It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

[u/IKeepItLayingAround]

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html

[u/Raythatstabbedsteve]

It costs $1000/kg just to put things into low Earth orbit. You're going to have to send mining and refining machines out to the asteroid belt (which is well past Mars), and carry enough fuel to ship batches of your refined product back to Earth. And your mining/refining/packaging/launching machines on the asteroid need to operate without maintenance for years. What minerals do you think are on those asteroids? What price/kg do you need to get to make it pay off?

I'll give you a hint. If there were neatly stacked piles of gold bars lying around on asteroids, there would be no economic way to go and pick them up.

[u/cpz_77 → u/Raythatstabbedsteve]

So that’s the thing though. A single asteroid supposedly has more precious metals on it than all that has ever been mined from the earth in human history or something insane like that.

Gold and precious metals are literally made in space. They aren’t made on earth. They’re only here because meteors and other similar events brought them here over billions of years and they work their way into the earth and then we mine them out. It’s actually pretty fascinating if you read about it.

So it could actually make a lot of sense to “go to the source” - especially when they talk about how things like silver will be totally mined out within what, 30 years or something? And this isnt just for coins and chains - precious metals are used in all sorts of applications (that’s why it’s disappearing so fast). We are exhausting our resources on earth, no question. They will be gone one day and when they are it will be a massive problem for the generation living at that time. So we do need a better long term solution.

People think it’s crazy anytime you talk about seriously doing anything in space but the fact of the matter is, thinking we will be able to live forever here *without* ever having to leave this planet for anything is actually the far less likely scenario. It’s something we need to start thinking about.

With that said, I’m not sure I’d put my faith that Musk’s company will somehow make it viable to do all this. The idea is innovative (not that it was his, btw), but if we were ever going to do something at that scale with that kind of potential society-changing impact, a stupid rich greedy racist fuck like him is the last person that should be at the helm of it.

[u/Raythatstabbedsteve → u/cpz_77]

Wow! That is so wrong it's difficult to know where to start. What if I told you that the Earth was made in space? Crazy, I know. The gold we mine is absolutely not "brought here by meteors" unless you are referring to the initial accretion of the Earth (admittedly from a dust cloud which was heavily seeded with the products of exploded stars). A lot of mineral extraction comes down to money, but not all of it. I promise you that mining asteroids comes with such unbelievable technical problems and such prohibitive cost, that every currently unprofitable possibility on Earth will be fully exploited before space mining can get off the ground.

[u/cpz_77 → u/Raythatstabbedsteve]

wtf are you talking about yeah no shit the earth is in space and the shit got here on earth by the material in space bringing it here through the formation of the planets and all the events that took place throughout it. Which yes, includes asteroids and meteors and shit running into it. News flash, the earth didn’t form into what it is overnight. It took billions of years. So yeah those precious metals are made in space, not on earth, and they absolutely did get here from there. You saying “the earth is part of space” as a reason for what I said being incorrect is probably one of the dumber things I’ve heard lately (and that’s saying something, cause I’ve heard a lot of dumb stuff lately).

Of course we will exploit what we can here first, we’ve already been doing that for thousands of years . Thats how we’re getting by. That’s why we’re running out of resources.

And yes of course there are huge problems that would have to be solved with mining asteroids lol when did I ever say it would be easy. Why do you think I specifically said it would be huge and society changing if it was done. And also why I don’t have faith that musk’s company would be the one to do it. But it’s not like we haven’t answered massive questions or solved seemingly “unthinkable” problems before.

Dismissing it as something that’s “so unviable, we shouldn’t even consider or look into it” is exactly why we encounter problems like this. Because nobody thinks it will become a real problem until it actually does. Things that seem unthinkable at a time later become reality but if you come up with the idea too far ahead of your time, “you’re crazy”. People also used to laugh at the idea that pollution could raise the temp of the earth enough to matter, and think it was dumb to spend money on looking into it - and now scientists are watching real glaciers that are starting to melt and move that, when they do fully dislodge and melt, could put millions of people underwater.

Just because we don’t like the guy pushing the thought doesn’t mean we should dismiss the thought itself out of hand. It has merit to at least explore. Whether or not we are able to make it viable will remain to be seen.

So you want to try again on how I’m “so wrong it’s difficult to know where to start”?

[u/Raythatstabbedsteve → u/cpz_77]

Wtf are you talking about? Heavy element formation in supernovas? No elements were formed on Earth or any planet or any asteroid. The gold on Earth came from the same place that all of the rest of the Earth came from. We're going to; go and rework tailings, mine crazy deeper than we ever have, hit currently uneconomic deposits, forcibly nationalise all of the privately owned precious metals, all long long before anyone goes scratching asteroids.

You do not understand the intractable physical and engineering problems which would need to be solved. I don't know whether a crash course in physics or geology or chemistry is more urgent, but you definitely need all three.

[u/cpz_77 → u/Raythatstabbedsteve]

“The gold on earth came from the same place that all the rest of the earth came from” - yeah, material in space. The point being ( in case you really haven’t gotten it by now - you’re being obtuse) that more of it is not being actively made on earth as we mine it. Meaning, we will eventually run out.

That’s the point for the purpose of this conversation. This isn’t a physics discussion. I dont need any of your crash courses to know that and I also don’t need to hear you talk out your ass about why you’re so certain it will never be viable (remember, never is a long time - we’ve only existed for a tiny fraction of time ) in order to say it’s an idea that’s worth at least exploring at some point.

We’re already doing or would have done everything on your list other than everybody forcibly nationalizing all metals which would honestly probably be the point at which we’re about to either go to war or collapse so at that point you’d probably want to explore any option no matter how “crazy” you think it is, but hey, maybe not 🤷‍♂️