- A Cheap Way to Mine Asteroids, the Moon or Elsewhere for Precious Minerals or Other Resources; Laser to 3D Printer (LTTDP)
Did you know it rains diamonds on Neptune?
Yes, conditions are just right on Neptune with carbon and high pressure to squeeze out impurities! Right, Meteorology Lives On!
As I say on my earlier post, a simple way for some to rapidly attain great wealth in a few months or years may be to send lightweight payloads by way of a laser to Neptune to retrieve the diamonds.
Think Breakthrough Starshot but much richer..
By the method, Laser To Three D Printer LTTDP this laser boosted payload then self assembles in orbit around Neptune by the self assembling machine like machines already devised.
This builds in orbit into a small 3d printer "on site" in orbit and this may then print out a larger printer by way of more ink sent drop by drop by the cheap fast laser method and so on...
By LTTDP the printer then prints out drones that go and drill the diamonds with sufficient boosters also used for the return up to orbit..
The stream of rocket fuel for the boost of the drone back to the orbiter after finding the diamonds also would be sent " drop by drop" much much more cheaply than by conventional boosters, all sourced from the proberbial earthbound laser.
In LTTDP the machine in orbit also prints out a laser for the return boost back to us of the small capsule payloads.
Any common power source for the return trip to power the laser might be achieved by the LTTDP method, solar, conventional etc.
Or for a more distant return like to mine the Neptune diamond wealth we might send uranium by the laser bit by bit to then print out the small reactor that powers the laser.
So in just days investors and tech experts could send out these cheap machines and start to recieve a stream of almost unlimited wealth.. And this would be an excellent way to send machines around the solar system for profit or science...
According to Scientific American, in an Article on July 2019,
"Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, two private businesses that were set up early in the 21st century to
pursue asteroid mining, both failed to attract enough investment to attempt any deep space resource extraction."
"It's not like the gold rush days, when anybody with a mule or a pickaxe could go and try to find gold."
The use of LTTDP may "soon disprove this without mules"..
By sending ink it's a much cheaper way to send large or small machines at considerable fractions of the speed of light to where we want them to go..because it's so cheap we can send and return many more types of machines and larger machines, anything a 3d printer can build.
And after we build the return laser it's also just as cheap to return masses in large volume by sending more, lightweight, payloads. While to send astronauts and colonists to mars will have value, lightweight payloads in volume are definitely not the same as heavier slower payloads for sending machines..
MINING He3 ON THE MOON
The moon has abundant He3, rare on earth. Even so it's been established that a few pounds of He3 from the lunar soil used in fusion reactors could power the United States power needs for 20 months or more.
It has been considered that this then could be in reach by sending a large space shuttle sized refining machine to the surface of the moon to sift out the He3, the machine being powered on the moon by solar power and the He3 boosted back to earth by small return bots.
A cheaper method I had also considered was by an orbiting laser that zaps the moon soil as it goes over the moon's surface. In this method a second orbiting "collection scoop" follows at the right distance in orbit to scoop up the stirred up dust and filter out the He3. And it would access the entire moon not just the area on site of the large space shuttle machine considered above..
Both machines don't need to be nearly so heavy as above saving much. This may attract more investors.
This could be improved by printing out the orbiting laser, the scoop, and a simple cheap return laser instead of using conventional boosters at much higher cost and slow speed. If the event fails this is no problem, just cheaply build more..
Why Terraform Mars not Venus?
Remember the L5 Society? In the 1970s They proposed giant machines like mass drivers, (electric cannons I won' t bore you with how it turned out!) Space stations, and much much more! Like in commercials, and what's just about 100000% up!
Here with LTTDP is something we can do now not in 200 years.
I've always been wary of space stations. It's been accepted that even one serious event or explosion would set back the space program 25 years.
To me a space station seems like a flimsy bubble to compute on not a real surface like a planet. I always looked without confidence at schemes for space stations. Unlike a planet, the dwellers would constantly live in a high risk area.
While methods like these seem a treasure for colonizing Mars, space stations and other such concepts always seemed implausible to me.
It's been said the distinction between science and sci fi is, timing. To me the time of space time and space stations may never come as they have been concieved. Even so as I say on this post I think they may be more viable in the future. As they are now, they seem necessary for just a trip perhaps once in a lifetime mars and no more when used so the advantages outweigh the real risk of fatal events.
No space station may be much viable relative to cost if "insurance sales are so rich" and you may wonder about it.
I believe a trip via a high speed space station (a starship) to go to Mars would outweigh the cost but by no means continuous life in space itself. As I'll say here a cheap simple fast way to terraform and colonize worlds like Mars would be more viable than space stations or "living" on the moon.
Insurance sales aside the real reason such risk has been considered is for want of a more optimal option. So dreamers of visits to Mars essentially should have some cosmic sympathy than from more than actuarials!
As I say elsewhere about colonizing mars we could make it a weather paradise in a decade not 1000's of years by spearing the side of satellite of Jupiter with a cheap magnetic bubble using the strong magnetic field of Jupiter to rapidly move it outward to Mars and crash it into the side of Mars giving it air pressure, oceans, and land, in years not centuries, with huge savings. "Living in space on Mars" to me seems to be no option.
The use of a spear to attach the magnetic bubble to the satellite to move it would be like the Japanese moon lander which didn't need a landing method saving money time and complexity. The Japanese moon program was named Hiten, the Japanese moon goddess. Hiten also means " music in heaven" in Japanese!
Other methods could also be used to attach the machine to the satellite.
Worlds may be a far huger and more valuable weather zone to win. I would believe since we could send unlimited 3d ink and print out machines in orbit much more cheaply, we can afford to build smaller machines so in the inevitable event of explosion or other eventuality only a few people would be at risk not thousands in a flimsy station.
This would be like in the patents on gyroscopes for storage, they found no way to limit explosions so they got patents on ways at any rate to make them explode as safely as possible.
Life needs a surface to compute, E.g. basic molecules/stuff of life are only seen like on asteroids near distant star systems. This has been found in exobiology, the general science of life elsewhere than the earth.
NASA is thinking of building an inflatable shield at the Mars L5 to shield Mars from the sun's radioactive particles.
My belief is that Mars can be shielded like this by a more natural magnetized satellite moved by moving a smaller body as with a laser which changes a heavier mass and moves it around mars etc.
The problem of cold weather on Mars some have hoped to solve by mirrors to reflect the suns rays.
Instead I believe magnetic bubbles around this captured moon with air inside the bubbles to bend the heat from the sun all the way around Mars would give more even reliable heat around the entire planet not just spots like mirrors.
Even so since it might be hazardous the mirrors like inflatable mirrors would be a good backup method that no one like terrorists could knock down unlike NASA's inflatable shield.
Mars like the Earth isn't a flimsy bubble like a space station. The only other
frontier ever traversed by man like it was when the indians colonized the new world.
These aren't methods of moving planets, only masses like moons.
As has been known for about 100 years tidal flexing causes 3/4 of the volcanoes and earthquakes to happen here within 10 days of the first of the month.
I believe the real cause of Venus putting out more heat than in as seen by the heat sensors is because the Sun Jupiter center of mass is outside the Sun so Venus is getting the short arm of the com action reaction lever and this is causing the tides that are causing the volcanism of Venus.
So unlike Mars just crashing a water or icy moon into the side of Venus won't solve the poisioned atmosphere problem Mars may not have by these engineering methods.
While we may move asteroids or moons easily by these methods and even give Mars a 24 hour day so no jet lag by crashing in the moon to give it good spin, moving planets may be more difficult.
I was thinking, wouldn't it be great to have the Earth, Mars a weather paradise, and Venus as a second weather haven?
And if so the method to remove the tides causing the volcanos and the poisioned atmosphere may be by moving Venus away from the
strong solar tides (the even heating of the lower atmosphere not seen in the extremes of the upper atmosphere of Venus would seem to be explained by the constant input of volcanic gas and heat as well as the output of more heat in general. This is where the greenhouse gas idea seems to fail as has been known; for the Co2 greenhouse planets Mars and Neptune, observations show the increase in solar heat is all the atmospheric change follows in a simple way.)
It's not been well known but fusion science has been moving ahead at a regular rate and it's believed relatively soon we may have fusion.
So it may not be impossible in 20 or 30 years to move Venus outward and by reducing the force of the tides, cool the volcanoes by moving Venus away from the com with giant laser boosters that react into the sun and then we might convert it into a weather haven by first crashing in a more solid planet or moon, e.g. mercury to remove the atmosphere and then crash an icy moon into Venus to both cool, remove the poisoned atmosphere and add water and clean air.
I see these sites that say we might colonize the moon or mars as it is or live in space stations but living in a flimsy bubble isn't how anyone much could flourish or prosper.
There is no huge move to build cities in Antarctica. I can imagine activity but not real life as it is here.
With the Apollo landings they were aviation military trained pilots, and they "always had five options, any one of which could kill them".
Apollo 11 was the most complex machine ever built up to that era, and that was just to send three people to the moon.
Living on the moon or Mars as is would be like living in space and when they learned more about Mars it was believed it's more like the moon than the earth.
So we need cheap ways first to engineer these worlds.
Sure we will need a "space station" like a high speed starship to send people to mars, but this will be a much higher risk event for any near "colonization" like on the moon or in space stations without more changes like of gravity (more about this below) than living on a real planet we might engineer.
Space launches have a much higher risk of explosion than airliners, so to compare the use of "space stations" to earlier events like colonizing the new world or the early days of aviation seems improbable..
If a ship sank in the old days of new wave sounds and there was no huge risk of explosion or meteorite or space junk impact, the survivors would often be able to swim or oar back to shore, but the events of space travel with no air outside the station would much tougher to survive if there was an accident and more risk.
Living on mars or the moon as it is now will never be comfortable of cheap. There may seem optimism about this as with the early optimism about Apollo and living on the moon. The reality soon set in and so we stayed in Near Earth Orbit and no more. Not just because of cost but also feasibility.
By using the LTTDP method the huger cost (estimated at trillions just to send a manned mission to Mars) would be dramatically reduced.
Engineering The Moon Why Asteroids Instead?
I had an earlier idea you may see on some of my other pages (search High Density Physics Computoria). This is to use hydrogen atoms or other methods to squeeze them so much the protons inside attract NS SN that they form a tube with lots of protons and this is a super dense solid I called a Proton Wire, a totally new type of matter with different chemical and mechanical aspects like super strength and light weight overall if used in composites.
But for here I discuss using the LTTDP method to send a drill bot cheap and fast to an asteroid or other area where we would want more gravity. The proton wires being super dense may allow gravity like for a moon by way of LTTDP.
The proton wire has large density. The radius of one electron and proton in one
cross section of the tube would be just an atom wide and the length is about 100 protons to fit, so it would have the density of uranium.
But due to the larger proton charge density the electrons would be moved in to a nearer radius. And I believe we could also make the outside electrons of the tube overlap to give these wires a much higher density and so it would have much more gravity than the matter e.g. of an asteroid where we source the hydrogen (water) from since many asteroids have a lot of water.
As I considered proton wires the density maximum might only be 10 times the density of uranium due to the overlapping geometry of the electrons needed to give it 0 overall charge and no extreme positive charge all the protons would cause. (Protons and neutrons can' t be used for this since they also aren't stable and would wrap around in a large nuclear explosion like a large nucleus. Uranium at higher AMU is more radioactive.)
So while proton wires might be great for other engineering like materials or gravity science it wouldn't allow the density for improving a world's gravity. (As I also realized, increasing gravity wouldn't be viable for the moon and instead using asteroids or improved space stations by this method seem best since it would change the tides and biology of Earth etc. and the disadvantages would outweigh-the advantages!)
So I started to consider neutron solids for this (as yet merely possible) use.
A neutron solid might be of worth in our study of gravity, like pulsars it would have a density up to 1 million times that of uranium. The gravity is far more than a million uranium atoms due to the distance of each quantum being reduced as by the law of m1x m2/d2.
Ways it might be possible
by using a machine like the fusor to make a lot of neutrons fast so they hold together by their own gravity before
they decay. (The fusor is a machine invented by Philo T Pharnsworth of television fame that makes a lot of
neutrons.) The neutrons are held more stable by an invention named a "light box". Light at high energy behaves like a heavy quanta , so standing waves would use essentially the strong force density to hold the neutrons together while we build up the density.
Or another method to make a neutron solid might be to cool the weak radioactive force enough to make the sphere of the stuff stable enough to add enough neutrons before it would decay.
As you may know the electroweak theory won the nobel prize by likening the weak force to electromagnetism, both with + and - charges and currents. And if the weak force was turned off the electric flow would continue with some radioactivity of its own for the strong force. Not as much
but enough and in proportion for the reduced force to convince researchers that
the electroweak method works well.
I think of the flow of the weak current as a flow of heat so if we might somehow reduce this flow it seems we might slow down decay of the solid by cooling the heat.
Another way to make a solid of this type might be to either use the electromagnetic force that exists at near radius of the neutron since it's a + and minus charge both, Or some other way to use the strong force just as the valence of the electrons in an atom while bound also have resonance that binds atoms even by the negative charges of the electrons. Some smart way of binding neutrons or protons might have real use in our science and technology.
If the exchange between a protons and a neutron is just an electron so they attract it seems possible some method of sharing the electrons would create a sort of "weaker strong force".. This would be strong enough to bind these super dense solids yet not so much it would be radioactive.
If so by LTTDP we might cheaply send a drill to drill to the center of an asteroid and drop the proton wires or other solids down to give it enough gravity to hold an atmosphere by a standard method of then cheaply crashing an asteroid or icy moon into the
area of the asteroid or other colonization area by first moving a small mass by the laser method which then moves the larger which then sends the moon or comet to add water and air to add density.
To manufacture the proton wires or other solids it would be much cheaper to use the LTTDP method to set up manufacturing powered by solar collectors or other methods cheaply printed out on an asteroid and the sending laser then relays the proton wires bit by bit to the area where we might add more gravity. One thing I considered is that a space station -as concieved by earlier historians! would be a flimsy bubble yet by adding gravity this might make it viable. An atmosphere would shield it from all main the problemsc commonfor those off the surface of worlds; explosion collision radiation etc. An atmosphere and gravity safety net would save many more lives and much more comfort than the method of making merely more but smaller vehicles to save more lives if there is an explosion or other disaster.
For the time being using more cheaper capsules might be best. Even so adding gravity and air with much cheaper building cost by LTTDP would hugely bring down costs and risk as in construction and insurance.
And by its nature this use of small ships to send astronauts and travel would limit using volume methods for economy. So no large space stations may have any viable insurance assay without using dense solids to hold an atmosphere.
Other than just like the fewest number of trips like to send colonizers to Mars who are well informed and willing to take the risk and small ships, other methods may not have as much viability in the immediate science ahead.
To keep the core from being off center we would have
a dispersed method of more shafts and more dense solids each of reduced mass at points around the com so the mechanical strength of the asteroid holds all these gravity sources without any one overbalancing the rest as a more dense core otherwise might.
This about a way to colonize asteroids or give a large space station gravity and an atmosphere is admittedly the most hypothetical of this post, moreso perhaps than engineering Venus. But unlike the L5 events the rest of these methods are with relatively near relatively cheap methods. The main elements are ready and may soon be improved.
GOOD WEATHER IS AN ESSENTIAL LUXURY
My belief is the dinosaurs did so well in terms of mass and time duration because they had a larger area of not just good weather, great weather!
In the history of civilization the explanation that has been believed is the band of good weather seemed to give the Eurasians a tech advantage and so they colonized the areas of the third world where there was bad weather. In this view the Eurasians had the luck of more time and energy to compute and are no smarter.
In the history of Egypt it's said they had no real barrier from invaders from the desert on both sides. And so Egypt was a suburb of the greco roman world for 1000 years and was part of some of the world's most fabled empires.
My belief is that like the maya, ancient Egypt had some good area and good weather to compute on, but not enough to compete as well with the outside invaders..The Maya empire unlike the old world civilizations only lasted a few hundred years.
Egypt would seem to be a tiny island nation in terms of good weather even if rich for thousands of years before the outside occupation by larger countries like Rome.
If civilization has a large power base on Mars of better weather there's a lot more we can do.
So if we colonize Mars, history shows we want to make it a "weather paradise" as the first step.
As I say on my other post we may be able to easily build complete cities with lots of comforts and necessities of life zones on Mars before we go with the return rocket ready to go...by these LTTDP methods.
A 4 hour cheap supply line to and from Mars would save more lives like in emergencies.
Even so before we build up we may want to be sure to improve the weather and do it right.
I had imagined at first crashing in the outside satellite to give Mars good air and water cheaper and fast and I hadn't yet realized about the orbiting satellite with magnetic field to hold on the atmosphere and so it wouldn't fizzle away because of the solar ablation.
Because of this ablation I originally believed we would need to periodically renew the atmosphere by crashing more satellites into Mars in some 100s of years and to achieve this we would have to remove all the settlers away at least from the impact side.
And after I realized we can stop the ablation with the second "more magnetic" satellite in orbit by NASA's method, or mine
this would obviate having to renew the atmosphere.
Even so because we would have to move all the people away from most of the planet to add the air and water, it would seem better to engineer the weather by the impactor and satellite before colonizing the land.
The "weather haven" first would be more optimal. Otherwise all the cities we build by LTTDP first would have to be removed if we want all the good weather.
MINING ASTEROIDS
Mining asteroids could also be in "easy rich"! One asteroid can have trillions of $ worth of precious metals. Yet by LTTDP the laser and 3d printer might cost a mere $100,000... Beyond that the minerals would arrive our way and the way of the pr in a steady flow month after month..no more costs other than maintenance.
To mine the asteroid we might print out drilling drones.. Since pressure is force/area, to mine solid rock, small slower but powerful drones would be all that might be needed, though by way of the lightweight laser supply line from us here we could print out larger machines if needed. (Those would either take extra time to build or more lasers might be used for a larger payoff even so.)
The return laser, the drill bots, and a relay train of boxes would be built by the printer on the asteroid, these follow the drill drones into the mine it digs out and when filled with platinum gold or other resource to return, it rolls back out of the mine and in my vision of this method it's then packaged in small capsules and boosted in a steady stream back to the welcome arms of our collection machine here on earth, well not so much welcome arms as a large welcome ship with a net!
(The speed of entry into the atmosphere can be low by "going with" the motion of the Earth. By inertia it's known that this costs almost the same/no more than going against a planet's motion to land a payload.This is one principle being considered in landing on Mars.
Another option would be to control the reentry of the small capsules by the ground lasers, much easier for lighter payloads than deorbit of machines like rockets.)
For power for the bots and laser near the asteroid, here again power of conventional type might be used, all by way of much cheaper laser sourced 3d ink and printers from earth.
The Moon and Beyond
There's been real contention here in 2019 about who will reach the moon and get "oil rights" to the lake of ice water that has been found frozen on the moon at the poles. This has been believed to be the cheapest way to get to mars because it would seem cheaper to go to the moon first and use the water for rocket fuel, air, and drinking water than to boost the huger cost of the same rockets direct from the earth to mars.
Because the "rocket fuel" on the moon is much lighter there with the moon's lighter gravity, overall it's been considered much cheaper to boost smaller rockets to the moon first to a sort of cosmic convenience store and then use much larger boosters on to mars even with just a lake's worth of water.
However the laser/self assembling printer to print the return laser etc method as above would be far cheaper and easier for this use, because a single asteroid has 1/5 the water in all of the oceans of the earth so this would be a far cheaper source of fuel, water, and air.
And we could also move the asteroid nearer for use by printing out small lasers near it... it's been well established that even a few small lasers near a mother station by asteroids can generate as much force by ablation of the dust and steam as the space shuttle's boosters outward to move the asteroid.
Moving asteroids could be done much faster and cheaper by the LTTDP method even so with a few hours not months or years to reach the site.
I believe we may also have near instant connection by way of the EPR quantum entanglement method for more control at a distance. See my Videos on Youtube Encyclopedia Comp Video for how this might be achieved.
This would be especially valuable for accessing more distant realms e.g. using LTTDP with disproof of Einstein's spooky quantum method for research about the Kuiper belt.
