heavy elements we have on Earth are harder to come by off-planet.

    "space is huge. Mind-bogglingly huge"
    The far side of the moon probably offers the same benefits as the Earth when it comes to gathering a random assortment of asteroid-delivered minerals within reasonable distance, plus whatever is in the crust.

    The smaller the planetary body, the less chance you have of finding what you need, and the greater the distance to the next place where you will. The asteroid belt likely has everything you need, but each needed mineral will feel like sending a rowboat to India for extra spices. The modern kind of rowboat, with one worker and twelve layers of management in it.

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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:51PM (1 child)

    by meustrus (4961) on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:51PM (#606340)

    The modern kind of rowboat, with one worker and twelve layers of management in it.

    Given that space travel, and technology in general, involves putting more and more raw power in the hands of machine operators to do even comparatively mundane things, this is probably a good thing. It's bad enough that everyone already drives around a kinetic weapon capable of mass homicide even before you start considering the destructive potential of its fuel source. Every such vehicle in space will also double as a nuclear weapon if allowed to fall to the Earth's surface.

    If you have a way to keep everyone safe from such things without taking away individual liberty, I would really love to hear it. It's the hard problem of decentralized technology, today, and it is only going to keep getting worse.

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:57PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday December 06 2017, @07:57PM (#606348)

      I just meant "really really slow".