The President Is Reading A Book About Asteroid Mining
Here’s What President Obama Is Reading This Summer, Time
“The presidential reading list also includes two big page-turners: Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, a sci-fi adventure about space explorers returning to a post-apocalyptic planet Earth.”
Seveneves, Wikipedia
“At some unspecified date in the near future, an unknown force causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. As the shattered remnants of the Moon begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer “Doc” Dubois Harris calculates that the number of collisions will increase exponentially. A large number of moon fragments will begin entering Earth’s atmosphere, forming a “white sky” and blanketing the earth within two years with what he calls a “Hard Rain” of bolides; this will cause the atmosphere to heat to incandescence and oceans to boil away, and make Earth uninhabitable for thousands of years. … The Cloud Ark is to be based around the International Space Station (ISS), currently commanded by American astronaut Ivy Xiao. The ISS is already bolted onto an iron Arjuna asteroid called Amalthea, which provides some protection against moon debris.”
Keith’s note: Hmm … I wonder if this has anything to do with the White House’s continued interest in the Asteroid Retrieval Mission and lack of interest in the Moon. Just kidding. FWIW I am a big Neal Stephenson fan and I really liked “Seveneves”.
Too bad he did not have any real vision or an achievable goal or the ability to garner congressional support to fund any true results during the past 8 years. Years lost that can not be regained. Years where many space workers lost their livelihood, careers and dreams; not to mention the loss of a vast portion of the best space workforce and knowledge base on Earth. A space program continuing its decay from when the last President canceled the Space Shuttle without a funded and committed goal and human rated spacecraft for our crews. And I don’t see the future or next administration doing any better: more years will be lost. Yes, pessimism abounds unless you can prove me wrong.
HSF does not have a ‘what next’ until an architecture that accepts 10X less launch costs with a goal of reuse is adapted, shifting excess LV capacity to missions/R&D. Period. Flight rate will increase as NASA works many R&D solutions, balancing ops.
Asteriod ISRU, landing heavy objects on Mars demonstrate reliability of hardware prior to HSF missions, as well as shorter duration flights perhaps demonstrate the radiation and ug solutions for long duration space flight. Otherwise, 90 day, no free return risks. No one can predict the wheel of fortune as it falls, but asteroid resources now hold more promise than lunar.
First of all, you must not work in the oil or mining industry, because if you did, and you realized that we truly know nothing about the composition, distribution or make up of any “rock” in space (most remote sensing only sees the top few microns of any surface) to the degree necessary for any company to decide to start mining them. History is replete with examples of miners going bust because they “felt” that they would strike it rich. Serious proof is still needed and no one really seems to be addressing that part of the question. All other parts of hardware/mission design follow upon the successful gaining of such knowledge. people really need to be very careful with their verbiage and stop making assertions and glittering generalities.
Well said. You need to sink a few prospect holes into NEOs to see if they are worth mining, or not.
Read John S Lewis’s book, “Asteroid Mining 101”. Lewis is an eminent planetary chemist, professor emeritus at University of AZ The book goes on for many many pages about what we know about asteroid compositions. Of course we may expect many surprises, but we know much much more than “nothing” of many rocks in space. Lewis’s earlier book, “Mining the Sky”. makes a compelling case for the enormous probable value of extraterrestrial resources, for utilization in space of course, and also for value returned to Earth.
Pity it is too late for his Administration to do anything productive. NASA’s future is at the mercy of who wins the election.
So it ever shall be.
Why is the congress being let off the hook?
An “unknown force” causes the Moon to break into seven parts? Sounds like a conspiracy to me.
No. And if you have not read the book speculating is a waste of your time.
It’s a fun read, better than the usual SF stuff. And despite the views of some, speculation is fun.
What are the craters on the Moon caused by? Yes, the Moon is a meteorite magnet and wouldn’t it stand to reason that the Moon is a scientist’s dream place to gather a wide variety of samples in relative close proximity to each other with out having to rely on just a single sample like ARM does which may be benign?
The rocket equation suggests that avoiding gravity wells holds the greater economic return Asteroid ISRU provides demonstrated reliability of the deep space transportation system, unlike lunar. Read more and watch more.
http://www.planetaryresourc…
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lun…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
“Stage 2 initiates human exploration of the solar system with a variety of destinations including “near Earth objects” such as asteroids, the Lagrange points; and the vicinities of the moon and Mars. Note that human landings on the moon or Mars are not included, although landings on the Martian moons (Phobos or Deimos) could be made, as they have negligible gravitational attraction and no atmosphere”
The rocket equation is not the whole story. Total cost is the long pole. And when human spaceflight is involved time is also critical for both life support and radiation protection.
Science fiction often includes plot devices that are not actually consistent with current science, such as the ubiquitous “space warp”. But it is incumbent on the author to make them believable, usually by providing a credible explanation. Literature that makes no effort to explain fantastic events is usually considered to be in the fantasy genre.
On the contrary, having a single inexplicable event (or handwaved invention) and then exploring the consequences of that has a long-standing tradition in SF. If it’s a technology, it’s called “handwavium”, if it’s an event, it’s called “Alien Space Bats”.
SF vs fantasy has nothing to do with the technology or explanations. It’s the “belief system” underlying the story. Fantasy is usually filled with Romance(*) beliefs, regardless of the setting.
*(The philosophy, not the movie genre.)
To be fair to Obama, his plan actually hinged on many of the things you listed. A core feature was putting NASA in NACA-mode in supporting commercial space (and New Space) with enabling technologies and support, then using that commercial development to feed back into NASA’s own capabilities.
Of course he received zero support from both Congress and much of the space community. But then, you canna teach a pig to sing.
Ha. I see you’ve never farmed pigs.
I thought it was OK, but I didn’t really learn anything, and I was pretty sure I saw several errors (I should have noted them down, I guess…), So I think I’d rate it a 4 or so on a 1-5 scale, 5 being best. Not to be too critical, Stephenson obviously knows a lot, and I am glad Mr. Obama makes time for such extracurricular reading.
I hears ya… love Stephenson’s stuff in general… but while reading 7eves, I found myself obsessing over WTH they were getting all the nitrogen from…. everything leaks: Oxygen- Water electrolysis, check… Nitrogen for air and organics… um? At least the Martian got a big dose of ammonia when he burnt the N2H4 for his spuds… maybe not where he wanted it but still.
I thought they mentioned that they retrieved a bunch of volitiles (including ammonia) from Greg’s Skeleton