reply to post by HossBog
Not picking on you Boss I just have a problem with transferring weight in spacecrafts. I know we want better technology and usually the fuel for
rockets are most of a spacecraft's weight, but you also need cargo capabilities to first get an infrastructure in place to mine, and second to have
ability to launch cargo from whatever, an asteroid would be the easiest escape velocity to reach but one is not considering the landing problems let
alone the fuel required to achieve orbit around a relatively small mass, I put fuel as a distant 4th place in what's holding back space 'bases'.
Consider first a cubic foot, you know like a small cooler you take to the park, if solid diamond would weigh 219 pounds, about an average astronaut
naked. A cubic foot of gold weighs in at 1,205 pounds, more than what the Apollos brought back in moon rock/dust in 6 trips, (just for comparison),
and they left the cameras and other equipment behind to save weight.
A trip to space to bring back cubic feet of somehow mined minerals needs much more than fuel. The cost would be greater than getting it from earth,
for a foreseeable, well, very long time. No manned craft has left earth orbit since 1972, or has flown faster since 1969. It must not be worth it!
It would be interesting to find out how much money it cost to process and fill the main external fuel tank of the Space Shuttle, it's not cheap to
produce liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, especially way over 1.5 million pounds of it.
