Space Mining

[Scottty]

Trump signs executive order to support moon mining, tap asteroid resources

The U.S. sees a clear path to the use of moon and asteroid resources.

www.space.com

Trump signs executive order to support moon mining, tap asteroid resources

The water ice and other lunar resources that will help the United States establish a long-term human presence on the moon are there for the taking, the White House believes.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order today (April 6) establishing U.S. policy on the exploitation of off-Earth resources. That policy stresses that the current regulatory regime — notably, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty — allows the use of such resources.

This view has long held sway in U.S. government circles. For example, the United States, like the other major spacefaring nations, has not signed the 1979 Moon Treaty, which stipulates that non-scientific use of space resources be governed by an international regulatory framework. And in 2015, Congress passed a law explicitly allowing American companies and citizens to use moon and asteroid resources.

 

[Duke Nukem]

Trump signs executive order to support moon mining, tap asteroid resources

The U.S. sees a clear path to the use of moon and asteroid resources.

www.space.com

Trump signs executive order to support moon mining, tap asteroid resources

That's great, first step to getting humanity a foothold in space.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

What resources does the Moon have? Does it have iron, gold, uranium?

 

[Duke Nukem]

What resources does the Moon have? Does it have iron, gold, uranium?

Helium-3, it could potentially be useful for fusion reactors in the Future.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Helium-3, it could potentially be useful for fusion reactors in the Future.

Would end up requiring constant visits to the moon, back and forth

Also, I expect other countries to stake their claims ASAP

 

[Duke Nukem]

Would end up requiring constant visits to the moon, back and forth

Also, I expect other countries to stake their claims ASAP

Also Some Asteroids have a lot of platinum, and a quite a few things can be done with platinum if it was more common, so that would be very useful too.

 

[bullethead]

I like the idea, but holy shit, we do not have the tech to make this viable, never mind sustainable.*

*Barring classified tech that Trump knows about that we don't, which is a a big "if".

 

[Duke Nukem]

I like the idea, but holy shit, we do not have the tech to make this viable, never mind sustainable.*

*Barring classified tech that Trump knows about that we don't, which is a a big "if".

I wouldn't be surprised, There's probably a lot of top secret tech the government is hiding, I mean take the SR-71 instance that was developed in the 60's and the public didn't know it existed until the 90's .

 

[Emperor Tippy]

What resources does the Moon have? Does it have iron, gold, uranium?

Titanium.

Turning lunar regolith into titanium forms is easy and resource cheap. Imagine replacing all steel I-Beams with titanium. Because you could actually form them on the moon and ship them to earth cheaper than it currently costs on Earth to produce and ship steel I-beams. The same for replacing steel plates with titanium plates.

I like the idea, but holy shit, we do not have the tech to make this viable, never mind sustainable.*

*Barring classified tech that Trump knows about that we don't, which is a a big "if".

Actually, we do. Establishing a permanent moon base isn't actually that expensive per the latest NASA studies on the topic.

And whenever Starship gets working, that will make it pretty much entirely viable. Once you can get stuff out of the gravity well without having to worry overmuch about mass, exploiting space becomes (relatively) easy.

It's not going to happen today, tomorrow, or next year. But before the end of the decade? Very likely.

And once you are processing titanium on the Moon you make it possible to rapidly build truly massive infrastructure in space.

You also solve one of the biggest problems with nuclear pulse propulsion (getting into space). Once you have titanium processing on the Moon, you can fairly rapidly build an Orion in Lunar orbit (although you would have to ship a lot of the internals up from Earth at least initially). Granted the shipping up of nukes would be fun.

Exploiting space is something that we have actually had the tech to do since Apollo but it has just been ruinously expensive until now.

 

[Arch Dornan]

Would end up requiring constant visits to the moon, back and forth

Also, I expect other countries to stake their claims ASAP

Scramble for the moon? This time all empty so no guilty conscience to fuck the scramble later?

 

[CarlManvers2019]

@Emperor Tippy
Who would be the USA’s top competitors?

I don’t think other countries would approve of the USA having a monopoly on its resources

Scramble for the moon? This time all empty so no guilty conscience to fuck the scramble later?

Empty? Nah, the moon belongs to the rest of the countries of the UN

 

[Arch Dornan]

Empty? Nah, the moon belongs to the rest of the countries of the UN

They have to get there first.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

They have to get there first.

They can stop the US from sending more missions to outer space and back

Send officials, declare NASA to be unsafe and bigoted, try influencing any corporations associated with NASA and the USA to stop it

 

[Arch Dornan]

They can stop the US from sending more missions to outer space and back

By shooting their mission with a missile?

 

[Emperor Tippy]

@Emperor Tippy
Who would be the USA’s top competitors?

I don’t think other countries would approve of the USA having a monopoly on its resources

There aren't any. Unless the US is willing to allow US commercial launch providers to provide the services to foreign nations, you are looking at the rest of the world being ten to twenty years behind the US in space tech and that gap is widening as we speak; not shrinking.

In addition, space is incredibly capital intensive. And the only place where the capital exists going forward is in the US.

They can stop the US from sending more missions to outer space and back

No, they can't. Interference with US space operations is considered (by the US) to be a strategic attack on the US that justifies a full scale nuclear response; the US treats it just as seriously as it would treat trying to interfere with an SSBN or the like.

Any foreign nation attempting to stop the US from doing whatever it wants in space is going to find itself at the top of the US's shit list in a heartbeat.

 

[Arch Dornan]

There aren't any. Unless the US is willing to allow US commercial launch providers to provide the services to foreign nations, you are looking at the rest of the world being ten to twenty years behind the US in space tech and that gap is widening as we speak; not shrinking.

In addition, space is incredibly capital intensive. And the only place where the capital exists going forward is in the US.


No, they can't. Interference with US space operations is considered (by the US) to be a strategic attack on the US that justifies a full scale nuclear response; the US treats it just as seriously as it would treat trying to interfere with an SSBN or the like.

Any foreign nation attempting to stop the US from doing whatever it wants in space is going to find itself at the top of the US's shit list in a heartbeat.

Such a bully the US can be not handicapping themselves to let other lesser countries reach them in the space department.

Hahahaha lol no. If Britain was like that Britannia would never rule the waves.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Such a bully the US can be not handicapping themselves to let other lesser countries reach them in the space department.

Hahahaha lol no. If Britain was like that Britannia would never rule the waves.

They can say that the reasons are different, that the USA has plans on using their space resources and technology for possible future plans and that this stuff needs to be redistributed

 

[Arch Dornan]

They can say that the reasons are different, that the USA has plans on using their space resources and technology for possible future plans and that this stuff needs to be redistributed

That would be generous. Too generous if you ask me.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

That would be generous. Too generous if you ask me.

So what wouldn’t be generous?

 

[Husky_Khan]

Not only good but most likely an inevitability if not a necessity within the next few generations. There are a lot of rare "Earth" metals that are used in electronics extensively whose supply might run out on our planet in a matter of decades IIRC. But asteroids and the like might be promising sources for new supplies of these sort of metals and minerals.

Also relevant...



Video itself is only a smidgen under thirty minutes, and they're always entertaining and informative when they come from this guy.