I don’t understand how it’s even remotely feasible to move dirty industry into space? It’s hard enough to build industry on Earth. Where would the biproducts (dirt) go? Wouldn’t it be far easier to make factories cleaner on Earth? This sounds like someone who has now truly lost the plot.

I've come to the opposite conclusion, that taking heavy industry off planet is a godsend, because it allows capitalism's stagnating growth curve, fuelled by resource extraction with no regard to externalities, to plausibly continue indefinitely, with no environmental consequences - and the wealth poured back onto earth.

You mean: “and the wealth poured back into Bezos pockets”.

Wealth isn’t a zero sum game.

New resources, new ideas, new efficiencies benefit all of us.

Sure, my comment was a bit hyperbolic, but 'all of us' is certainly far from the truth as well.

Just because the pie is getting bigger doesn't mean our slices aren't getting smaller.

Heavy industry will never move to space because it doesn't make sense economically. The main reason is that they are made in huge quantities that make it impossible to transport. Space elevators are pretty limited in quantity, think of them as a single rail line.

Concrete is most made material and its components come from Earth. It is used on Earth. It is made in such quantities that it is produced locally because it infeasible to transport it long distances. Wood comes from Earth, used on Earth, and makes no sense to manufacture in space.

Chemical industry is another good example, where a lot of the source materials come from Earth (nitrogen, petroleum, gas). All of the processes are designed to work in atmosphere and under gravity. My guess is that nitrogen-based chemicals will be shipped to space for a long time.

Steel is made in huge quantities, with ore trains, ore ships, and giant steel factories. My guess is that even had a free iron asteroid in space, that wouldn't make sense to mine it because getting the results down would be too expensive.

Also, there is a lot of large-scale manufacturing that wouldn't make sense to move because the result is used on Earth. Ship building is a prime example where building anywhere other than next to body of water doesn't make sense. Complex objects also have a lot of parts which means shipping them to space or moving the whole supply chain.

The exception is industry being used for use in space.

> Where would the biproducts (dirt) go?

On the website, they suggest that these byproducts, i.e. waste, could effectively be dumped into space, where the solar winds would carry it out to the asteroid belt.

I have no expertise to determine if this would ever be viable, but seems like they do at least answer this particular question of yours.

I guess that could work, I did not think of that. Not sure if it greatly improves viability but venting into the solar winds I guess could be an option. At low earth orbit wouldn’t most material fall back down to Earth, it’s not like they’d be vending hydrogen. And a very high Earth orbit would incur even greater costs of getting material into space. It still seems bananas.

I had the same questions! But again, this is where my knowledge fails me. For example, if you release C02, how far away from earth would you need to be for it to not get caught in Earth's gravity?

Still, it's a fascinating idea.

Anything within Earth's sphere of influence [1] (about 90000 km) will initially be in orbit around Earth. Unless you give it a kick that puts the highest point of the orbit further away from earth than that.

Unless you shoot stuff away with railguns, the relevant question might be "at which point are solar winds a bigger factor than drag". I guess it's highly dependent on the exact gas. We lose Helium that way from earth (buoyancy brings it up, where solar winds catch it), so at some height it should work for CO2.

It only really works for gases though, and then only for things that stay reasonably gaseous in orbit (low pressure and large temperature swings). For any solid or liquid you have to worry about it crashing into you on one of the orbits, and at orbital speeds tiny things can impact with a lot of energy.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence_(astrodyna...

The more I look into it the less feasible it looks. My initial assumption is reflective of the peer comment that anything remotely heavy won’t have enough solar wind drag to get it out of Earths gravity well.

Just to be in the solar wind alone you’d have to be outside the magnetosheath ~60K Km at its closest point, 35K Km is geostationary orbit which costs $10K kg to get to with falcon 9. And now you’d have to send up a whole falcon 9 in order to bring the non byproduct mass back to Earth which would defeat the purpose of venting CO2 to begin with. For those who don’t know it takes roughly the same delta V to bring things back down as it took to send them up.

I don't know the answer to that.

Though I'm wondering: If manufacturing were done on the moon, would it be safe and feasible to haul some wastes to the lunar equator during the cold of night and let it burn up when daytime temps naturally exceed the boiling point of water from solar power alone?

The better bet is to process raw materials in space and send refined products down to earth. Would you rather have strip-mining and smelting occurring in space or on earth? Daniel Suarez had a lot of fascinating ideas in Delta-V

> Would you rather have strip-mining and smelting occurring in space or on earth?

I assume you mean "on the moon or on earth" since you can't really mine in empty space. The process of either (without air, for a start) would make them so different as to be incomparable.

Mining on the moon would have so many expenses associated, that you could spend the same amount making earth-based processes cleaner. The issue is that it's economical not to do so, so earth processes are dirty by design and due to lack of regulation.

I wonder how hard it would be to mine an asteroid, and then send the refined materials back to Earth from the asteroid belt. Sure, the initial trip would take a while, but after the initial package you could just keep shipping them every few weeks for a consistent supply.

It's not bananas. What's bananas is the idea of getting all your raw materials from mines on the Earth, launching those to space factories, then sending the finished products back to Earth.

Obviously, the goal is to do the mining in space (moon, asteroids, etc.), and then use those raw materials in space factories.

I wonder what the impact would be on astronomy, whether space based or terrestrial?

His entire series of enterprises has been about complete vertical integration. One part of why his favorite show ever is The Expanse.

Just curious, what does vertical integration have to do with The Expanse?

The entire show is about political tensions that result from expanding corporate dominance and private ownership into industrial heavy mining operations like those out in the Belt, with all the attendant cost-cutting and consequent torture of the peons that that entails. Reminds heavily of stories heard from within Amazon warehouses.

Amazon's push to dominate retail markets via Basics, etc., and the anti-competitive practices he enables, only serves to portend an obvious conclusion that Bezos wants to own not just the marketplace but every component of goods production.

Gotcha. It is also one of my favorite shows(and I am far from a space theme enthusiast), but I think I focused more on the protovirus and what not, I should go back and re-watch it again!