farticustheelder t1_irowoes wrote on October 9, 2022 at 10:25 PM

I've been a fan of science fiction since I was a kid. And science and tech generally. Not to mention a healthy respect for reality.

That reality thing should be paid attention to. The first crop of space mining companies had zero chance of working. There it was a scam to fleece investors.

New flash!!! The new generation of space mining companies is also a scam.

For space mining to ever take off we need space transportation costs to fall by a factor of 100, at minimum. We also need a single stage to LEO (and back!) space plane like the one in 2001.

Then we need a ton of infrastructure in space, starting with permanent L5 habitats and R&D labs. We need to figure out how to refine asteroids and comets into useful stuff in space. We need cheap in system transportation infrastructure, I like Dyson style nano swarms of space based solar panels that power masers that beam power to spaceships which are big clouds of rectennae to harvest that power and use it to run ion drives, no fuel!

We have about 50 years before space tourism gives way to industrialization.

phunkydroid t1_irrov6p wrote on October 10, 2022 at 3:08 PM

I agree with a lot of what you say, but FYI ion engines still need fuel, just not as much.

farticustheelder t1_irrveww wrote on October 10, 2022 at 3:52 PM

That's true.

hucktard t1_irrudyq wrote on October 10, 2022 at 3:45 PM

I agree with most of this. But I don’t think we need single stage to orbit space planes. If you have a reusable two stage system (like starship), what’s the problem with that?