Essentially, the first test on the Skylon's engine, called S.A.B.R.E, was a success. They were testing a pre-cooler that cools air which is over 1000 celcius down to minus140 celcius in just 1/100th of a second. It is the first time it has been achieved, even if Skylon does not come to fruition, the technology can be used in so many other things.

The American Air Force and NASA have tried to do this and have succeeded, sort of. The problem they had was the cooling process created frost which broke the pre-cooler and stalled the engines, which are RAMJets, the versions they tested without a pre-cooler were only suitable for one time use only and the internals were partially melted. So it looks like a bunch of geeks in a shed managed to do what enormously funded agencies couldn't. That is a little romantic if you think about it haha

Woops, wrong topic to reply to. Hahah.

You guys are fooling yourselves if you think that allowing private business to take over the space program is the way to go. We have proven, time and time again, that when money is involved, people tend to show their ugliest sides. It could, at this point, supply a continuation until the government gets their heads out of their butts but if the private sector becomes the true driving force, it'll become big business, and that's not good for anyone but the people who get paid. Not that I think the US government has done such a stand-up job with funds for NASA in the past 30ish years, but there is a more likely chance of multiple countries working together then a bunch of rich guys who want to make their next buck. (Yes, I believe they'd work well together at first, at least to get the technology secured, but then it would become a cutthrough business.)

I also understand that mining in space could be our saving grace when it comes to resources, but I have a lingering belief that we don't own the universe and should be very careful on how we approach it's exploration and use. There are still many, many things we don't know or understand. We've tried to reroute things, change things, all to make them more useful to us, only to completely screw up our ecosystems or other equally important aspects of Earth. Screwing up the universe is a little more serious. What seems completely random and insignificant to us now, could be far more necessary in the existance of everything.

I hardly think that a little asteroid mining will end up screwing up the existence of (life, the universe and) everything. I'd be willing to wager that we know more about our little corner of space than we do the ecosystem (And whether that's good or not is a discussion for another day).

Indeed. The Universe is not going to explode if we mine Ceres into dust.

No, but Ceres could be full of Flood spores waiting to infect us. . .

They also thought they knew enough about the Everglades to safely build in that area. The entire ecosystem began to fail.

I'm merely stating that we don't know everything there is to know about the universe or how it works. And I mean.. it's not like we may have some "pollution" issues or debris that we are unsure of how to deal with...after all, we've done a WONDERFUL job managing that kind of stuff here.

...So what? It's in our nature to take risks like this. If it works, then humanity solves some of our biggest problems. If not, it solves all our problems (as in kills us). Win win

That's what I'm saying, the ecosystem is much, much more complex than drilling into a rock that's hurtling through space. There's little in there that we don't understand, and there really aren't many unknowns here. We aren't going out and shooting nukes into stars or something, it's just simple asteroid mining. What I'd be worried about is negligence, not lack of knowledge or understanding.

We have put much more time and effort into researching space than understanding the native ecosystems of Earth.

Private business created cars, computers, helicopters, and the internet as we know it. Tell me how that never benefited society.

Just because someone, somewhere is getting filthy rich off of something doesn't mean that they haven't also managed to benefit society in the long run at the same time. Maybe it seems counterintuitive to you, but we need more than just bright minds and free time to innovate. We need motivation - and what better way to motivate someone than with the promise of fame and/or fortune?

I agree that the government should keep a regulating hand or two on the space industry, of course. But it's just silly to think that the government should be the driving force for these things. That's how it's been for the last fourty years, and what have we accomplished in space? A pathetically unproductive shuttle program? Please.

I do agree that we really need to clean up our act before we go spreading ourselves around the universe (or even the solar system), but I also agree that asteroid mining doesn't require that so much. It would even help us get things in order down here; if we can move some of the processing off-planet we'd be moving a decent amount of pollution to a place where it truly doesn't matter (things like mercury leaking into the vast vacuum between worlds is a star's throw from the same leaking into an 'unimportant' desert somewhere).

It may even drive a bunch of technologies which would also reduce the damage we're doing to our world -- highly efficient solar panels with constant exposure to the sun could be an extremely cheap way to power a space-mine.

The only potential concern I can see is the long term addition and redistribution of mass... I don't know if there are any foreseeable consequences in that regard, and no-one knows if there'll be any unforeseen ones. On the other hand, our spread into space may offset that somewhat, especially if we figure out liveable long-term satellite accommodation... but that's get well into the realm of science fiction.

In short: I support the mining of asteroids, but would like to see us improve as a species before we get all colonial.

It should be noted that just because the organisation backing the experimentation has loads of money, doesn't mean the project itself got any more than the private one did. Both NASA and the USAF have their hands in a lot of pies, and each of those pies has to fight and beg for every cent they get. And NASA, in turn, has to fight and beg for every cent it gets as a whole. I imagine the air force has less of a problem in that regard, but its priorities don't necessarily line up the way we might like.

That would be a hoot! XD

All the motivation we should need is the possibility of a better life... of course, I'm not naive enough to believe that's ever going to happen, but that's what should drive us to further this endeavor. I'm not saying that the private sector hasn't helped us here on Earth, I'm saying it shouldn't be the driving force behind something like space exploration. But I think we're pretty much saying the same thing, as you agree the government shouldn't give up all rights and power. I just want someone to keep the kids in the sandbox playing nice.

And I don't disagree that the government completely and utterly dropped the ball with NASA, and especially the shuttle program. NASA should have had a working prototype before the shuttle program ended.. but again, I think the blame lies with the government on that. (But I can't go further without getting political.) I think involving the private sector could spur the government into being more on board and getting their butts in gear, but I don't want to see this become big business. We have this issue right now with medicine: people being more worried about the money then the actual leaps in medical care that could come from these medicines. And unfortunately, that's even with government intervention. (If you even can call it "intervention".)

When governments handed the reigns of planes over to companies the technology, safety and availability went off the chart.
When governments handed the reigns of trains over to companies the technology, safety and availability went off the chart.
When governments handed the reigns of shipping over to companies the technology, safety and availability went off the chart.
When governments handed the reigns of medicine over to companies the technology, safety and availability went off the chart.
When governments handed the reigns of television over to companies the technology, safety and availability went off the chart.
When governments handed the reigns of energy over to companies the technology, safety and availability went off the chart.
When governments handed the reigns of construction over to companies the technology, safety and availability went off the chart.

Why do you think Space would be any different? As with all other major industries, commercialisation of the space industry would super accelerate our technology knowledge, massively increase the safety aspect and drive the costs down. Those companies will be competing to provide the fastest, most reliable and cheapest services to any potential customer, so long as Space exploration remains in the hands of only the governments then we will have no chance of seeing rare metals being mined from asteroids and no chance of seeing Helium-3 being harvested from the surface of the Moon. The reason for this is that in government funding there is so much red tape involved you will find the whole prcoess for procurring a replacement toilet seat for an office department in Houston can cost a rediculous $5,000 and that eats in to the whole agencies budget.

With a government involved something as poor as the Space Shuttle costs over one trillion dollars, with a private company involved something as game changing as Skylon can cost as little as twelve billion british pounds. Go figure. Governments have never tried to build a Skylon because they couldn't afford it, but a little company believes it can... why? Because it doesn't have to trawl itself through a million miles of red tape.

But the Air Force and NASA worked together on their RAMjet and SCRAMJet technology and it's budget was enormous.... for the project itself. Like another post I just made, Government red tape most likely got in the way to make the money contribution extremely inefficient. A company is lightyears ahead as far as spending efficiency is concerned, NASA/USAF's venture probably would have worked if NASA/USAF handed all responsibility over to a company and stood well to the side to see what they could come up with. Governments always insist on expensive things like 'Preferred Suppliers', and that supplier then says "Haha! We are the preferred supplier, our prices have now gone up by a factor of 7! Pay it!" A company doesn't work that way, a company says "Well hold on, we can get it 4 cents cheaper over there... either beat that price or we are going elsewhere".

That is just one of many, many, many examples of why NASAs/USAF's rediculously huge funding for RAMJet/SCRAMJet was a catastrophic failure. Between them the annual budget in excess of a trillion US dollars and RAMJet/SCRAMJet was high on the list of priorities with the USAF which has the authority to make demands of NASA for help as a priority.

I am pretty sure any contracted companies involved in that project took massive advantage of inefficient government spending (as they usually do) and totally destroyed the prospect of it being successful. A company that is trying to build the thing itself however is not going to risk bankruptcy.

I never said I thought the government had done a good job with the space program. In fact, I said it hadn't.

I also never said that I didn't think having the private sector involved was a bad thing, only that it shouldn't be the driving force or the people who have complete control over it. I just don't see space exploration as the same as anything we've done here on Earth. I believe the implications of us doing stuff out there could be larger then anything we've ever done up to this point. And as such, should be treated differently and more carefully.

Just wanted to address a question I saw posted on the linked site.


The way things work in space is light objects tend to gather around heavy objects. In the case of asteroid and planet formation this process is called accretion and happens over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Accretion has the side effect of leaving all the heavy stuff towards the middle of the object, such as Earth's nickle-iron core. Asteroids, being lighter objects, may have more potential for heavier elements towards the center, such as gold, platinum, uranium, osmium; all of which is fairly rare on Earth. That's not to say an asteroid could have more of this stuff than Earth but we know that it's there and where to find it, potentially all clustered together.

I'm curious what methods they'll employ to get at the cores. My guess is they'll use a series of small detonations to chip away at the surface which would eventually drill a hole to the center of the asteroid. These detonations would need to be small enough to keep the debris from escaping the asteroid's gravitational pull, but large enough to make the method practical. Something on the scale of traditional dynamite mining would probably work.

The way I picture it, a ship would be in a stationary orbit around the asteroid, drop the mining charges to get at the core, then send in remote controlled robots to search for and gather valuable minerals that have broken away. If done properly they could even do this without having to send up astronauts at all. Everything could be controlled remotely from Earth.

Okay, my bad. I misread your post. I agree there is defo need for regulation, and tight regulation. I will throw up a hypothetical scenario that will support your thinking.

A mining company sets up base on Mars to tap into the rediculous amounts of rare earths on it's satalite, Phobos. The processing is done on the planet in refinery. That refinery has an underground section to protect the ore from the harmful rays which could in theory begin a carbonisation effect, much like the high oxygen content on earth oxidises rare earths. That company is fairly well hidden out of sight and they could be conducting research on potentially lucrative sciences, such as chemical or biological munitions. It is plausible, with governments on earth being interested in the results of such experiments that perhaps the western world would rather never get into the hands of the wrong authorities.

For that I would say regulation is assuredly a requirement we would want which I think is what you are suggesting, even if my scenario is plausible yet remote.

Back on to Asteroid mining, the cheapest option of all for a proper industry to form around that would be a Moon base where the logistics vehicles have to advantage of very little gravity to go get the material and stock them after extraction. Vehicles from earth can then traverse to the Moon and pick that stock up for delivery back to Earth, back of the massive advantage of logistics from Moon to asteroid over Earth to Moon there would likely be a positive stock pile at most times. As crazy as it may sound, I think the most reliable way for this to happen is to take out the human element as we make too many mistakes... so we are probably best leaving the process to the machines and we simply watch over them as ESA does for it's ATV when it docks at the ISS... although there is some human involvement in that, where they prefer to initiate each automated stage themselves but that is going to change after a few runs that prove the automated stages work flawlessly.

I think we are in for a exciting advancement, there is one Near Earth Asteroid that contains enough extractable material that is the equivalent of the total annual economic output of our entire planet. Thirty trillion US dollars worth at current prices. That is pretty amazing but no doubt the prices would come down if full scale mining began. But there is an even more valuable commodity deeper into our Solar System... water, lots of it. More than exists on our planet. Europa has an ice sheet 100km thick, that could be a good prospect for future mining around the year 2075.