Yes it would, but if the purpose of space mining was most to build structures in space, then very little material would end up being dropped back to earth. The other thing to keep in mind is just how much energy is getting poured onto the earth at any moment. The sun radiates something like 1kw/m^2 at our orbital radius. Therefore a flat cross-section of the earth would receive about 1.29E17 watts of solar energy at any one time. Liberally derating this figure by 90% to account for reflectivity, angle of incidence, etc, you still end up with 1.29E16 watts of energy absorbed by the earth as a ballpark figure. By using the energy equivalent for a kiloton of TNT (defined as 1E12 calories or 4.186E12 joules), you can convert the energy absorbed by the earth as being about 30759 kT/sec or 30.756 MT/sec.
A metric ton rock (1000kg) delivered from LEO to the earth's surface will have to lose about 8 km/sec before stopping on the earth or about 3.2E10 joules (0.0076 kT ) of energy. Clearly this is a very small fraction of the total energy absorbed by the earth at any one second. -----Original Message----- From: Sander Pool [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 1:46 PM To: Bill Clawson; ERPS Subject: Re: [ERPS] Cute Asteroid A whole new form of global warming! Woohoo! In the process of making space livable (mining there would be a great way to start building huge structures in space) we'd be making Earth unlivable. This in turn should speed up the colonization efforts of space and planets which causes more global warming etc. etc. Nice touch! Sander ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Clawson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "ERPS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 12:56 PM Subject: RE: [ERPS] Cute Asteroid > Especially if you are intending the upper atmosphere to absorb what amounts > to kilotons of excess energy. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Henry Spencer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 12:53 PM > To: ERPS > Subject: Re: [ERPS] Cute Asteroid > > On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Michael Wallis wrote: > > My concern is still the failure mode of some tired space miner > > shooting his pile of refined metal into the Earth instead of beside it... > > I think the answer is that the tired space miner sells his pile to the > intended customer *before* shooting it, rather than afterward. The > shooting is then done by professionals with Reentry Pilot licences, who do > it routinely and have multiply-redundant navigation and insurance against > screwups. > > It will, in any case, be necessary to limit use of aerobraking reentry > eventually. It creates noticeable amounts of nitrogen oxides in the upper > atmosphere, and probably isn't a good thing in really large quantities. > > Henry Spencer > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > _______________________________________________ > ERPS-list mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list > _______________________________________________ > ERPS-list mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list > > _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
