Re: The Falcon Has Landed! Epic Views of SpaceX's Amazing Rocket Landing

by **Code_Warrior** Wed Dec 23, 2015 12:45 pm

Floyd Robertson wrote:
SpartanInNH wrote:

All of which is why we should be targeting the Moon first. Closer, lower gravity, economic viability (mining), closer in the event things go wrong. Better idea all around, but everybody's all "Been there, done that" when it comes to the Moon.

Still no politicians willing to fund it, so no real fucking difference in the end of it. Whatever.

Someday mining the moon's minerals might be worthwhile, but I have to believe it is going to be a long time before the benefit outweighs the cost. Other than Titanium, what is on the moon of value or that we're running out of in terms of natural deposits?

Then you get into the whole argument of who profits from mining the materials from a celestial body that is owned by 7.3 billion people?

For me, it's not about the economic viability, it's about technology development. We will need to get off this Earth for a large number of reasons, the biggest of which is the fact that our time here is limited. We will run out of easy to reach natural resources well before we face any planet ending cataclysms, but if we wait until we run out of resources before we develop the technology to extract them from the moon and other bodies, life will get very nasty down here and we will wish for a cataclysm. The problem is that working on and mining the moon will take decades of development work just to create systems that can do it reliably, let alone do it on anywhere near a comparable cost to terrestrial production, and when I say comparable cost, I mean a cost with the same order of magnitude, i.e. less than 10 times the cost of terrestrial production.

by Guest Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:21 pm

Giant Moose wrote:
SpartanDawgs265 wrote:

Ur a jerk for saying that. I had to get that off my chest sorry.
Why? I like Bezos. He's going to give average humans a realistic shot to enter space in our lifetimes. That's pretty damn cool.

I was half kidding but he failed miserably (On tiny rockets that can't carry anything) rather recently at doing the same thing Team Musk just did. Then he had the balls to tweet out to him saying "welcome to the club" when he was never in the club. Not my kind of guy.

by **Watch Out Pylon!** Wed Dec 23, 2015 1:59 pm

SpartanDawgs265 wrote:
Giant Moose wrote:
Why? I like Bezos. He's going to give average humans a realistic shot to enter space in our lifetimes. That's pretty damn cool.

I was half kidding but he failed miserably (On tiny rockets that can't carry anything) rather recently at doing the same thing Team Musk just did. Then he had the balls to tweet out to him saying "welcome to the club" when he was never in the club. Not my kind of guy.

Actually that sounds exactly like your kind of guy.

by **SpartanInNH** Wed Dec 23, 2015 7:18 pm

Code_Warrior wrote:
Floyd Robertson wrote:

Someday mining the moon's minerals might be worthwhile, but I have to believe it is going to be a long time before the benefit outweighs the cost. Other than Titanium, what is on the moon of value or that we're running out of in terms of natural deposits?

Then you get into the whole argument of who profits from mining the materials from a celestial body that is owned by 7.3 billion people?
For me, it's not about the economic viability, it's about technology development. We will need to get off this Earth for a large number of reasons, the biggest of which is the fact that our time here is limited. We will run out of easy to reach natural resources well before we face any planet ending cataclysms, but if we wait until we run out of resources before we develop the technology to extract them from the moon and other bodies, life will get very nasty down here and we will wish for a cataclysm. The problem is that working on and mining the moon will take decades of development work just to create systems that can do it reliably, let alone do it on anywhere near a comparable cost to terrestrial production, and when I say comparable cost, I mean a cost with the same order of magnitude, i.e. less than 10 times the cost of terrestrial production.