NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles above the surface

Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by ROTMetro on Monday November 21, 2022 @12:44PM (#33695469)

Isn't that the goal? If we can get rid of scarcity in materials and energy then everyone's living standards can go up. If we can move metal smelting off world, pollution goes down at the same time. Am I ignorant to think that would be a big positive for human kind?

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by kibwen on Monday November 21, 2022 @12:48PM (#33695526)

I'm not saying it's not a potential positive for society, rather I'm saying that the economic calculations shown so far are exceedingly simplistic and merely extrapolate from the current market price of these metals, so we cannot use these numbers to conclude that this will be the most profitable endeavor in human history.

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by giantrobot on Monday November 21, 2022 @03:48PM (#33697721)

It will costs trillions to bootstrap that industry in space. It would cost mere billions to make that industry on Earth cleaner. The Earth is fucking gigantic. It's literally filled with raw materials. Access to those materials is downright cheap compared to attempting to access the same material in space.

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Re:NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles... by widjit on Monday November 21, 2022 @11:30PM (#33701921)

at the very least people would stop stealing catalytic converters, that's a win

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