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Like I said, as long as they are putting "private money" into it, I have no complaints. The amazing thing about "private venture" is that if it turns out to be a stupid idea and a complete waste of money, only that company and its investors get the shaft. So, as I said, more power to them. Even in stupid ideas, there is always something to be learned from it. As long as it isn't on the tax payers dime, I will wave a flag and cheer them on.
Dude, you guys are a riot. How many decades would it take just to REACH the asteroids to mine?
NEAR-Shoemaker reached 253 Mathilda in less than 18 months and 433 Eros less than 18 months after that. And that was a craft small enough to fit in a pickup truck, carrying an absolute minimum of reaction mass.
That being said, these efforts are probably not going to pan out - definitely a long shot. But who knows, the engineering may spin off some interesting stuff - the necessary semi-autonomous robotics alone may be worth it.
Like I said, as long as they are putting "private money" into it, I have no complaints. The amazing thing about "private venture" is that if it turns out to be a stupid idea and a complete waste of money, only that company and its investors get the shaft. So, as I said, more power to them. Even in stupid ideas, there is always something to be learned from it. As long as it isn't on the tax payers dime, I will wave a flag and cheer them on.
I agree. If I was a billionaire I would buy all my favorite sports teams and run em into the ground myself. lol
It tickles me to no end to see these RWers rant and rave over what some rich people want to do. They are always such staunch defenders of the wealthy; what happened?
What happened to the American pioneer spirit; you know, the same spirit that built this country and that RWers are constantly harping on..the roots of the founding of this country.
I am sure that many Europeans and others thought their friends and relatives were on a fool's journey when they left their home countries to settle and develop America.
RWers are wimps now?
LOL
Oh, my bad...mining asteriods involves the use of SCIENCE, the bane of the RWNJs.
Kooks now want to mine asteroids for precious metals
Quote:
Originally Posted by KUchief25
Of course it's too expensive to do it on earth and "really hard". LOL. Are these nutjobs just completely off their rockers or have they watched Armageddon one too many times?? I'm sure precious elements from asteroids will be much more cheaper than diggin some up on earth.
"The venture, which would be the first effort to mine the solar system commercially, has the backing of billionaire Ross Perot, Google board member Kavitark Ram Shriram and International Software Corp. founder Charles Simonyi as well as Page and Schmidt. Within a decade it plans to develop galactic “gas stations” that will use hydrogen and oxygen in asteroid water to refuel spacecraft, including satellites.
“Ripping up the Earth’s crust not only is terribly intrusive from an environmental point of view, but it’s actually really expensive and really hard,” Anderson said. “Why not go to the source? There is ample technology to go to asteroids and begin to use resources that convert them into their constituent elements.”
Hey it's their money do with it what you want. If Obama gets a whiff of this nonsense I'm sure another stimulous will be in order to fund this nonsense. I wonder if these guys buy up a lot of beachfront property in Oklahoma too?
Hey, if it's economically viable, more power to them. Hopefully it will spur some technological innovation and the rest of the economy will benefit from those spinoffs.
Well according to NASA Eros has more gold than we have dug up on Earth... all in one small place.
getting that would make one very rich feller, even more very rich...
Not necessarily. It may overload the market and thus drive down the price of gold depending on the total cost of procuring the space gold.
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Wait, that's where they ran into "Alien". 
Kooks now want to mine asteroids for precious metals
