The deep sea is filled with treasure, but it comes at a price

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/21/the-deep-sea-is-filled-with-treasure-but-it-comes-at-a-price

by thunderbong • 2 years ago

42 39 2 years ago

newyorker.com

mitchbob• 2 years ago

(2021). Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27543323

greggsy• 2 years ago

Interesting that the discussion them was mainly focussed on the feasibility in comparison to asteroid mining.

Is that still a reasonable proposition in the mid- long-term future, or was everyone’s imaginations running a bit wild during the COVID lockdowns of mid-2021?

jumploops• 2 years ago

Everyone talks about asteroid mining, but what about mining the asteroids that have already accumulated on the moon?

Afaik the problem is getting resources back to Earth, but it seems more plausible to me that we could refine more repeatably on the Moon vs. on specific asteroids.

What am I missing?

a_gnostic2• 2 years ago

You need less Δv, on average, to mine near-Earth asteroids, than launching resources off the Moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTAxjJ6KY7M

JoshTriplett• 2 years ago

Exactly. The moon has a gravity well, and while it's a sixth of Earth's, it would still take a lot of energy.

Plus, there's the public relations of mining the moon, versus mining asteroids.

NL807• 2 years ago

Unlike on earth, a space elevator is actually feasible on the Moon with current technology.

oneshtein• 2 years ago

Moon has no atmosphere, so all required Δv can be applied at launching point. It's much much harder to land on Moon, than to launch from Moon.

ssnri• 2 years ago

the fuckin regolith! It’s the worst. It will destroy anything you build. It’s like sand but every grain has been personally sharpened by the devil

sonofhans• 2 years ago

That’s a lovely description of regolith. I’m stealing it :D

The moon is hostile to life on a level that humans can’t instinctively grasp. It’s a reminder of what a perfect cradle of life Earth is.

chatmasta• 2 years ago

Well, you've gotta make a refinery on the moon, for starters.

Maybe in a few decades, that will be feasible, with lowered marginal costs for doing anything other than floating around in space. But until then, doing pretty much everything is prohibitively expensive, so asking "why not just refine it there?" is putting the cart before the horse.

m463• 2 years ago

I wonder if we just went down we might find infinite resources.

Instead of flying 250k miles to the moon, just drill 1 mile downwards.

card_zero• 2 years ago

Plenty of mines are deeper than a mile, several deeper than two miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deepest_mines

It gets somewhat hot, I've heard. The Iceland Deep Drilling Project went a bit deeper (still not 3 miles) and hit magma, which is more interesting as an energy source than as a mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland_Deep_Drilling_Project

#BoreholesIHaveKnown

cwillu• 2 years ago

The potash mine under the city I live in is 1600 meters deep.

defrost• 2 years ago

For some small finite sub part of infinite .. maybe.

Even if we allow concave Hohlwelttheorie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth#Concave_Hollow_Ea...

https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:14770298

the "infinite resources" aren't realisable due to asymptopic hyperbolic geometry.

iancmceachern3• 2 years ago

The moon doesn't have good stuff.

The attractive thing about asteroids is they are made of stuff we want, rare metals etc.

solumunus2• 2 years ago

Isn’t the moon full of craters from asteroids landing on it?

iancmceachern3• 2 years ago

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-we-mine-the-moon-for-resource...

flakeoil• 2 years ago

If there are at all any economical amount of metals on the moon then you would either have to build a smelter on the moon or you would need to transport an enormous amount of soil to earth (with just some tiny percent of metal content).

Even with a smelter on the moon, the amount and weight of the metal to transport to earth would be enormous.

And just imagine all the equipment needed. Huge dumper truck, haulers, grinding machines etc. For underground mining you would need concrete etc.

It would require so much fuel and energy to transport the vessels back and forth to make it completely pointless.

odyssey7• 2 years ago

This is a great use case for von Neumann self-replicating machines. Little self-replicating space robots that fashion aerodynamic payloads and fire them to a small receiving site on the Earth. Just remember to include a stop signal, lest they consume in an unstoppable, exponential way.

a_gnostic2• 2 years ago

Deep sea mining at several atmospheres, or asteroid mining at <1 atmosphere? Easy answer.

ponector2• 2 years ago

Deep sea of course. How many people have been on the moon and how many in the Marian trench?

dmurray• 2 years ago

Twelve and twenty-seven respectively. Not clear what that proves.

PeterisP• 2 years ago

No people have climbed out of their vehicle in the Marian trench to be able to manipulate or build something with their (heavily gloved) hands.

jmward01• 2 years ago

I am personally conflicted on this. Our current society needs resources that have to come from somewhere. There is a 'perfect world' where we recycle so perfectly that we don't need to mine more but the technology, and social will, to make that a practical reality just aren't here. So, do we mine on land or take from the sea? Both destroy ecosystems. Probably the best route is to start small and increase as we understand more. The reality of what will happen though is likely to be that we will start small and then massively increase capacity to the limit of regulation.

amelius• 2 years ago

Our current society needs resources that have to come from somewhere.

If we ban advertising, suddenly our current society needs only a fraction of the resources ...

RandomLensman• 2 years ago

Not going to happen as such. Has been around for several thousand years, so people on the whole don't seem to mind too much.

Also, very unclear how much advertising (in narrow sense) contributes towards consumption.

koenraad• 2 years ago

I’m afraid that deep sea mining operations are motivated by greed. It will not be easy to get sustainable solutions out of this and not only deep sea creatures will have losses…

helix278• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240309045142/https://www.newyo...

stuaxo• 2 years ago

Absolute vandalism.

The deep sea is filled with treasure, but it comes at a price

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