Everyone talks about asteroid mining, but what about mining the asteroids that have already accumulated on the moon?
Afaik the problem is getting resources back to Earth, but it seems more plausible to me that we could refine more repeatably on the Moon vs. on specific asteroids.
Perfect use for a system like SpinLaunch:
- no fuel, just solar energy
- the Moon always faces the Earth with the same side
- no air to create drag
- no need for huge burts of energy
- a block of minerals does not mind extreme g-forces
If there are at all any economical amount of metals on the moon then you would either have to build a smelter on the moon or you would need to transport an enormous amount of soil to earth (with just some tiny percent of metal content).
Even with a smelter on the moon, the amount and weight of the metal to transport to earth would be enormous.
And just imagine all the equipment needed. Huge dumper truck, haulers, grinding machines etc. For underground mining you would need concrete etc.
It would require so much fuel and energy to transport the vessels back and forth to make it completely pointless.
This is a great use case for von Neumann self-replicating machines. Little self-replicating space robots that fashion aerodynamic payloads and fire them to a small receiving site on the Earth. Just remember to include a stop signal, lest they consume in an unstoppable, exponential way.
It gets somewhat hot, I've heard. The Iceland Deep Drilling Project went a bit deeper (still not 3 miles) and hit magma, which is more interesting as an energy source than as a mine.
Well, you've gotta make a refinery on the moon, for starters.
Maybe in a few decades, that will be feasible, with lowered marginal costs for doing anything other than floating around in space. But until then, doing pretty much everything is prohibitively expensive, so asking "why not just refine it there?" is putting the cart before the horse.
Afaik the problem is getting resources back to Earth, but it seems more plausible to me that we could refine more repeatably on the Moon vs. on specific asteroids.
What am I missing?