spencerforhire
All Star
Get off the crack
China preparing to send astronauts to the moon before the end of this decade
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Get off the crack
Get off Xi’s dikk.
Not really. There is nothing out there that we cant get here on earth easier and cheaper. I mean its literally cheaper to mine the bottom of the ocean, than it is to go to the moon and back. And we got a crap ton of ocean leftover, so it might be a few centuries before we actually “need” space.
I wish we would just be honest about our space asperations. Im tired of folks hiding behind flimsy humanitarian or utilitarian reasons for going to space. Its perfectly fine to admit, “we want to go because its cool, and we dont care about practicality !”
Of course, I do agree with you that war is unideal.
Gritsngravy
Superstar
I don’t know you got to prove that, I doubt the earth by itself got more resources than the asteroid belt, and going to space is a business ventureGet off Xi’s dikk.
Not really. There is nothing out there that we cant get here on earth easier and cheaper. I mean its literally cheaper to mine the bottom of the ocean, than it is to go to the moon and back. And we got a crap ton of ocean leftover, so it might be a few centuries before we actually “need” space.
I wish we would just be honest about our space asperations. Im tired of folks hiding behind flimsy humanitarian or utilitarian reasons for going to space. Its perfectly fine to admit, “we want to go because its cool, and we dont care about practicality !”
They talking about building factories in space, so I don’t think it’s purely a “cool” thing
2 things.
First:
are you aware of the International Seabed Authority?
The International Seabed Authority and Deep Seabed Mining | United Nations
The Main Players - The DSCC Deep Sea Conservation Coalition
Deep-sea mining involves a collection of government, inter-government, industry, scientific, academic, civil society and other interests. Exploration As of January 2023, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has issued permits and entered into 31 contracts for exploration for polymetallic...
savethehighseas.org
They already mapped most of the seafloors since the 60s and have allocated a crazy amount of minerals , however; most of it is allocated to developing nations as part of UN treaties because the great powers were worried about taking their shares at the height of the cold war. So its literally free for the taking because nations like Swaziland or Laos lack the capital to use their allotment. . This isnt crazy scifi stuff. We already have deep sea mining operations and they cost dramatically less than R&D on rockets/shuttles/ extraction/ etc.
This will be a much lower barier to entry and lower cost than anything done in space. More importantly its easier to get shareholders of a private company or govt to invest in a mining operation on the deep shore coast of Fiji than to risk their money in a multidecade investment on Ceres.
There are literal balls of minerals just sitting on the surface of the ocean floor (not even burried) and ready for the taking. And they are pretty evenly distributed over that gigantic sea floor. Once again, they are literally sitting on the seafloor like a treasure chest for mankind.
Rare Earth Metal Balls Found Beneath The Atlantic Ocean
The ancient deposit could be good news for tech companies
www.popsci.com
An Underwater Field of Weird Metal Balls Is a Key to Both Past And Future
A huge deposit of manganese nodules beneath the Atlantic might be a potential source of highly prized rare earth metals
www.smithsonianmag.com
Second:
On a mass-per-mass basis its not even close. The mass of all the rocky bodies in the asteroid belt is 3% of the moon. And that moon is only 1.2% of the mass of Earth.
Link (second paragraph) Asteroid belt - Wikipedia.
Link (6th paragraph) How Big is the Moon?
So its not even a debate as to which entity has more resources for us.
But why? You gotta ask why we would do any of this . There is circular logic at play here.
At a certain point it becomes ..
(1) We go, so we can build, (2) so that we can go further , (3) so that we can build, so we can….( to the nth power )
(In detail)
- Build rocket. Why?
- To Go to moon. Why?
- To build moon factories. why?
- To making going to deep space easier. Why?
- To go to mars and phobos. Why?
- To make going to asteroid belt easier. Why?
- To make going to oiter solar system easier. Why?
- To get to he Kuiper Belt. Why?
- To leave solar system and go to nearest star. Why?
- Etc…etc…etc
In an infinite regressive loop. And at no point will this be easier than doing the same thing on earth.
I was a comEng major in college and we used to go on and on about this debate in our multi-disciplinary engineering courses because computer engineers, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, nuclear engineers, etc have been having wet dreams about space since middleschool and convo always falls to space.
There is no practical purpose for any of this stuff. And believe me, i think thats perfectly fine. Humanity does impractical stuff all the time. But lets be honest here and just say its cool and thats why we wanna do it.
Last edited:
Gritsngravy
Superstar
@CopiousX
They say the resources in the ocean could be worth about 16 trillion, space mining quintillions
Things will become cheap enough eventually to actually be cost effective to go to space, that’s the whole point of setting a footprint out there now
Why did humans leave Africa to go to other areas, why did the Spanish leave for the americas, humans are explorers and willing to take chances to see new shyt
And people aren’t just interest with space, it’s a bunch of topics that are just as interesting if not more than space but why is it so regressive to discuss space
They say the resources in the ocean could be worth about 16 trillion, space mining quintillions
Things will become cheap enough eventually to actually be cost effective to go to space, that’s the whole point of setting a footprint out there now
Why did humans leave Africa to go to other areas, why did the Spanish leave for the americas, humans are explorers and willing to take chances to see new shyt
And people aren’t just interest with space, it’s a bunch of topics that are just as interesting if not more than space but why is it so regressive to discuss space
Why? So in 100 years ungrateful Chinese kids online can deny it happened?
InGodWeTrust
Tall & Handsome in ATL
Let me know when they build a Dyson Sphere
JealousOnesEn_V
HTX Certified
We had similar proclamations about japan in the late 80s and mid 90s. They were also buying govt debt, us shares in private companies, us land/realestate, spying on us interests, had hilarious projections of surpassing the us gdp, etc. just look up any archived news from nyt or nyp or usatoday from the 90s or mid80s.You don’t think China will be around in 7 yrs?
By 2007 japan had fallen from prominenece, due to american intervention in numerous areas such currency manipualtion and the plaza accords.
Dafunkdoc_Unlimited
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The actual reason for going into space is simple: room.
The Earth, right now, has almost 8 billion people. This present population is the result of doubling since 1960. It'll probably 'level-off' by the 22nd Century to about 10-12 billion.
The Earth's resources are not sufficient to maintain a population that large at the rate of current consumption, or, the projected increase, without expanding into the Solar System.
The Earth, right now, has almost 8 billion people. This present population is the result of doubling since 1960. It'll probably 'level-off' by the 22nd Century to about 10-12 billion.
The Earth's resources are not sufficient to maintain a population that large at the rate of current consumption, or, the projected increase, without expanding into the Solar System.
China is too repressive and insular. They don’t even export culture like that. It’s very strange
RickyDiBiase
The Sword of Jesus of Nazareth
You don’t think China will be around in 7 yrs?
Conditions are applicable and its happened before