Discussion The next 100 years..

[fsci123]

2020-ish - China has built its small space station, everyone congratulates them and moves on. China continues with manned launches to the station over the next few years.

A few years later, China launches a rocket with a large "orbit maintenance booster" as its payload and docks with their small station in LEO. Two days later the entire station performs a TLI and heads to the moon.

The major powers are in an uproar, the press calls it "the Space Pearl harbor" and the US congress demands answers from everyone from NASA to the CIA.

A week later the second nation flag is planted on the moon, a Chinese one. A week after that a small habitat is deorbited from the Chinese station in lunar orbit.

At this point Space funding goes through the roof in all major countries, minor countries offer what ever they can to support their favorite major power. Technology leaps ahead at an astounding pace, new propolusion technologies, new materials, more computing power. By 2050 every nation in the world has at least one commercial space port offering trips to the moon or LEO hotels. By 2100 trips to Mars are just like going to the beach for a long weekend.

Who really knows what will happen, but as my Dad likes to say "no one will care about the moon until China puts a big old honking space laser up there!"

I have a feeling that china will collapse and there will be another Chinese civil war far before they ever have a solid date of when they will make a moon mission...

 

[Izack]

At this point Space funding goes through the roof in all major countries, minor countries offer what ever they can to support their favorite major power. Technology leaps ahead at an astounding pace, new propolusion technologies, new materials, more computing power. By 2050 every nation in the world has at least one commercial space port offering trips to the moon or LEO hotels. By 2100 trips to Mars are just like going to the beach for a long weekend.

Simple answer: Too cool to happen in reality. But oh, if it did...

Who really knows what will happen, but as my Dad likes to say "no one will care about the moon until China puts a big old honking space laser up there!"

I wonder if even that would garner much more of a reaction than uproar in the Security Council and perhaps boycotts by some UN countries. :shrug:

 

[C3PO]

We owe the Home Computer Revolution to some lucky breaks: unexpensive ICs, devoted hobbysts ...

The difference is of course that you can't get into orbit in small steps. The difference in the amount of energy required for orbital flight, compared to a 100 km suborbital hop, is too large. And there's no point in aiming for a point in between, so we can't rely on the same progression we got in computing.

 

[T.Neo]

I think people take China for more of an Evil Empire than they really are. China doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast in space. It's progressing at what, a tenth the rate of the US/russian space programs? Certainly when flight rate is concerned. Their plans don't look all that amibitious, and they don't look like they're going to "pull a fast one" and plant a death-ray on the Moon.

Maybe increased political competition will lend itself to new lunar programs and soforth, but if a government needs to spend money to look impressive, they'll spend a lot of money- which means that cost reduction no longer becomes so much of a problem. In essence, it has a lesser chance of "opening up" manned spaceflight.

What manned spaceflight needs, is a "killer app". If it does exist, nobody has found it yet. Even political competition won't cut it- after all, Apollo only lasted for a few missions, and the Soviets axed their moon program without even going to the Moon.

If we had another planet in the solar system that was actually habitable, maybe there would be more of a push towards space. But alas, we are in between a hellish hothouse and a freezing desert, and orbited by a dry cinder, places most people couldn't care less about.

Or end up producing something worse than Skynet, GLaDOS, and that computer from Paranoia combined.

Or it could produce something worse still; not only something worse than Skynet, GLaDOS and that computer that I've never heard about before, but something worse than Skynet, GLaDOS and that computer I've never heard about before, combined with the psychology of an evil corporation:

 

[C3PO]

Or end up producing something worse than Skynet, GLaDOS, and that computer from Paranoia combined.

You're talking about Facebook, right? :lol:

 

[RGClark]

There's no reason to ship lunar/asteroidal resources to Earth, because Earth already has those resources, and they're far cheaper to get at, even when you factor in reduced launch costs. Add to that the fact that they're often concentrated in convenient ores, whereas they would generally tend to be found in low concentrations elsewhere in the solar system.
I also think people underestimate the difficulties of launch costs. One to two orders of magnitude cheaper is a big improvement, and certainly not an easy one.

The precious metal ores are not convenient, otherwise they would not be expensive. If launch costs can be reduced to the range of $100/kg it very well may be profitable to mine them off Earth.
According to this page an asteroid just one mile wide could have valuable metals concentrated within it worth trillions of dollars:

Asteroid mining.
"Asteroid mining refers to the possibility of exploiting raw materials from asteroids and planetoids in space, especially near-Earth objects. Minerals and volatiles could be mined from an asteroid or spent comet to provide space construction material (e.g., iron, nickel, titanium), to extract water and oxygen to sustain the lives of prospector-astronauts on site, as well as hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel. In space exploration, these activities are referred to as in-situ resource utilization.
Some day, the platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may even be returned to Earth for profit. At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mile) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.[1] In fact, all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium and ruthenium that we now mine from the Earth's crust, and that are essential for economic and technological progress, came originally from the rain of asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled.[2][3] This is because, while asteroids and the Earth congealed from the same starting materials, Earth's massive gravity pulled all such siderophilic (iron loving) elements into the planet's core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago. Initially, this left the crust utterly depleted of such valuable elements. Asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust with metals."
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining"]Asteroid mining - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Some proponents of space exploration have stated the first trillionaires will come from the exploitation of space resources. They may be right.

I've discussed on this forum my view on how to reduce the cost of space access. It's summarized in that one simple sentence at the end of my sig file.


Bob Clark

 

[Chub777]

If the Moon is the way to go. Then probably something like this will happen:

2020-The countries involved in the ISS team up for a "return to the Moon mission".

2025-Tests on the [insert name here] rocket are successful.

2027-Manned mission to the Moon.

2029-Unmanned "LM trucks" land on the Moon with parts for a Lunar outpost.

2030-Astronauts/Cosmonauts construct the outpost.

2032-First crew to live in the outpost.

2035-Proposals for rockets built on the Moon for a Mars mission arise.

2036-Second Lunar outpost constructed for rocket building.

2045-First manned mission to Mars.


Off topic:

By 2100 trips to Mars are just like going to the beach for a long weekend.

Anyone else notice the subliminal message?

 

[vorthon]

You're talking about Facebook, right? :lol:

Facebook doesn't think everyone's commie mutant traitors.

 

[fsci123]

The precious metal ores are not convenient, otherwise they would not be expensive. If launch costs can be reduced to the range of $100/kg it very well may be profitable to mine them off Earth.
According to this page an asteroid just one mile wide could have valuable metals concentrated within it worth trillions of dollars:

Asteroid mining.
"Asteroid mining refers to the possibility of exploiting raw materials from asteroids and planetoids in space, especially near-Earth objects. Minerals and volatiles could be mined from an asteroid or spent comet to provide space construction material (e.g., iron, nickel, titanium), to extract water and oxygen to sustain the lives of prospector-astronauts on site, as well as hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel. In space exploration, these activities are referred to as in-situ resource utilization.
Some day, the platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may even be returned to Earth for profit. At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mile) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.[1] In fact, all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium and ruthenium that we now mine from the Earth's crust, and that are essential for economic and technological progress, came originally from the rain of asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled.[2][3] This is because, while asteroids and the Earth congealed from the same starting materials, Earth's massive gravity pulled all such siderophilic (iron loving) elements into the planet's core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago. Initially, this left the crust utterly depleted of such valuable elements. Asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust with metals."
Asteroid mining - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some proponents of space exploration have stated the first trillionaires will come from the exploitation of space resources. They may be right.

I've discussed on this forum my view on how to reduce the cost of space access. It's summarized in that one simple sentence at the end of my sig file.


Bob Clark

Plus there could be a surge in the need for platinum and there is an asteroid that ,based on its radio albedo, contains vast amounts of gold, platinum... And there is a minority of iron and nickel which theoretically could power industry on earth for a few thousand if not million years... Iron and nickel could be combined with small amounts of carbon on the asteroid to to make steel... The platinum could be used to run methanol economy(I hate hydrogen)... The gold could be used to make electronics and other advanced parts cheaper...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(6178)_1986_DA


Attached is my cargo vessel...

 

[T.Neo]

The precious metal ores are not convenient, otherwise they would not be expensive. If launch costs can be reduced to the range of $100/kg it very well may be profitable to mine them off Earth.
According to this page an asteroid just one mile wide could have valuable metals concentrated within it worth trillions of dollars:

There's a sliding scale of convenient-ness here. Yes, it's difficult to dig 3 km under Johannesburg to get at some gold ore, but it's far easier than travelling to some asteroid to get at the concentrations of gold there.

Asteroid mining.
"Asteroid mining refers to the possibility of exploiting raw materials from asteroids and planetoids in space, especially near-Earth objects. Minerals and volatiles could be mined from an asteroid or spent comet to provide space construction material (e.g., iron, nickel, titanium), to extract water and oxygen to sustain the lives of prospector-astronauts on site, as well as hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel. In space exploration, these activities are referred to as in-situ resource utilization.
Some day, the platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may even be returned to Earth for profit. At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mile) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.[1]

Well yes, that is a nice figure, but the economics of the whole operation are the deciding factor. If you can't launch from Earth, transit to the asteroid, perform the operation, transit back to Earth, and reenter for a low enough amount of money, then the entire operation is entirely unfeasible.

Some proponents of space exploration have stated the first trillionaires will come from the exploitation of space resources. They may be right.

They are likely wrong, at least, for the forseeable future. For one, mining 20 trillion USD out of an asteroid even with abilities far beyond our own would not be a cheap endeavour, one that would certainly be undertaken by a very large company at the very least, with profits being split up into several departments.

I've discussed on this forum my view on how to reduce the cost of space access. It's summarized in that one simple sentence at the end of my sig file.

SSTO will not dramatically reduce launch costs. Skylon for example is supposed to achieve what, 1000-600 $/kg? That is quite a bit above 100 $/kg.

The fact is, the infrastructure is just too costly, regardless of whether it breaks up into pieces or not. Spaceflight is extremely intensive and therefore expensive.

In addition, once you want to go beyond LEO, costs balloon, because you have to ship all your propellant to LEO first.

EDIT:

Plus there could be a surge in the need for platinum and there is an asteroid that ,based on its radio albedo, contains vast amounts of gold, platinum... And there is a minority of iron and nickel which theoretically could power industry on earth for a few thousand if not million years... Iron and nickel could be combined with small amounts of carbon on the asteroid to to make steel... The platinum could be used to run methanol economy(I hate hydrogen)... The gold could be used to make electronics and other advanced parts cheaper...

Vast amounts of gold and platinum? How vast?

What is this, a platinum moon?

Is there some sort of impenatrable diamond layer that has magically appeared over the Earth's crust that makes it impossible to utilise our own resources? :shifty:

 

[fsci123]

There's a sliding scale of convenient-ness here. Yes, it's difficult to dig 3 km under Johannesburg to get at some gold ore, but it's far easier than travelling to some asteroid to get at the concentrations of gold there.



Well yes, that is a nice figure, but the economics of the whole operation are the deciding factor. If you can't launch from Earth, transit to the asteroid, perform the operation, transit back to Earth, and reenter for a low enough amount of money, then the entire operation is entirely unfeasible.



They are likely wrong, at least, for the forseeable future. For one, mining 20 trillion USD out of an asteroid even with abilities far beyond our own would not be a cheap endeavour, one that would certainly be undertaken by a very large company at the very least, with profits being split up into several departments.



SSTO will not dramatically reduce launch costs. Skylon for example is supposed to achieve what, 1000-600 $/kg? That is quite a bit above 100 $/kg.

The fact is, the infrastructure is just too costly, regardless of whether it breaks up into pieces or not. Spaceflight is extremely intensive and therefore expensive.

In addition, once you want to go beyond LEO, costs balloon, because you have to ship all your propellant to LEO first.

EDIT:


Vast amounts of gold and platinum? How vast?

What is this, a platinum moon?

Is there some sort of impenatrable diamond layer that has magically appeared over the Earth's crust that makes it impossible to utilise our own resources? :shifty:

Well when it gets to a point where the nearest and cheapest gold reserves are 7km under Johannesburg then we will be wishing that we had done our research... Last time i checked the gold in south Africa will be "cheap" for another 40years. Now gold is cheap now and it is somewhere around a few hundred an ounce how much will It be when it gets expensive $900/g, $3000/g... If gold starts costing $900000/kg and the cheapest launch cost are $600/kg then it will be a good investment for asteroid mining...

I did some calculations and if a spacecraft carrying a few tons of gold it will be able to pay for itself in 13 trips if it was carrying platinum it would pay for itself in 6 trips

 

[C3PO]

Mining asteroids to supply Earth is a non-starter. At least with current or near-future tech.

If you manage to bring back enough "rare" minerals to make the project turn a profit using today's tech, they wouldn't be that rare anymore.
Just look how much it costs to bring back a few grammes of material for scientific studies.

The value of of-planet materials is that they are of-planet. We don't have to lift them 100+ km and accelerate them to orbital speeds.
Bringing some rare minerals back to Earth could be a way to help fund of-planet construction, but we-re a long way from making $$$ from asteroid mining.

---------- Post added at 06:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------

At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mile) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.

Do you have any idea how much it would cost to process the ore in a mile-wide asteroid even if it was sitting on Earth's surface, never mind one that's 1 AU away.

 

[Ghostrider]

Mining asteroids makes sense if you're planning to build something in space, because it takes less energy to lift the stuff off the 'oid than it is to get it off Earth. But unless we're talking transuranics or exotic stuff we don't have here, it's a non-starter.

 

[RGClark]

They are likely wrong, at least, for the forseeable future. For one, mining 20 trillion USD out of an asteroid even with abilities far beyond our own would not be a cheap endeavour, one that would certainly be undertaken by a very large company at the very least, with profits being split up into several departments.
SSTO will not dramatically reduce launch costs. Skylon for example is supposed to achieve what, 1000-600 $/kg? That is quite a bit above 100 $/kg...

It's not that hard. It's only a mile across. That means a mile in all three dimensions.

Reusable SSTO's can majorly cut launch costs if done in the right way. I have argued that you can get multiple times more payload using a hydrocarbon fueld SSTO compared to a similar sized hydrogen one.
Estimates for the price to orbit for a hydrogen fueled SSTO such as the VentureStar put it at $1,000/kg. I calculated that with fixing the propellant tank overweight problems of the VentureStar and switching to kerosene fueled you could increase the payload by a factor of six. This would bring the cost to orbit to $160/kg. Pretty good for a first level SSTO. More advanced versions could improve on this further.

See here:

Newsgroups: sci.space.policy, sci.astro, sci.physics, sci.space.history
From: Robert Clark <rgregorycl...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:04:01 -0800 (PST)
Local: Thurs, Feb 11 2010 2:04 am
Subject: Re: A kerosene-fueled X-33 as a single stage to orbit vehicle.
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.history/msg/fa960a091aec01c8

Bob Clark

---------- Post added at 07:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:27 PM ----------

...
I did some calculations and if a spacecraft carrying a few tons of gold it will be able to pay for itself in 13 trips if it was carrying platinum it would pay for itself in 6 trips

I'd like to see that calculation.

Bob Clark

 

[C3PO]

Last time i checked the gold in south Africa will be "cheap" for another 40years.

May I ask what method you used to check that? :crystalball:

I did some calculations and if a spacecraft carrying a few tons of gold it will be able to pay for itself in 13 trips if it was carrying platinum it would pay for itself in 6 trips

And it probably would if you were launching it into LEO. That's the only thing you can calculate with launch cost.

We haven't even started research on manned long duration interplanetary flight. How can can you possible begin to calculate operating cost?

 

[T.Neo]

It's not that hard. It's only a mile across. That means a mile in all three dimensions.

Do you know how difficult it is to dig through 1.6 kilometers of rock, regardless of where it is located?

Moreover, that rock not only needs to be 'dug through', but actually processed into raw metals. That's a whole other problem.

If we assume a 1.6 kilometer sphere, with a density of 3300 kg/m^3, that is 7e12 kilograms. Not all of that is going to be valuable material. Comparatively, the total of production of iron on Earth per annum is 1.2e12 kg. That's the end product, and that whole operation is on Earth, mind you.

And you don't see any trillionaires coming out of the iron business.

Reusable SSTO's can majorly cut launch costs if done in the right way. I have argued that you can get multiple times more payload using a hydrocarbon fueld SSTO compared to a similar sized hydrogen one.
Estimates for the price to orbit for a hydrogen fueled SSTO such as the VentureStar put it at $1,000/kg. I calculated that with fixing the propellant tank overweight problems of the VentureStar and switching to kerosene fueled you could increase the payload by a factor of six. This would bring the cost to orbit to $160/kg. Pretty good for a first level SSTO. More advanced versions could improve on this further.

Firstly increasing the payload of the Venture Star by six times is not a quick fix (that payload bay can only accomodate so much mass).

Secondly, who came up with the $1000/kg figure? The lowest figures I've seen for STS say $10 400/kg, and I've seen higher figures as well ($16 000/kg-$18 000/kg).

While some of the expense of the shuttle is definitely related to stacking procedures and soforth, a large amount of the cost of STS is refurbishing the orbiter vehicle itself, refurbishing the engines, and the upkeep of the whole vehicle. That will not disappear with a vehicle like the X-33, even if it's an SSTO. It's still going to have an expensive propulsion system, an expensive airframe, an expensive TPS (well, probably not as fragile as that of STS, but still fragile), expensive systems... etc.

The price cannot just be magic-ed down to something super-low.

I'd like to see that calculation.

I second this question...

May I ask what method you used to check that?

I second this question as well...

We haven't even started research on manned long duration interplanetary flight. How can can you possible begin to calculate operating cost?

We haven't? Wait what? There have been tons of studies on long duration manned interplanetary flight!

It is possible to calculate operating cost, though only to a degree of certainty. There could be all sorts of factors at play.

 

[fsci123]

May I ask what method you used to check that? :crystalball:



And it probably would if you were launching it into LEO. That's the only thing you can calculate with launch cost.

We haven't even started research on manned long duration interplanetary flight. How can can you possible begin to calculate operating cost?

T=One Trip
C=750,000kg
Pg=$1200/kg $3600/kg
Pf=$400K

x=(T[750,000

 

[C3PO]

We haven't? Wait what? There have been tons of studies on long duration manned interplanetary flight!

There has been a lot of speculation and educated guessing, but AFAIK there has never been a study on the effect of interplanetary flight on a living organism.
We have done some work on the microgravity part, but I'm guessing there will be some kind of gravity field in a manned craft (probably rotation, or propulsive if we get some kind of magic engine).

We can't use ISS to study these things because it's too deep in our magnetosphere. We could study it on the Moon or on a L1 fuel station.

It is possible to calculate operating cost, though only to a degree of certainty. There could be all sorts of factors at play.

IMHO it would be a miracle if you could guestimate those costs with any kind of certainty. I'm not even sure if we have the tech to mine any significant amount of ore in vacum+Zero.
Remember how much trouble NASA had with lunar dust? How do we keep the equipment clean without water or compressed air?
How do we keep the drill bit cool? We have enough trouble cooling electronic equipment.

I think people overestimate our capabilities working in space. NASA makes it look easy, but if you know how much planning goes into just loosening or tightening a single bolt, you'd know how much trouble Mr.Willis&Co. would be in IRL.

 

[T.Neo]

I am not overestimating our abilities to work in space, and it is not as if gigantic space-dragons loom beyond our magnetosphere.

We know about microgravity. It's bad for you over long periods of time.

We know about radiation exposure. It's also bad for you, but we might not be entirely sure what the levels of it are, how humans would react, and how we can mitigate the problem. We don't know yet.

The lunar dust caused problems, but it didn't suck the LM under the lunar surface, or morph into a space-ghoul. You can't just sit around saying "but there might be problems that we don't know about, they're so scary". You're supposed to try and figure out what they are, prepare for as many eventualities as possible, and have a flexible plan to avoid outright failure.

Mining ore is possible in microgravity and a vacuum. Keeping things cool is possible in a vacuum. Keeping things clean is possible (ish) in a vacuum. It isn't like a caveman trying to invent a particle accelerator here, we aren't a society of Homer Simpson analogues.

Now, I'm not saying that it would be easy, and I'm not saying that we have the capability right this very moment. What I'm saying is that techno-pessimism gets one nowhere.

We do know how to deal with many problems in space, and we have at least a vague idea of how to deal with many other problems.

That said, it doesn't make asteroid mining feasible in the near future. If we are capable of things, it's not a guarantee that we're close to competent with them. We can launch to LEO, sure, but for thousands of dollars per kilogram.

And if asteroid mining is a difficult and expensive endeavour in itself, it only makes the issue of getting there and back even worse.

 

[RGClark]

Do you have any idea how much it would cost to process the ore in a mile-wide asteroid even if it was sitting on Earth's surface, never mind one that's 1 AU away.

If you look at some of the larger mining companies you see they have leases on areas at 10's of square miles or some even over 100 square miles. Clearly they wouldn't mine this area all at once or in a year, which of course would be hugely expensive. They do it over many years.
For a 20 trillion dollar asteroid you could mine this value over 100 years and still be making a large amount of revenue per year. The owners, the trillionaires, wouldn't have to live to see it all mined. They could sell shares in their ownership. So in fact they could cash out their ownership and indeed get their trillion dollar value on their investment all at once.


Bob Clark