NASA Technology Going In Reverse?

[Mag40]

However, asteroid mining can start much sooner than that if we find some good targets with large amounts of volatiles.

Won't there be somewhat of a problem with next to no gravity? I've seen numerous articles on this but they don't seem to mention this in any context of holding station to actually drill and collect the stuff. Or was there another way they were going to mine it?


eta: yay - I made it to Earth (far longer than some of these 50 post a day trolls as well!).

[cjameshuff]

Won't there be somewhat of a problem with next to no gravity? I've seen numerous articles on this but they don't seem to mention this in any context of holding station to actually drill and collect the stuff. Or was there another way they were going to mine it?

Generally the idea with small asteroids seems to be to bag or otherwise enclose it and use tethers and such to anchor equipment. With large, solid asteroids, you might do things like drilling shafts and inserting heaters to drive off volatiles without having to break the asteroid up into manageable chunks. It's a very different environment, but lack of gravity is hardly an insurmountable obstacle, or even a hindrance in general. It means a machine can't simply use its weight to bear down on a work area, but it also means machines and materials are a lot easier to move around.

[twik]

That's a pretty bad analogy I would say. Even if you and your boss can't afford it, others can, enough to make keeping up the infrastructure required to get there economically feasible. If everyone had to build their own plane and fly it themselves, flights would be far less common.
In short, Europe is a destination, the moon is not, just a place whose major appeal is how hard it is to get to.

Ha, those other people who claim to be flying to Germany are just another part of the conspiracy, just like, say, the Japanese or Europeans who say they're doing (makes bunny ear motion with fingers) independent exploration of the Moon, but they're really not.

The point is, I would likely have gone back to Germany *if* I had a compelling reason to override the expense. The fact that it's an interesting place to visit has not counterbalanced the expense. This has nothing to do with whether I *could* get to Germany if I wanted, just as people *could* get to the Moon if they were willing to spend the money to do so. Its strictly a financial decision, with nothing to do with the technology.

[raven]

Part of the expense though is the rarity of the event makes keeping the infrastructure to be non-viable. Imagine if the only time anyone flew was when someone built a plane themselves.

[twik]

Well, I imagine that if there were a compelling-enough reason to return to the Moon, there'd be an infrastructure in existence, just as there is for travel between North America and Europe.

However, there is not a lot of current economic benefit from visiting the Moon. It's not a resource of gold, or diamonds, or unobtainium. The advances to pure science are not currently considered important enough to make people want to spend the money to get there. If there were suddenly a Lunar gold rush, a technology sufficient to get us there would be rapidly created or, to be precise, recreated.

[ipearse]

Let's face it, man has been restricted to low earth orbit since the much disputed apollo missions and will for the foreseeable future.

More correctly, I'd say that man has restricted himself to LEO...