What would happen - and at what cost?

[azato]

Suppose that breaking free of Earth's gravity because something much cheaper and faster than what it currently is. Suppose even further that travelling and landing on planets in our solar system was fairly simple and "relatively" inexpensive proposition and was also fairly quick (maybe travel would be measured in weeks not months.

 

Given that we have greatly reduced the cost to transport men and material, would there be a business case to travel to the other planets to set up mines or even perhaps to set up manufacturing facilities? By manufacturing I mean that pehaps some atmospheres and gravities may make the production of certain high priced but small sized items easier or less costly. And if there is a business case, what things would be mined/made?

[Kraven Kor]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Suppose that breaking free of Earth's gravity because something much cheaper and faster than what it currently is. Suppose even further that travelling and landing on planets in our solar system was fairly simple and "relatively" inexpensive proposition and was also fairly quick (maybe travel would be measured in weeks not months.

 

Given that we have greatly reduced the cost to transport men and material, would there be a business case to travel to the other planets to set up mines or even perhaps to set up manufacturing facilities? By manufacturing I mean that pehaps some atmospheres and gravities may make the production of certain high priced but small sized items easier or less costly. And if there is a business case, what things would be mined/made?

 

I think Zero-G manufacturing will be able to produce some products and materials at greatly reduced cost than surface manufacturing. I think there are some things we'll be able to build in Zero-G that are simply not possible on the surface. Not to mention the freedom of less environmental worries.

 

Asteroid mining will likely be profitable - and, depending on the exact cost of getting materials off the ground of another planet or moon, then perhaps there as well. Asteroid mining is much cheaper due to the lack of breaking out of a planet's gravity, etc.

 

So yes, given cheap and quick ways to move about a solar system, I think there is a lot of money to be made and great industrial progress via such things.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

We have no idea how to make stuff in orbit yet. Existing manufacturing processes rely on there being things like air, water, and earth around. We have a lot to learn, and we will only be learning it as fast as we can learn, which isn't that fast. In the mean time, getting there cheaper won't change things much.

The planets? Even if Mars and Venus turned out to be inhabitable (hey, we're already playing with a universal constant, what's a little swords and planets handwaving?) it wouldn't change things anywhere near as much as Golden Age science fiction assumed. Contra the Heinlein thesis, take a look at the population density and GNP of Papua New Guinea, the British Antarctic Territories, or, heck, Canada. Real estate is not the problem. To the extent that there is one, it is that people clump together.

What will happen is that Earth orbit will get even more crowded with assorted communications, control and intelligence devices. So the likely consequence is a fully networked fourth generation, universally accessible phone that can help drive your car. (May, in fact, be required to help drive your car in some neighbourhoods.)

[Clonus]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Given that we have greatly reduced the cost to transport men and material, would there be a business case to travel to the other planets to set up mines or even perhaps to set up manufacturing facilities? By manufacturing I mean that perhaps some atmospheres and gravities may make the production of certain high priced but small sized items easier or less costly. And if there is a business case, what things would be mined/made?

 

If you can make space travel cheap enough then yes, mining in space becomes economically viable. There is, however no particular advantage in manufacturing on other planets beyond conveniently serving a population already there. It's dubious that even microgravity would be a noticeable advantage in the manufacture of things like nanotechnology.

[Nyrath]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Suppose even further that travelling and landing on planets in our solar system was fairly simple and "relatively" inexpensive proposition and was also fairly quick (maybe travel would be measured in weeks not months.

 

So now everybody has Dirt Cheap Planet Crackers.

A ship that can do 1 g acceleration to Jupiter can travel from Earth to Jupiter in about 12 days.

 

Say the ship was the same mass as a Russian Oscar submarine (13,900 metric tons). It's kinetic energy will be such that if the ship instead accelerated until its fuel tanks were empty, and aimed itself at Earth, it would crash into Earth with an explosion of about 3,000 megatons.

 

With just this ship. Imagine what you could do with a fleet of them.

 

It only takes 25 megatons to flatten a city.

[Erkenfresh]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

So now everybody has Dirt Cheap Planet Crackers.

A ship that can do 1 g acceleration to Jupiter can travel from Earth to Jupiter in about 12 days.

 

Say the ship was the same mass as a Russian Oscar submarine (13,900 metric tons). It's kinetic energy will be such that if the ship instead accelerated until its fuel tanks were empty, and aimed itself at Earth, it would crash into Earth with an explosion of about 3,000 megatons.

 

With just this ship. Imagine what you could do with a fleet of them.

 

It only takes 25 megatons to flatten a city.

 

As long as they calculate the trajectory properly. But yeah, that's a bit scary.

[azato]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

So the other planets do not contain, or should I say potentially contain, material (metals, radioactives, gems, etc) that is more rare that would be easily mined? For instance, I believe that gold is still found but it is not in the great veins for which they were found centuries ago. If one could do a strip mine and get large amounts of high grade that would make it viable.

 

Likewise, we have great amounts of oil because previous plant life. Now eventually this will become depleted. Now obviously other planets would not have petroleum , but would they have some alternative?

 

 

 

If you can make space travel cheap enough then yes' date=' mining in space becomes economically viable. There is, however no particular advantage in manufacturing on other planets beyond conveniently serving a population already there. It's dubious that even microgravity would be a noticeable advantage in the manufacture of things like nanotechnology.[/quote']

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

As long as they calculate the trajectory properly. But yeah' date=' that's a bit scary.[/quote']

 

Planets have a pretty big DCV penalty...

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

So the other planets do not contain, or should I say potentially contain, material (metals, radioactives, gems, etc) that is more rare that would be easily mined? For instance, I believe that gold is still found but it is not in the great veins for which they were found centuries ago. If one could do a strip mine and get large amounts of high grade that would make it viable.

 

Likewise, we have great amounts of oil because previous plant life. Now eventually this will become depleted. Now obviously other planets would not have petroleum , but would they have some alternative?

 

There are a lot of other volatile hydrocarbons.Methane seems to be smegging everywhere, for instance.

 

diamond and iridium might both be commodities that are easier found off world.

[Nyrath]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

The term I like is "MacGuffinite". Some incredibly valuable substance that is only found off Earth, as motivation to develop an interplanetary economy.

 

Like something which is the perfect diet pill, or the cure for male pattern baldness.

 

Larry Niven had his asteroid miners prospecting for magnetic monopoles.

 

Of course, if you somehow already have a space colony, common iron and other simple materials from asteroids are valuable since the incredibly high added cost of hauling such things up Earth's gravity well would be avoided.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Recall reading that there are VAST quanttities of hydrocarbons in the upper atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, and a lesser (though still considerable) quantity to be found on Titan. Probably a few other places as well. I think there are also big sulphur-spewing "volcanoes" on Io - I am sure there would be uses for that stuff.

 

There are also a few very mineral-rich asteroids scattered around - NASA is supposedly keeping an eye on the more promising ones.

 

Plus, there is a lot of useful basic raw material on the Moon - iron, silicon, titanium, etc..

 

I think there would be major possibilities in shifting various industries into orbit, or to places like the Moon. If absolutely nothing else, think in terms of Solar energy - "farms" of solar panels to power whatever you are operating or a system of mirrors to create a solar "furnace" (which has been done experimentally here on Earth).

 

Or, as Gerard K O'Neill proposed in 'High Frontier', stations that convert solar energy into microwaves, then beam those microwaves to receiving stations elsewhere to be converted into electricity. Supposedly, the microwave radiiation involved is not enough to be considered any kind of 'death ray', so it COULD even be directed to special receiving stations here on Earth. Actually, nearly all of GK O'Neill's ideas would be totally doable.

[Clonus]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

So the other planets do not contain' date=' or should I say potentially contain, material (metals, radioactives, gems, etc) that is more rare that would be easily mined? [/quote']

 

I'm sorry, where did I ever say that other planets do not contain exploitable resources if we have conveniently cheap space travel?

[azato]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Yeah, you are right. I re-re-read the post and even when back to edited this reply.

 

--> I completely misread your post. <------

 

 

I'm sorry' date=' where did I ever say that other planets do not contain exploitable resources if we have conveniently cheap space travel?[/quote']

[Yansuf]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

So now everybody has Dirt Cheap Planet Crackers.

A ship that can do 1 g acceleration to Jupiter can travel from Earth to Jupiter in about 12 days.

 

Say the ship was the same mass as a Russian Oscar submarine (13,900 metric tons). It's kinetic energy will be such that if the ship instead accelerated until its fuel tanks were empty, and aimed itself at Earth, it would crash into Earth with an explosion of about 3,000 megatons.

 

With just this ship. Imagine what you could do with a fleet of them.

 

It only takes 25 megatons to flatten a city.

 

Of course, an in-system jump drive would not do this.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Given all the other costs involved, it really would take "McGuffinite" to make extraplanetary mining possible.

Now.

Besides space drives, there are just too many other things that need to be developed. Our current processes for refining gold involve the use of huge amounts of liquid water, for example. I know the solar furnace/centrifuge sounds cool, but it is not likely to be very practical. Imagine an asteroid turning into Pop-Rocks and you get the picture.

In the long run, once all these technologies are incrementally developed, I have a feeling that the problem of propulsion is not going to stand in our way. It certainly won't limit the economic exploitation of the Solar System, since there are ways to travel out there quite cheaply, albeit slowly.

Really, it's not the drive that's going to be the issue. It'll be things like Bandaids that you can apply from outside your space suit, and vibration damping mechanisms for orbital forging presses.

[Basil]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Given a cheap method of getting into space, there are materials worth mining. Given mining, manufacturing will move into space for two reasons: building and repairing mining machinery, and building and repairing refinery machinery --- no matter how cheap to/from orbit travel is, there are enormous savings to be had by reducing the mass to be moved. Hence refineries, hence manufacturing.

 

Once that manufacturing base is in place, there's a strong impetus to increase the amount of mining, which leads to increased populations, which will want more than the bare necessities, which leads to manufacturing more than mining and refinery gear, which leads to....

 

And so on, and so forth.

[Nyrath]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

As long as they calculate the trajectory properly. But yeah' date=' that's a bit scary.[/quote']

 

Yes, but the point is when the Martian colonials decide that they want to be free of the tyranny of Earth, they can start by gathering up a dozen tramp freighters and annihilating every major Terran city and plunging the planet into nuclear winter.

 

This is one of the consequences of John's Law

[austenandrews]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

So now everybody has Dirt Cheap Planet Crackers.

Doesn't the ability to move vast quantities of material around in space automatically put city-killing weapons into play, no matter how you slice it? In the same way that huge jet planes can always be used as missiles.

 

 

Edit: I should learn to read the whole thread first.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Now, I know that an asteroid of sufficient size would do exactly what is described here... but wouldn't a spacecraft - especially if not designed for re-entry - just break up or mostly disintegrate before hitting ground?

 

If the Shuttle nose-dived into, say, St. Louis, how much damage would it really do in comparison to a space rock of the same size?

 

I'd think turning asteroids into weapons would be more practical and devastating than just a freighter. Doesn't really change the equation, I just want to make sure I understand just how much damage a high-moving spacecraft is going to do.

[Tom Carman]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Now, I know that an asteroid of sufficient size would do exactly what is described here... but wouldn't a spacecraft - especially if not designed for re-entry - just break up or mostly disintegrate before hitting ground?

 

If the Shuttle nose-dived into, say, St. Louis, how much damage would it really do in comparison to a space rock of the same size?

 

I'd think turning asteroids into weapons would be more practical and devastating than just a freighter. Doesn't really change the equation, I just want to make sure I understand just how much damage a high-moving spacecraft is going to do.

 

A Shuttle has much less mass than a space rock of similar size, much lower density. It has all those tanks and air spaces so beloved of, oh say, the crew. And it is designed to slow down in atmosphere and not hit the ground like a few tons of rock. But kick a craft up to a few hundred (or thousand) KPS, and it'll hit hard, with little chance to slow down.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

A Shuttle has much less mass than a space rock of similar size' date=' much lower density. It has all those tanks and air spaces so beloved of, oh say, the crew. And it is [u']designed[/u] to slow down in atmosphere and not hit the ground like a few tons of rock. But kick a craft up to a few hundred (or thousand) KPS, and it'll hit hard, with little chance to slow down.

 

Crude analogy - differance between a Sopwith Camel ramming into a wall at its top speed, and an F-18 Hornet doing likewise at ITS top speed. Said differance then being multiplied by at least a hundred.

[Nyrath]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

If the Shuttle nose-dived into, say, St. Louis, how much damage would it really do in comparison to a space rock of the same size?

 

I'd think turning asteroids into weapons would be more practical and devastating than just a freighter. Doesn't really change the equation, I just want to make sure I understand just how much damage a high-moving spacecraft is going to do.

The damage is from the kinetic energy. The kinetic energy is

Ke = 0.5 * M * V^2

where:

Ke = kinetic energy (Joules)

M = mass of projectile (kg)

V = velocity of projectile relative to target (m/s)

 

Before your eyes glaze over, note that the amount of damage is related to how much the object weighs and how fast it is moving.

 

Since the shuttle is hollow, a space rock of the same size will weigh more, and thus will do more damage than the shuttle.

 

You can make the shuttle do the same amount of damage if it is moving faster than the space rock.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

But wouldn't the shuttle be more prone to disentegrating in the atmosphere and never making it TO the surface? I'm sure there is a point where it is moving fast enough to not do that, but I'd think that at most any speed provided by a torch drive you couldn't get that delicate of an object to ground in one piece to deliver your kinetic energy - you'd just have a fireball in the upper atmosphere.

 

I mean, let's say you got a 1km long space freighter - that isn't even designed for re-entry, no heat shields, nothing - up to around 300 kps, how much of it would make it to the ground? In one big piece or a bunch of little pieces?

[Nyrath]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

But wouldn't the shuttle be more prone to disentegrating in the atmosphere and never making it TO the surface? I'm sure there is a point where it is moving fast enough to not do that' date=' but I'd think that at most any speed provided by a torch drive you couldn't get that delicate of an object to ground in one piece to deliver your kinetic energy - you'd just have a fireball in the upper atmosphere.[/quote']

Yes, it is just that above a certain velocity, even if the fireball starts at the "top" of the atmosphere, it will still reach the ground.

 

Even if the ship is vaporized, the energy doesn't go away. If the fireball does not dissipate fast enough, the firestorm of superheated air will annihilate the city underneath.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: What would happen - and at what cost?

 

Yes, it is just that above a certain velocity, even if the fireball starts at the "top" of the atmosphere, it will still reach the ground.

 

Even if the ship is vaporized, the energy doesn't go away. If the fireball does not dissipate fast enough, the firestorm of superheated air will annihilate the city underneath.

 

At what mass / velocity do you have direct impact or a large enough fireball?

 

Or is that covered in your above equation?