Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson on space exploration
“The Earth is the cradle of humanity but humankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.”
— Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky —
Regardless of how fabulously successful America’s lunar landing program was—with valuable spin-off technologies galore—and what a supreme political victory it became in terms of discrediting the Soviet Union’s much vaunted “centrally planned economy”, for further space exploration to continue, it must be profitable.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with there being a Capitalist component to the equation that describes mankind’s future in space. Someone has to pay for it and how better to fund such a venture than by economically harvesting precious metals from the asteroid belt? Only by viewing this video did I learn about how visiting, and returning from, certain near-Earth orbit asteroids would require a lower energy budget than a round trip moon mission. Combine this with the fact that just one single 500 meter sized LL chondrite type PGM (Platinum Group Metals) rich asteroid could yield more platinum than has ever been mined in the Earth’s entire history. A tiny 75 meter sized carbonaceous chondrite asteroid could supply the entire oxygen and hydrogen fuel requirements to launch all 135 of the Space Shuttle missions.
This video describes how to do it and the methods that they propose present zero conflict with every last book and journal I have read on the economics of space flight. As part of my commitment to bringing the 1389 Blog high quality, informative material, I personally will be vetting each of the Solve for X videos before they are posted.
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