Moon, Mars, Asteroids: Where to Go First for Resources? SSI

[@jeffrogers210]

Thank you for posting this! Excellent and hopeful information about obtaining resources from the moon, and and near-Earth objects.

[@De-Mystifying]

Ceres. If we focus on Ceres first, everything is in grasp.

[@jamesgibson3582]

Wow, what a great conversation with excellent subject matter experts. Recorded in 2010? it would be great to see a reunion in 2024 to hear how the sector is advancing. I bet it is.

[@Superkuh2]

Focus on asteroid de-spin technology for capture and then go after all the near earth asteroid and live on/off them in cis-lunar space and lagrange points. | Also, are you sure you meant this was filmed Oct 29th, 2010? LCROSS was Oct 2009 which would put this at Oct 29th, 2009.

[@SSISpaceStudiesInstitute]

Thank you for your note. This was recorded at Space Manufacturing 14, October 29th, 2010 at Ames. Time of report vs time of verification of reports is a common ailment of the space business. But the timestamp is correct.

[@Superkuh2]

@@SSISpaceStudiesInstitute Ah, I suppose by 22:11 "the LCROSS stuff that was big news last week" they meant the papers that came out a year after the actual LCROSS impact in Oct 2009. My mistake.

[@treva31]

If we revolutionize launch costs (which we need to do anyway), then we can get all the resources we need, pure and pre-fabricated, from Earth.

[@r0sal3sr]

I guess it depends on what next rounds of cost optimization looks like. 5 USD/kg can be high end of terrestrial air cargo costs. That is one datapoint for estimating costly logistics. Earth to moon USD/kg is probably a good cis-lunar space cost metric. Some near term estimates of reusable starships earth to moon are 1000 USD/kg. Probably 2000 USD/kg earth to moon would be a better estimate. I think that factor of 200-400 or so is what still drives off-earth resource utilization research.