Mining the Moon - Good or Bad?

MooMoo444 · 6 Mar 2015 at 17:04

Edward78 said:

What, he's got a point. You only have half the mining time.

Glaucus · 6 Mar 2015 at 17:09

Well energy and matter are the same thing, so we just need to harness lots of energy and work out a way of converting it. Maybe in several hundred years.

Unicorn · 6 Mar 2015 at 17:27

Crash the materials back to earth.. possibly somewere like pyongyang? No one will care if we do that

me227 · 6 Mar 2015 at 20:09

Tie a rope to a rocket.

Point it at the moon.

Launch

Bring resources back along the rope.

DXP55 · 6 Mar 2015 at 20:34

How do you know miners are not already there ?

Dave

Vanilla · 6 Mar 2015 at 21:09

Is the question is it possible or if it is 'good or bad'?

Some people may be taking it from the wrong angle, c'mon people this is homework we are talking about let's get it right.

StriderX · 6 Mar 2015 at 21:10

We really only require the moon for helium-3 before pumping the gas giants for higher returns.

That will be the industry that will make the oil industry look minuscule in comparison.

Castiel · 6 Mar 2015 at 21:13

StriderX said:
We really only require the moon for helium-3 before pumping the gas giants for higher returns.

That will be the industry that will make the oil industry look minuscule in comparison.

And we have enough trouble making difficult to reach oil fields viable, let alone mining Jupiter.

arknor · 6 Mar 2015 at 21:29

SMN said:
This. The cost of getting there, back, wages, insurance to name but a few - you'd need to be mining something you can get ONLY on the moon, essentially. And you'd need a damn good reason for needing it.

cheese

Realistically we would be better off capturing/mining comets after dragging them into the earth's orbit

Tefal · 7 Mar 2015 at 13:03

Freefaller said:
Based on our current knowledge and abilities. Be more future looking

more the fundamentals of physics really.

splitting and combining atoms releases incredible amounts of energy (Hiroshima being <1 gram of mass difference), so to do it with the hundreds of thousands of tons we use of say metals you're talking world ending amounts of energy both produced and required.

LordSplodge · 7 Mar 2015 at 15:30

arknor said:
cheese

Realistically we would be better off capturing/mining comets after dragging them into the earth's orbit

Nah, mine them in-situ and send the processed ore back. Needs much less Delta-V and a lot less risky if you get the orbital calculations wrong...

Freefaller · 7 Mar 2015 at 18:35

Tefal said:
more the fundamentals of physics really.

splitting and combining atoms releases incredible amounts of energy (Hiroshima being <1 gram of mass difference), so to do it with the hundreds of thousands of tons we use of say metals you're talking world ending amounts of energy both produced and required.

Fundamental of physics mean nothing since physics evolves and changes.

In a thousand years time we may have re-written 90% of the rules

Ryan-3 · 7 Mar 2015 at 18:37

There are no rules in science. Only models, theories and laws.

arknor · 7 Mar 2015 at 18:38

LordSplodge said:
Nah, mine them in-situ and send the processed ore back. Needs much less Delta-V and a lot less risky if you get the orbital calculations wrong...

You do realise how simple calculations to maintain an orbit are? you can do them by hand

Fundamental of physics mean nothing since physics evolves and changes. In a thousand years time we may have re-written 90% of the rules

Physics doesn't evolve and change only our understanding of them.
we won't have re-witten 90% of the rules since they never change

Freefaller · 7 Mar 2015 at 18:46

arknor said:
Physics doesn't evolve and change only our understanding of them.
we won't have re-witten 90% of the rules since they never change

Well it does, doesn't it? New theories are proposed, old theories are debunked or disproven, or changed. I think it's pretty arrogant of us (humans) to think we have all the answers no?

How did we get here from where we were if we didn't challenge the laws of physics and our understanding?

I'm not saying "I'm right you're wrong" - but that's just how I see it.

arknor · 7 Mar 2015 at 19:07

you don't seriously see physics like a living entity that is constantly adapting and evolving ?

it's been the same since time existed, we come up with a theory of how physics work,if the theory fits then it sticks.
at some later point we find out the model we came up with does not have the expected results in reality.

This does not mean physics have changed and evolved it means we were wrong in the first place.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955), whose work on the photoelectric effect and the theory of relativity led to a revolution in 20th century physics
Max Planck (1858–1947), the originator of the theory of quantum mechanics

Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Classical mechanics predicted a varying speed of light, which could not be resolved with the constant speed predicted by Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism; this discrepancy was corrected by Einstein's theory of special relativity, which replaced classical mechanics for fast-moving bodies and allowed for a constant speed of light

Freefaller · 7 Mar 2015 at 19:28

Okay maybe evolving is the wrong word - but we are constantly making new discoveries and realising that some of our theories were wrong, what word should I used instead of evolve? Discover? Re-learn? Adapt?

I'm not trying to be petty, but I remember my physics lecturer's first words were "physics is not an absolute, what I'm teaching you now is what we have tried and tested and agree to be correct at this moment in time..." or something like that. Maybe I should have paid more attention

Glaucus · 7 Mar 2015 at 19:33

Adapt is probably the best. It is very unlikely that we will rewrite any of the known physics totally. However great chance they will be modified slightly.
It's not going to turn out observations and measurements are wrong.

Tefal · 7 Mar 2015 at 19:39

Freefaller said:
Fundamental of physics mean nothing since physics evolves and changes. In a thousand years time we may have re-written 90% of the rules

well no.

it's not something you can really get around, if you split an atomic nucleus perfectly in half, when you weigh each half it wont add up to the same as it was as a whole it will be ever so slightly less, that's because the strong nuclear forces in the atom count towards its mass, once they're broken the mass is converted into energy via the famous equation E=mc^2

to say split a heavy element like lead down into lighter more useful elements you'd be releasing masses of energy (in one book where the earth had been destroyed by "grey goo" nano machines an man was living in space this was their main source of energy further out and resulted in the odd economy where lead was worth more than gold because it could be split down more resulting in more energy.) on the scales needed for industry, instead of that "m" being fractions of a gram it would be in tons.

feel free to put that figure into the equation cause you'll see why its not a sensible solution unless you can think of a way of dissipating teratonnes of TNT equivalent of energy a second.

its not so much a theory but a an observed measured and tested event.

Freefaller · 7 Mar 2015 at 19:41

Glaucus said:
Adapt is probably the best. It is very unlikely that we will rewrite any of the known physics totally. However great chance they will be modified slightly.
It's not going to turn out observations and measurements are wrong.

No but one small change may allow us knowledge or understanding which changes everything.

Like the recent big bang is now suggested that the theory could be wrong which could change the way we look at the galaxy.