Re:Company backed by James Cameron & Google founders may min...
by CWuestefeld on Wednesday April 18, 2012 @05:32PM
(#3860336)
The Great Lakes would make a great catcher's mitt for a few tons of air-dropped iron.
Not without an environmental impact study first.
Re:Company backed by James Cameron & Google founders may min...
by nitrogen on Wednesday April 18, 2012 @08:06PM
(#3860814)
Maybe China will volunteer some remote quarter of their vast stretches of land as a crash landing pad. It might be worth completely sacrificing the environmental quality of a few dozen square miles of land (there's already tons of land that's naturally uninhabitable) to gain the resources available from space.
Some of this we might be able to make in space - boot strap a mirror factory and you've made the tools to make the tools.
Throwing bits of asteroid at the planet seems inefficient, to say the least.
How so? You can land the goods anywhere you want on earth. Sending stuff down a space elevator and you still need to ship it from the equator to wherever you need it.
After you apply the brakes, you don't need any more energy - the stuff is going downhill.
Granted, we can't simply drop iron on Cleavland where they can process it. Even if we assume pin-point delivery people are going to be reluctant to be at a potential ground-zero.
However lots of potential users are near water. The Great Lakes would make a great catcher's mitt for a few tons of air-dropped iron.