The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth elements (2018)

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by sillyquiet on Friday January 11, 2019 @08:21AM (#18883361)

nah, let's go hunt for rare-earth elements left over from the creation of the solar system out where we aren't in danger of stressing an already stressed ecosystem.

Let's pay the tremendous up-front costs of lifting mining operations out and reap the long (caveat: very long) term benefits of doing so.

edit: In case that came across as sarcasm, I am in dead earnest. Whatever the relative costs of so-called asteroid mining versus deep sea mining, the ecological cost tips the balance waaay in the favor of asteroid mining. It's just that we'd have to have a longer-term mindset than we currently do.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by danmaz74 on Friday January 11, 2019 @10:03AM (#18883968)

Just for the sake of discussion, I'll say that sending anything into space also creates a lot of pollution on Earth (just think about all the energy necessary to build and power our rockets). Mining asteroids would still have an ecological impact - higher, lower, I don't know. But something to keep in mind.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by sillyquiet on Friday January 11, 2019 @10:09AM (#18884011)

This is very true, but my thinking is that cost is almost all front-loaded - once we get equipment up there to accomplish the mining, the launches in support would not be terribly frequent, I think, right?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by danmaz74 on Friday January 11, 2019 @01:04PM (#18885403)

That's possible, depending on how much fuel will the operation consume when in space - and where it will come from. At the moment, I think we would need to send the fuel to move all cargo from Earth. Being able to create it directly in space would change everything, of course.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by pvaldes on Friday January 11, 2019 @04:26PM (#18887238)

Land ecosystems had evolved with a fair amount of change. They can recover also much faster because they are "high energy" machines. In the mud you have a lot of hidden structure that is basic for the marine living things inhabiting those ecosystems. Just stirring the mud you can kill a lot of the biomass. And there is the anoxic nasty stuff also that would poison the area.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by jyounker on Friday January 11, 2019 @09:25AM (#18883724)

The dinosaurs tried to do that by bringing the Chicxulub asteroid into Earth orbit for easy mining. Look how that turned out.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by sillyquiet on Friday January 11, 2019 @09:34AM (#18883779)

And then became petroleum! COINCIDENCE?

seriously, whatever the (overstated, imo) danger of moving mass into Earth orbit is, it can be mitigated - and probably a lot more easily than the dangers of deep sea drilling can be.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth e... by nothanksmydude on Friday January 11, 2019 @06:16PM (#18888143)

I don't think your opinion is very informed. We're just now starting to discover and understand the consequences of launching and landing so many rockets per year. This part would not hold up to the scale at which mining is done.

Perhaps this is why China wants to build a moon base

[ Parent | on HN ]