[Newsbot]

Title: NASA scientists asks for help in ambitious plan to lasso asteroid, send it into moon's orbit
Category: Tech
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2013-06-18 23:12:06
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

To anyone who hates the destruction caused by strip mining, this is something you can get behind. Much purer forms of minerals and metals, and no environmantal damage!

[FieryVulpine]

There's gold in them asteroids! Time to get my pick axe!

[DanSC]

No mention of how much fuel the mission would require. What a surprise.

[raydan]

My guess, at least 200 years until we're mining asteroids commercially.

[Tyler_1]

Sounds like one of those disaster movies waiting to happen.

OMG THE ROPE BROKE AND IT IS NOW HURTLING TOWARDS EARTH!!!

[commanderkai]

I can see this horribly fucking up.

[PluggyRug]

commanderkai commanderkai:

I can see this horribly fucking up.

Not if Roy Rogers is wielding the lasso.

[jeff744]

raydan raydan:

My guess, at least 200 years until we're mining asteroids commercially.

If we tried we could do it a lot sooner easily. Space development has slowed dramatically as there is almost no money in it. Throw in the profit from asteroids and commercial groups would be all over it if we could actually get one into lunar orbit.

That being said, there would need to be some really profitable rocks in them asteroids or the companies will go after the cheaper resources on earth.

[BartSimpson]

raydan raydan:

My guess, at least 200 years until we're mining asteroids commercially.

Depends on what they're mining. If they find gold or something else that's really provides a cost-benefit (where profit exceeds the cost of recovery) then it'll happen sooner.

Of course, as soon as commercial asteroid mining occurs then we'll see countries like China claiming the entire universe for themselves.

[jeff744]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

raydan raydan:

My guess, at least 200 years until we're mining asteroids commercially.

Depends on what they're mining. If they find gold or something else that's really provides a cost-benefit (where profit exceeds the cost of recovery) then it'll happen sooner.

Of course, as soon as commercial asteroid mining occurs then we'll see countries like China claiming the entire universe for themselves.

Gold would still be pretty iffy considering the current costs, we would need some kind of resource that would create a benefit to basically developing a way to get large amounts of the resources to earth for cheap. We would likely have to move the refining to either the moon or the asteroids, probably the moon.

[peck420]

jeff744 jeff744:

Gold would still be pretty iffy considering the current costs, we would need some kind of resource that would create a benefit to basically developing a way to get large amounts of the resources to earth for cheap. We would likely have to move the refining to either the moon or the asteroids, probably the moon.

Refining would most likely occur at the mining apparatus.

The majority of constraints that make fixed point refining ideal on Earth don't exist in space.

[peck420]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Of course, as soon as commercial asteroid mining occurs then we'll see countries like China claiming the entire universe for themselves.

Think it would be similar to Monsanto and global food supplies?