Comment on Against all odds, an asteroid mining company [AstroForge] appears to be making headway
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
It’s amazing people are still wasting time and resources on this trash while the planet is literally being destroyed.
How long until these grifters call it an “AI” miner?
I was about to say people can walk and chew gum. But this kind of miss the point.
This is not space exploration, this is not for science’s sake. This is about extracting resources, and these companies perpetuate the idea that there’s virtually infinite resource, which imply we can continue with humanity’s exponential growth without negative consequences.
“I wish we could mine without destroying the environment”
“Well what if we mined in space instead?”
“Why don’t you focus on the problems here on Earth buddy. Wow what an idiot. Can you believe that guy?”
Hypothetically, it would only make sense to mine rare materials in space, and it would only have environmental benefits if we return significant amount compared to the mass of rockets we send into space.
There is no coal/gas/oil in space, and even it we could burning, and even mining were cleaner, burning that stuff would still be disastrous.
Space mining would be a best viable for a very niche use for a few material. It won’t bring us infinite clean resources, overall we still need to reduce extraction of resources.
Coal is a basic substance, so it is in the space. Maybe there is not likely oil or gas ( although I believe methan should be pretty much available everywhere as it’s simple substance ), uran will be in space for sure. Maybe even mining dead stars would be possible in the future, who knows
If you engineer for it, you can send up a machine to fabricate the miners with raw resources. Then you just have to send up a couple starter miners and you never have to send another rocket up. Infinite resources down (limited by time). Solar power to drive the machines. Hell the manufacturer can double as basic initial processing plant and drop purified metals.
This means space colonization. Here is the problem: 1) either we meet sooner or later aliens whom we don’t whether they are dangerous and hostile 2) we discover we live in a simulation but still every simulation has its limits ( like maps in the games )
filcuk@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I don’t think that viewpoint makes sense.
It’s like saying you shouldn’t throw out food because people elsewhere in the world are starving.
The two things are divided by a large gap of unrelatedness.