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Comment by liamconnell | Hacker News Reader

Based on economic incentives, I would guess that the mining industry would conquer the new frontier way before any commercial space travel for humans--one way or two way. Unfortunately the mining industry today is the scummiest on earth. I honestly hope that Elon Musk and SpaceX get into space mining before say Rio Tinto, just because he deserves the billions more and would probably reinvest it for more socially good projects as well.

My vision of how it could be in [N=no_fucking_clue] decades: Completely unmanned from the beginning (just like mining on earth nearly already is), with a large-scale base on the moon. It starts with mining on the moon that is processed on the moon and shipped to the earth and the infrastructure is set up so that [M] decades later it would be the hub for inerplanetary mining operations as well.

Get building Mr. Musk!

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You might be interested in Planetary Resources [1]. They're planning to mine resources from asteroids though – no gravity well (like the moon) makes for easier transport from the source to the consumer.

It's very unlikely that SpaceX will be entering the space mining business. Musk doesn't seem to be a big fan of it, except in the context of mining resources on Mars for consumption on Mars.

[1] http://planetaryresources.com/

SpaceX will certainly be interested in putting someone else's mining equipment in space though. If there is an asteroid gold rush, they're selling the tickets.

This is probably a better point. Established mining companies would be better off investing in research on how to extract raw materials once they are at the location.

Let another company (e.g. SpaceX) deal with the transportation. The level of specialisation at every steps is huge.

I've actually been working on a ground based launch platform for automated space mining that uses magnetics and plasma lasers to launch the miners into space. I've got a few drawings and stuff but I haven't published anything yet because there are a few things left to make sure of. Such as, using a plasma laser, how much electricity would you need to pass along the beam to displace air? That kind of thing, but I haven't had time to study up on it yet.

Are you aware of Escape Dynamics? You might want to see what they're trying to do with beamed energy thermal rockets.

Sadly, not much any more, by the looks of it:

http://escapedynamics.com/

Well, thats very disappointing.

Space is f'n enormous and it's cold. People don't belong up there at all. I think we have a better chance of evolving into a different species, rather than the species we are getting past Jupiter.

The big problem with a moon base is that there is no carbon on the moon. So anything biological or requiring organic chemistry will have to be transported from earth.

Its weird to think the moon has more titanium than carbon. Surely it has some carbon rich meteors to scavenge, but... I guess a lunar colony would need to recycle pretty much all of its biomass.

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