Space Exploitation - Getting stuff back

[grooble]

Once we have mining operations on asteroids, moon, mars, how do we get resources and products safely to the earths surface in big quantities?

 

[grooble]

dp.

 

[grooble]

It could have a mass driver on the moon and use a Troysten(tm) sledge fitted with boosters, parachutes to land your payload in the desert. <br /><br />http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/cliparmy/1-27a.htm

 

[chris_in_space]

May-be by building some desalinization plants...<br /><br /><img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />

 

[grooble]

http://www.tungsten.com/sheet.html

 

[grooble]

Does no one have a reply?

 

[nacnud]

Foamed metal ablative heat shield + luna mass drivers

 

[chriscdc]

Well the best way would be a space elevator. Mass going down could also drive generators. <br />But otherwise, get a large open space eg australia and drop it down there. That is if you are just moving lump materials.<br />I doubt it would be the best idea to take stuff down to earth. Although it would be interesting to see the state of the economy after precious metals come falling from the sky.<br />I think that the earth and space based economies would have to be kept seperate or earth's economy could easily collapse after having ultra cheap goods being dumped on them.

 

[chris_in_space]

"I think that the earth and space based economies would have to be kept seperate"<br /><br />It's weird, I agree with this statement but because I think the other economy would collapse if it had to be as cheap and competitive as the first one (at least at the beginning and for a long long time afterwards)...

 

[johnhawl218]

Getting cargo to earth would be cheap if we actually built a space elevator. I don't have the report available, but if you search NASA there is a pdf outlining how to build one with relatively few new technological advancements needing to be overcome, one is carbon nano fiber which is moving along nicely.<br /><br />As far as the economy collapsing, perhaps that is for the best, let the earth heal a bit from all the stripmining, let her heal a bit, perhaps re-educatate some of the work force that will be pushed out of the market into something that is earthbound in production, like agriculture, or even educatate them in the space version of there job and send them out.

 

[deep_space_1]

this really is'nt something we should be thinking about right now...it will take decades to begin mining on other planets

 

[spacester]

nacnud: <font color="yellow">Foamed metal ablative heat shield + luna mass drivers</font>. . . <br /><br />. . . surrounding chunks of titanium, plopping down in the Australian outback.<br /><br />Cool idea. Lots of problems, but a cool idea anyway.<br /><br />Mining planets may be decades away, but mining the Near Earth Objects and the moon could hapen right away.<br /><br />People smart enough to go get off-planet resources are smart enough to not flood the market with their treasure. Prices would not collapse, economies would not fail. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[tuttle]

That is quite simple. <br /><br />Stuff in high energy trajectories is much too valuable to just drop it on earth. By using a rotovator such as the ones described on http://www.tethers.com/LaunchAssist.html you could use the kinetic energy of stuff going down to accellerate stuff that is going up. <br /><br />Note that a rotovator (as opposed to a full-blown space elevator) is doable today with materials that are commercially avaliable in ton quantities such as spectra and zylon fiber.<br /><br />If you have more stuff coming down than what is going up, you just launch dirt or whatever in the opposite direction.<br />