Michael, Thanks for your thoughts and for the interesting and useful links. You are almost certainly correct, unless (1) a much cheaper means of lifting payloads into Earth orbit can be developed, or (2) a much more efficient, far greater capacity, energy-storage system can be developed, or (preferably) both, before the time comes (which may or may not be likely). Either of these would allow us to sidestep the need for lifting plutonium from the Earth's surface. A much cheaper launch capability, in particular, would obviate the issue. Otherwise, lifting nuclear fuel and reactors would be necessary.
However, my point was not that mining asteroids would allow us to avoid the issue entirely, but merely that it would be safer and more economical once the operation was initially set up--and that the cost of the initial setup (although you are correct that it would likely be high) would quickly pay for itself many times over (so much so that it should be priority number one because the enormous profits involved are what will motivate the settling of other worlds and all that has to happen for that to become possible). In the meantime, I agree that finding a safer way to lift nuclear fuels into orbit is important work, and well worth discussing. I don't think the same is true of trying to change the political environment, for two reasons: First, developing new technology nearly always can be done more easily and more quickly than bringing about persistent shifts of opinion from near one extreme to near another. Second, the political change is not likely to happen at all, since (1) the people who are concerned about the safety issue have very sound reasons to be concerned and, (2) the more you try to debate the issue, the more attention it will get--and hence the more people who were previously unaware of the issue will become aware of it, which will only increase opposition (since, believe me, there are many more people who understand that having plutonium burn up in the atmosphere would be a very bad thing than there are who understand why it is of paramount importance that we accelerate our efforts to move into space). So, I think the way to proceed is to find a way of doing it that is extremely safe--maybe even much safer than it would ever need to be--as you have suggested. As to whether it is best to try to bootstrap an asteroid mining operation first, then use it to harvest fuel and raw materials for long-distance exploration missions (and a base to launch them from), on the one hand--or try to do some of those missions (the most important one being Europa, in my opinion) up front instead, in hopes that they will be successful enough to increase interest in space exploration and colonization (over and above the knowledge and experience gained), on the other hand--well, I can see it both ways. The former option would require a greater initial investment--but once it happened, everything else would surely follow because we'd never again need to worry about the funding drying up. The latter would be easier and cheaper, but would do much less to get us into space in a permanent and sustainable way--and if the funding dries up, or the politics change for the worse (etc.) in the meantime, we've got a big problem. On another topic, also related to the nuclear fuel issue, I'm not real happy about the prospect of using nuclear fuel (whether in a reactor or otherwise) to get through the ice on Europa, unless it can be done in a way that doesn't result in introducing nuclear waste into a previously untouched ecosystem. That's not much of a first gift to be making. :) Using a detachable, rechargable drilling module that could climb back up the shaft to the lander for periodic recharging might be a possibility. Or perhaps using a tether/power cable with extremely stong and light fibers, and superconducting wire... Any thoughts? Sean McCutcheon -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Turner Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 9:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This won't help with the support of JIMO The problem with all asteroid mining talk isn't the abundance of resources, but how to make extraction economical *initially*. In the long run, after it's bootstrapped, it's probably very economical indeed. But in the long run, everybody has instead invested in mutual funds predicated on some much wilder surmise, such as the notion that there will be continued use of dog food, toothpaste, funeral home services and Microsoft Windows for the forseeable future. Bootstrapping the asteroid resource extraction process will likely require something like nuclear-electric drives in the first place, so the problem of either getting plutonium off the earth safely, or from ISRU processes on the Moon, still remains. It's a worthy cause in the long run. Check out the B612 Foundation http://www.b612foundation.org/ Rusty Schweickart is one of those behind the B612 Project, which is to "significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid by 2015." The B612 agenda is more one of planetary defense than resource extraction, but it's eventually to the same point - making asteroids useful instead of merely dangerous. The B612 draft NEA-Tug design is annoyingly located in the History section http://www.b612foundation.org/about/history.html even though it's not history yet. It's a nuclear propulsion design - a "variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket concept" to be precise. The problem is really one of assessment of relative risks - the risks to earth and people from an NEA collision vs. the risks to same from trying to send a reactor to an NEA. They don't mention this in their discussion. They would have to mention it in giving testimony before Congress, because it would come up. All of which is (yes, believe it or not, Jeff! ;-) to the point of Europa/Icepick: if missions like JIMO need to be nuclear, they need to be launched either in a political environment that's more accepting of the risks of stray plutonium from some launch disaster making its way back to earth, or in a technological environment that offers ways of getting plutonium safely to some probe integration point where almost anything could happen, without consequences for earth. Thus my rambling speculations about how to get the plutonium off earth safely. My scheme may have holes you could fly an AirBus through at this point, but if these holes can be plugged, or some alternative can be devised, it seems to be the quickest way past this issue. Trying to get past it by mining the asteroids is a can't-get-there-from-here proposition - actually assuming you can already do what you're trying to do in the first place. -michael turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sean McCutcheon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 3:57 AM Subject: RE: This won't help with the support of JIMO > > Likely quite a lot, since we know that there are extremely large amounts of > many other important metals. However, while I'm not an expert, it is my > understanding that nobody is entirely sure how much there is, simply because > we haven't taken a systematic look yet, or anything approaching one. Due to > ionization, most of them probably have a thick layer of dust sticking to > them, even if they are nearly solid metal underneath, so techniques using > reflected sunlight (all that has been attempted thus far) are not likely to > be of much value. We need to hit them with a powerful laser, vaporizing a > small amount, and then determine the composition of the resulting cloud. > > Here's one intriguing passage that I came across: (from > http://science.howstuffworks.com/asteroid-mining1.htm ) > > "One NASA report estimates that the mineral wealth of the asteroids in the > asteroid belt might exceed $100 billion for each of the six billion people > on Earth. John S. Lewis, author of the space mining book Mining the Sky, has > said that an asteroid with a diameter of one kilometer would have a mass of > about two billion tons. There are perhaps one million asteroids of this size > in the solar system. One of these asteroids, according to Lewis, would > contain 30 million tons of nickel, 1.5 million tons of metal cobalt and > 7,500 tons of platinum. The platinum alone would have a value of more than > $150 billion!" > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of LARRY > KLAES > Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 1:29 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: This won't help with the support of JIMO > > > How much uranium is there in the planetoids? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Sean McCutcheon > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 10:27 AM > Subject: RE: This won't help with the support of JIMO > > > Another possibility might be that once we have a moon base, we could > obtained uranium from asteroids instead, with little risk to Earth. There > would be some initial difficulty in setting up the operation but it could > quickly become very profitable indeed, since there are absolutely enormous > quantities of various, valuable metals (fissionable and otherwise) just > sitting there waiting to be taken, without any need to take them out of a > gravity well or even to dig for them. If we were very, very careful about > it, we could send robotic probes to nudge some of the more valuable ones > (like the little one that's essentially 12 tons of platinum, for instance) > into closer orbits, to avoid having to set up a mining operation a long > distance away. > > Can you imagine anything more likely to accelerate the establishment of > off-world colonies? I can't. The potential profits would be irresistable. > That's what we need to settle the new frontier: a new gold rush. > > I think that discovery of life on Europa would be likely to greatly > accelerate interest and efforts toward eventual interstellar travel (because > many people would realize that if there is life on two worlds within our own > system, it must be quite plentiful throughout the galaxy--and in many cases, > evolution would have produced other intelligent life). However, in the > short term what we really need is for private industry to become highly > motivated to establish a permanent presence in space, and to set about > developing and refining all of the related technologies. > > Sean McCutcheon > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael > Turner > Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 2:54 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: This won't help with the support of JIMO > > > Just a kind of random thought here .... > > Getting plutonium safely away from Earth and to some moon base, or orbital > construction facility near the moon, or at a libration point, seems like a > real challenge. To do it economically might be even more of a challenge. > How do you package it for all scenarios? For fission-powered probes to > Jupiter, this might be the biggest political and technical challenge of all. > > I don't think I can address all scenarios with one idea, but ... I read a > book by Freeman Dyson's son, about Project Orion, in which an interesting > experiment was devised at thermonuclear bomb test sites. They dangled some > metal spheres (copper, IIRC) fairly close to ground zero. These spheres > survived with remarkably little damage. And were used as supporting > evidence that Orion could work. > > Last year, a friend of mine, professor of mechanical engineering, sent me a > copy of a formal request for proposals for some research into demisable > satellite fuel tanks, asking if I had any ideas. I sent him a few, and I > don't know what's become of my suggestions, but it struck me: a hollow metal > object is pretty hard to kill with atmospheric reentry. Most satellites > self-dispose of their parts pretty nicely, and could be made even better in > this respect with more investment. But tanks made of aluminum alloys > frequently come back nearly intact. Getting them to burn up nicely is > actually a hard, and largely unsolved, problem. > > Well, so roughly spherical, mostly empty, metal objects are tough buggers. > Make the most of it. Send plutonium up inside spheres, suspended in a mesh > of very strong wire or fiber. Your rocket blows up? It's OK, so long as > you can track the payload. Launch goes off course and the payload reenters? > It's OK, so long as you can track it. Something hits it (debris, meteor) in > transit ... well, that I can't tell you anything about. But maybe there are > shielding concepts that are both lightweight and strong enough to handle > almost anything at this point. > > No point in thinking about patenting something that almost certainly won't > get used within the lifetime of the patent. Who has time, anyway? And for > all I know, somebody else has thought of this already, and it's full of > holes. FWIW. > > -michael turner > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: LARRY KLAES > To: europa > Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 3:15 AM > Subject: This won't help with the support of JIMO > > > And you know the anti-nuke forces will not bother to differentiate between > some old Soviet satellites and the new JIMO. > > > Science/Astronomy: > > * Havoc in the Heavens: Soviet-Era Satellite's Leaky Reactor's Lethal Legacy > > http://www.space.com/news/mystery_monday_040329.html > > Old Soviet nuclear powered satellites leaked a trail of menacing radioactive > droplets that have become a debris threat to other spacecraft. > > > == > You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ > > == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/ == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
