The merits of Lunar resource mining versus mining on Earth

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

The biggest hurdle is the energy required. When energy finally becomes too cheap to meter, then it will make sense. Until then, it costs to much compared to newly extracted resources.

Yes, it requires a lot of energy (so, the fusion energetics), but that's all it requires.

It doesn't need chemistry, it can process any piece of matter (stones, garbage, outdated canned fish), it's same for any planet or orbital habitat, and it's absolutely multipurpose.

Actually, it's in use (metallurgy, wastes processing), but limited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification

***

Also the proper garbage recycling will allow to reuse many times already mined metals contained in human spent things like cars, buildings, kitchen waste, clothes, colors, etc.

When a city is able to recycle everything by the ionization and separation, it will mostly use a limited amount of metals, so the need in mining will decrease, just to compensate random losses.

This means that it will be able to use this expensive plasmatic metallurgy due to much less amount of resources to process.

Outside of the Earth it's the only way to extract resources, due to the total absence of any chemicals, coal, and so on.

So, it's just a question of time, and the time mark is the beginning of fusion.
Deuterium reactors working on oceanic deuterium, etc.
It's also the point when the lunar metallurgy becomes possible, requiring only fusion fuel (D from ice, ³He from regolith) to extract everything.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Yes, it requires a lot of energy (so, the fusion energetics), but that's all it requires.

It doesn't need chemistry, it can process any piece of matter (stones, garbage, outdated canned fish), it's same for any planet or orbital habitat, and it's absolutely multipurpose.

Actually, it's in use (metallurgy, wastes processing), but limited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification

***

Also the proper garbage recycling will allow to reuse many times already mined metals contained in human spent things like cars, buildings, kitchen waste, clothes, colors, etc.

When a city is able to recycle everything by the ionization and separation, it will mostly use a limited amount of metals, so the need in mining will decrease, just to compensate random losses.

This means that it will be able to use this expensive plasmatic metallurgy due to much less amount of resources to process.

Outside of the Earth it's the only way to extract resources, due to the total absence of any chemicals, coal, and so on.

So, it's just a question of time, and the time mark is the beginning of fusion.
Deuterium reactors working on oceanic deuterium, etc.
It's also the point when the lunar metallurgy becomes possible, requiring only fusion fuel (D from ice, ³He from regolith) to extract everything.

 

The wikipedia article also showed both it's advantages and disadvantages.... the plasma gasification process.

 

Advantages: Works in space, can process just about anything in space.

 

Disadvantages: Large industrial upfront cost and investment. Also the machinery would require constant maintenence.

 

This not at all like a car you can drive for months without taking it in for an oil change if you are processing stuff daily.

[SunlitZelkova]

11 hours ago, darthgently said:

I figured the cleaning up part was kind of obvious.

Unfortunately, it isn’t these days…

11 hours ago, darthgently said:

Amazing

I apologize. I shall take a bit more time to ascertain intentions from now on 

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Disadvantages: Large industrial upfront cost and investment. Also the machinery would require constant maintenence.

The machinery is always requiring a lot of maintenance.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 4/19/2022 at 1:21 PM, tater said:

Space resources is very much a chicken and egg thing. Useful mostly in space by people who live in space who need resources to be able to build where they live, so that they exist to need the resources. My head hurts

I fully agree and understand

My expectation - we will have very early day 'resource return' (mostly for scientific /research purposes or novelty collection) and then we will bring stuff down because we don't have anything up there to do anything with it - which will be horribly inefficient - and then we will build stuff up there for use down here - and realize it's not only horribly inefficient... It's expensive... Until one day, finally - everything extracted there is used there and we start exporting. 

 

... And then we have The Expanse 

Edited April 23, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[miklkit]

Yes.  The astroid belt and outer moons beckon.

[mikegarrison]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-17/china-us-are-in-a-space-race-to-make-billions-from-mining-the-moon-s-minerals

Journalists should really avoid writing about technical subjects if they don't understand them.

The article claims helium 3 is a "replacement for uranium" -- Um ... what? Should someone writing an article about this know that uranium is a fissionable and helium 3 is a potential fusion fuel? And so not only is it not a direct replacement, and not only has no one ever yet built a practical fusion power plant, but also it's only speculation that we might find any practical source of helium 3 on the moon?

I am not at all  convinced that lunar mining will ever be much of a resource for terrestrial industry, simply because everything available on the moon is also available on the earth. I could see the moon being a handy source of materials for space-based industry.

[StrandedonEarth]

Another group is entering the asteroid mining ring….  
 

I know it’s not lunar mining, but since this is the most recent space resource acquisition thread, I figure it’s close enough…

 

[kerbiloid]

If redirect a minable asteroid into the Moon, it will be both lunar resource mining and asteroid mining optimization.

Also nice to watch from here.