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How Asteroid Mining Could Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. This is Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck
0:21
Speaker 1: Bryant that makes this stuff. You should know. Two things. Josh,
0:24
Speaker 1: I got the cheek weapon just under the wire on
0:27
Speaker 1: that one. Have you done that every time lately? Um,
0:31
Speaker 1: I've been so harried and frazzled, and you know, Pittsburgh,
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Speaker 1: I might have forgotten, so we may have forgotten. That
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Speaker 1: explains a lot. The second thing is, uh, we recorded
0:41
Speaker 1: some little promos a few minutes ago and you called
0:43
Speaker 1: me Chad and then hey Chad. That was a little weird. Yeah,
0:47
Speaker 1: say hey to Chad. Yeah, hey Chad. We do have
0:49
Speaker 1: a colleague and close friend named Chad, so that explains it.
0:53
Speaker 1: But that would have been really weird if you just
0:55
Speaker 1: called it was. It came out and landed on the
0:57
Speaker 1: table and just laid there like a dead fish in
1:00
Speaker 1: the throes of the end of its life. Let's start
1:02
Speaker 1: calling you Jock. My guy's named Jock. Have you ever
1:07
Speaker 1: met a gay name jock? But they've been like Jock
1:10
Speaker 1: or Jock. There's been movie characters named Jock, but they're
1:13
Speaker 1: always like the bully at the ski instructor school or
1:16
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, they're the guy who gets there,
1:19
Speaker 1: come up. And I don't get come up in it.
1:21
Speaker 1: I mean I get come up. It's like every day.
1:23
Speaker 1: But you shouldn't root for it, I guess, is what
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Speaker 1: I'm saying. I don't think I deserve that. So, Um, Chuck,
1:30
Speaker 1: do you remember in the doomsday scenario episode? What was
1:35
Speaker 1: that terror management? Yes, which had nothing to give a
1:37
Speaker 1: terrorism right. If you've been putting off listening to that
1:40
Speaker 1: episode because you think it has to do with terrorism, nothing,
1:42
Speaker 1: go back and listen to it. You will be pleasantly surprised. Agreed,
1:44
Speaker 1: it was pretty good. Agreed. Um, we mentioned that. I
1:48
Speaker 1: don't know if we mentioned or not, but in a
1:49
Speaker 1: report that we cited, one of the things that these
1:52
Speaker 1: people suggested we needed to do right to save the
1:55
Speaker 1: planet was to get busy learning how to mind asteroids.
2:00
Speaker 1: And I remember reading that and I was like, Oh,
2:02
Speaker 1: what's a good idea? Sure that sounds awesome. Price it
2:07
Speaker 1: is pricey, and I looked a little more into it.
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Speaker 1: Turns out we had an article on the site written
2:12
Speaker 1: by the esteem Kevin Bond. So or yeah, the monster.
2:17
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, it's interesting, it is pricey, and there's
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Speaker 1: a lot of holes in any plan that's given right now.
2:25
Speaker 1: But it depends on what you want to do with
2:26
Speaker 1: this stuff, right. The asteroids are well, there's a huge belt.
2:31
Speaker 1: You want to talk about asteroids first in general, and
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Speaker 1: then we can talk about mining, sure, Josh. An asteroid belt. Well,
2:37
Speaker 1: actually there's more than one asteroid belt, but there's one
2:41
Speaker 1: main asteroid belt. It's not that far away. Nope, it's
2:45
Speaker 1: between it's called the main asteroid belt. You weren't just
2:49
Speaker 1: citing it as such. That's right, And it is between
2:51
Speaker 1: Mars and Jupiter. Mars and Jupiter. Thank you. I'm sorry
2:55
Speaker 1: for talking over and Uh. There's a lot of theories
2:59
Speaker 1: on how the Earth in the Solar System was formed,
3:02
Speaker 1: depends on who you ask. One of the more popular
3:05
Speaker 1: theories is the nebular theory. And within this theory, uh.
3:09
Speaker 1: And this is the Solar System, not the universe. So
3:11
Speaker 1: just just stop emailing right now, go ahead? Did I
3:14
Speaker 1: say universe? Okay? Under the nebular theory, Josh, astronomers and
3:20
Speaker 1: physicists think that the universe was. I'm sorry, the Solar System.
3:25
Speaker 1: We're gonna get in trouble. No, we're not chunk, chunk.
3:27
Speaker 1: You're talking about the Solar system. And you know, the
3:30
Speaker 1: Solar System was a big shapeless cloud of gas and
3:35
Speaker 1: ice dust, and then something set things in motion. Probably
3:38
Speaker 1: an explosion is what they think. Maybe a star exploded, hypothetical, right,
3:42
Speaker 1: and and literally set things in motion right, yes, into
3:45
Speaker 1: a circular motion and rotation, yes, a tight rotation that
3:50
Speaker 1: spun faster and faster and faster, and then started collecting
3:54
Speaker 1: this dust flying around and started forming things originally plan testimal,
4:00
Speaker 1: that's a great word. And then more matters flying around colliding,
4:04
Speaker 1: and then the plantestimals get caught up on this in
4:07
Speaker 1: the process called how do you pronounce that? Accrestion? Accretion? Accretion,
4:11
Speaker 1: And then they eventually catch more dust and gas and
4:14
Speaker 1: form protoplanets, and then eventually they formed the planets that
4:18
Speaker 1: we all think are super groovy today. So like planetesimals
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Speaker 1: are toddlers, proto planets are adolescents, tweens, and then you've
4:26
Speaker 1: got planets, yes, right, and um, now we kind of diverge,
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Speaker 1: like everybody agrees generally who who buys into the nebular
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Speaker 1: theory um that you know that all that what you
4:39
Speaker 1: just said is correct. Yes, but now we reach a
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Speaker 1: de vergence. Right, Yes, So there's this big the main
4:45
Speaker 1: asteroid belt that's between Jupiter and Mars is far enough
4:49
Speaker 1: away from the Sun. There's a there's a big enough
4:51
Speaker 1: distance between Jupiter and Mars with this asteroid belt in
4:54
Speaker 1: between that some people think that that asteroid belt got
4:58
Speaker 1: there because there was a proto plane in it there
5:00
Speaker 1: at one time that was bombarded, maybe hit by something else,
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Speaker 1: some other space junk like a comet, maybe just shot
5:07
Speaker 1: by some other civilization eons ago, right, and it exploded,
5:12
Speaker 1: and that these these these bits of in pieces of
5:15
Speaker 1: this it entered into and uh its own rotation around
5:20
Speaker 1: the Sun and was attracted by Jupiter's gravity because Jupiter
5:23
Speaker 1: is so big that it's it's influences the movement of
5:26
Speaker 1: these asteroid This asteroid belt basically keeps it in line.
5:30
Speaker 1: So that's one theory for how the asteroid belt got there.
5:33
Speaker 1: That was a proto planet, It's not bad. The other
5:36
Speaker 1: theory is a little more widely accepted, which is that
5:38
Speaker 1: the asteroid belt is nothing more than a collection of
5:42
Speaker 1: that original debris that never formed into a uh plan
5:48
Speaker 1: tessimal and then a proto planet and then eventually a planet.
5:51
Speaker 1: And Jupiter Mars are five and fifty five million kilometers apart,
5:57
Speaker 1: which is a great distance. So that's why they thought
5:59
Speaker 1: originally you're first theory or not yours, But their first
6:02
Speaker 1: series was, you know, there probably should have been another
6:04
Speaker 1: planet in there that got broken up. But the other
6:07
Speaker 1: theory says that no, that was it never formed again,
6:11
Speaker 1: probably because of Jupiter's Mask's just reckon everything. So what
6:14
Speaker 1: we ended up with was a main asteroid belt. And
6:19
Speaker 1: there's tens of thousands of asteroids in these belts in
6:22
Speaker 1: this belt, the main belt UM, and most of them
6:25
Speaker 1: are about the size of a pebble by far, the
6:27
Speaker 1: vast majority UM. And then there's just a handful and
6:31
Speaker 1: we're talking like a handful and galactic terms, um, so
6:36
Speaker 1: you know thousands that are big and then bigger and
6:39
Speaker 1: big est, and the biggest one is still not that big.
6:44
Speaker 1: Series c R E. Y S right has a diameter
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Speaker 1: of about a thousand kilometers. And if apparently astronomers have
6:53
Speaker 1: figured out that if you uh put all of the
6:56
Speaker 1: mass all of these pieces together every asteroid and the
6:59
Speaker 1: main asteroid belt. If you could put it into a
7:02
Speaker 1: planet or a proto planet, you would still only have
7:06
Speaker 1: a planet about half the size of the Moon for
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Speaker 1: about a thousand the mass of the Earth, So it
7:13
Speaker 1: wouldn't be very big if it were a planet that
7:15
Speaker 1: had broken up. But you know, there's a lot of
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Speaker 1: them flying around, Josh, and you know the odds of
7:21
Speaker 1: let's just say you had a starship, okay, and you
7:24
Speaker 1: wanted to navigate this asteroid field. You know, the odds
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Speaker 1: of successfully doing so are uh, it depends on who
7:31
Speaker 1: you ask. If you were to ask somebody like C
7:34
Speaker 1: three p O, you'd have one in like a sixty
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Speaker 1: and change chance, maybe one in a fifty dred one
7:43
Speaker 1: in a seventy thirty seven one three thousand, seven twenty one.
7:48
Speaker 1: The odds are very slim. If you listen to a robot, right,
7:53
Speaker 1: But that wasn't in our galaxy. It was in another galaxy,
7:56
Speaker 1: far far away. And maybe I should have said droid
7:59
Speaker 1: instead of robot before the listener male tumbles in yeah,
8:02
Speaker 1: or perhaps did the same. I'm just cover my base,
8:05
Speaker 1: So chuck Um. Size is not the only differentiator of
8:09
Speaker 1: asteroids in the main asteroid belt, right right. Um, they're
8:14
Speaker 1: they're also generally more generally classified UM by the composition
8:19
Speaker 1: of their makeup. And if you look at most asteroids,
8:21
Speaker 1: they look like chunks of the moon, just kind of
8:24
Speaker 1: dull and gray and then not have like a pock
8:26
Speaker 1: mark or something like that. Um. But not all of
8:30
Speaker 1: them are exactly alike. They're made up of generally three
8:33
Speaker 1: different types of stuff, right, Josh, that's the name of
8:38
Speaker 1: our show, so that's appropriate. We have the C type,
8:41
Speaker 1: the S type, and the M type amazon uh, Millennium falcon.
8:47
Speaker 1: I don't think that's right. The C type is about
8:52
Speaker 1: the known asteroids or of C type, and they are
8:55
Speaker 1: sort of like the Sun in composition, but without the
8:57
Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium and some other volatile compounds, right, so
9:02
Speaker 1: they're not going to start burning. Right. Then you got
9:05
Speaker 1: the S type, it's only accounts for about and they
9:08
Speaker 1: have nickel, iron and magnesium. And then you got the
9:12
Speaker 1: M type UM for millennium falcon and that's the smallest
9:18
Speaker 1: number of asteroids are the M type, and they have
9:20
Speaker 1: nickel and iron inside them, right, And the the C
9:24
Speaker 1: type where most of them are in the outer ring,
9:27
Speaker 1: the out the outside of the belt. Right. Uh, the
9:31
Speaker 1: M types in the middle, which makes sense, and then
9:34
Speaker 1: the the silicacious. The S type is the um that
9:38
Speaker 1: stands for yeah, silicacious like silicon, um, carbonaceous carbon, and
9:43
Speaker 1: millennium falcon. M type is metallic. Now the n M
9:47
Speaker 1: type is the kind that we're probably going to be
9:50
Speaker 1: most interested in harvesting, right, Yeah, well we should talk
9:54
Speaker 1: about why why why do we want to harvest asteroids.
9:57
Speaker 1: We're average Joe out there in Jane. They might say, well,
10:00
Speaker 1: what's the big deal? We got all that stuff here
10:02
Speaker 1: on Earth. Well, the the the point is is if
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Speaker 1: it's well, there's two ways of thinking, right. One is
10:10
Speaker 1: that we could go to these asteroids mine all this
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Speaker 1: stuff because there are precious metals found on their platinum,
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Speaker 1: which is very expensive gold, gold, potentially um iron ore,
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Speaker 1: which can be turned into steel um and brought back
10:26
Speaker 1: to Earth and sold. Right. So, if you happen to
10:29
Speaker 1: be some sort of investor, maybe one who's into spaceflight
10:33
Speaker 1: or space exploration, like Richard Branson, let's sure you might
10:37
Speaker 1: be interested in setting up a space mining operation. Go
10:40
Speaker 1: get a bunch of platinum. Nobody owns an asteroid. If you,
10:43
Speaker 1: as a as far as I understand it. If you
10:45
Speaker 1: can make it to that asteroid, you can mine it.
10:47
Speaker 1: It's yours the slogan that's that's I just coin that
10:50
Speaker 1: you can make it, you can mind it right, So
10:52
Speaker 1: you go get a bunch of platinum. You don't have
10:53
Speaker 1: to worry about negotiating with some you know, um junta
10:58
Speaker 1: in a developing country for mineral rights or anything like that,
11:01
Speaker 1: and just go to an asteroid and get the stuff
11:03
Speaker 1: and bring it back right. And and there are people
11:05
Speaker 1: are thinking about this. Large corporations are you know, I
11:08
Speaker 1: have plans in motion if they have ideas. The other
11:14
Speaker 1: and much more reasonable reason to mine and asteroid is
11:18
Speaker 1: to supply a space colony, because then that way you
11:21
Speaker 1: don't have two ferry supplies out of space all the time,
11:25
Speaker 1: which a colony is gonna need a lot of supplies
11:27
Speaker 1: and they're gonna need them pretty much constantly. That's really inefficient,
11:30
Speaker 1: that's really expensive. They actually think a lot of smart
11:34
Speaker 1: people actually think that it will be cheaper to set
11:38
Speaker 1: up an asteroid mining operation two basically mine or to
11:45
Speaker 1: be turned into steel for structures and spacecraft and all
11:48
Speaker 1: that stuff. And there's some pretty clever ideas floating around.
11:51
Speaker 1: The bringing them back to Earth idea um as largely
11:55
Speaker 1: pooh pooed, is it? It is because I mean, there's
11:59
Speaker 1: so much, so much um metal, precious rare otherwise here
12:07
Speaker 1: on Earth that we haven't tapped, and then we won't
12:10
Speaker 1: tap until the price of them is enough to really
12:14
Speaker 1: go to the trouble of getting these because they're harder
12:16
Speaker 1: to get, right, But we are running out of some
12:18
Speaker 1: of that stuff, but we're running out of the easy
12:21
Speaker 1: to get stuff. That's the point, right, So if you
12:24
Speaker 1: take into account that there's a bunch of it there,
12:27
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be more expensive. It will still be
12:29
Speaker 1: less expensive to mind the hard to get expensive stuff
12:32
Speaker 1: on Earth than to go there and back, Right, That's
12:35
Speaker 1: one thing. The other reason that selling it on Earth
12:38
Speaker 1: will is probably not as good of an idea. Is
12:42
Speaker 1: you hear numbers bandied about where like an asteroid is
12:45
Speaker 1: worth twenty trillion dollars? Right? Yeah, you want me to
12:48
Speaker 1: read the stat real quick. According to Jonas Lewis, who
12:52
Speaker 1: is the author and sounds like supporter of asteroid mining,
12:56
Speaker 1: he wrote a book called Mining the Sky, he says, uh,
12:59
Speaker 1: there are perhaps a million asteroids the size of one
13:04
Speaker 1: kilometer in diameter, which would have a massive about two
13:07
Speaker 1: billion tons, and he projects that one of these asteroids
13:11
Speaker 1: could contain, or he says, would contain thirty million tons
13:14
Speaker 1: of nickel mill mill and a half of metal cobalt,
13:18
Speaker 1: seventy tons of platinum, and the platinum alone would be
13:22
Speaker 1: worth more than a hundred and fifty billion dollars. Right,
13:25
Speaker 1: And a NASA report valued the nasaer. NASA valued all
13:32
Speaker 1: of the minerals and ore found in these um asteroids
13:36
Speaker 1: in the main asteroid belt at worth about a hundred
13:40
Speaker 1: billion per each of the six billion people on Earth.
13:44
Speaker 1: It's funny. When I read that, I was like, well,
13:46
Speaker 1: why did they write it like that? And then I
13:47
Speaker 1: multiplied it out and it was some ridiculous ten to
13:50
Speaker 1: the twenty six and I was like, oh, that's why.
13:52
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money. Yeah. But the problem is
13:54
Speaker 1: is that none of these, none of these um outrageous
13:57
Speaker 1: and very attractive numbers, take into account things like actually
14:02
Speaker 1: mining them, transporting the stuff back, and possibly most importantly,
14:07
Speaker 1: the effect that flooding the platinum market with a hundred
14:11
Speaker 1: and fifty billion tons of platinum would totally drop the
14:17
Speaker 1: bottom out of it. Well, that would suck. It wouldn't
14:19
Speaker 1: because you went to all that trouble and now you're
14:21
Speaker 1: shooting yourself and they're like, hey, guess what. Platinum isn't
14:23
Speaker 1: worth anything anymore because we have so much of it.
14:25
Speaker 1: But likely anybody who could finance and undertake a asteroid
14:30
Speaker 1: mining operation would probably set up some sort of like
14:33
Speaker 1: the beers and and sit on this stuff and slowly
14:36
Speaker 1: dole it out right or or do the method ahead
14:39
Speaker 1: of time. They wouldn't just jump into it will nally, right.
14:41
Speaker 1: But using these things for space colonies is a is
14:45
Speaker 1: a pretty reasonable idea. And there's a lot of people
14:47
Speaker 1: who are behind us. Yeah, and and we should point
14:50
Speaker 1: out to that. Uh. One of the ways that they
14:53
Speaker 1: find out, because you know, they're not landing on asteroids
14:56
Speaker 1: and drilling into them. Now, one of the ways they
14:57
Speaker 1: find out what potentially is inside the the asteroids is
15:01
Speaker 1: uh using something called telescopic spect spectroscopy. I thought I
15:06
Speaker 1: was gonna say it, if I was gonna nail it.
15:08
Speaker 1: It sounds like it. Uh, it sounds like a painful procedure,
15:11
Speaker 1: doesn't that. Yeah, it does. What they do is a
15:13
Speaker 1: bounced light off of it, and they analyze that reflected
15:15
Speaker 1: light um from the asteroid surface and that through the
15:19
Speaker 1: you know, powers of magic, they can tell what might
15:22
Speaker 1: be inside, like magnesium, water, oxygen even And that's important
15:28
Speaker 1: because water can't have space colony without water. Water is
15:32
Speaker 1: key to anything that we want to do pretty much.
15:36
Speaker 1: And you can separate the hydrogen and the oxygen and
15:39
Speaker 1: potentially potentially use that as rocket fuel. Right. The water
15:44
Speaker 1: is very valuable on many levels. And this guy who um,
15:47
Speaker 1: who created the book Mining in the Sky, what's his name,
15:49
Speaker 1: Jonice Lewis, Yeah, mining the skuy he's um Mining in
15:54
Speaker 1: the sky. That's a little more fanciful. He he has
15:58
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea of how optimum um productivity an
16:04
Speaker 1: asteroid could be harvested. Right. Well, yeah, I mean like
16:07
Speaker 1: that this is kind of what would it look like
16:10
Speaker 1: like in this article. I get the impression it's largely
16:12
Speaker 1: based on Lewis's conception of what it should look like, right. Um.
16:16
Speaker 1: And one of the ideas that's bandied about is to
16:18
Speaker 1: use robots, right makes sense, it does. You don't have
16:21
Speaker 1: to feed robots, you don't have to water robots, um,
16:25
Speaker 1: you don't have to pay robots a salary, which you
16:29
Speaker 1: know makes everything a little bit cheaper, although it's expensive
16:32
Speaker 1: to build one. If you can get self replicating robots,
16:35
Speaker 1: if you can create them and you're not afraid of singularity, um,
16:39
Speaker 1: then you you're all the better. You just launch a
16:43
Speaker 1: few into space and be like start reproducing and then
16:45
Speaker 1: get to work. Was an alien of mine? The original
16:49
Speaker 1: crew for the alien? Wasn't that? Like a I think so?
16:51
Speaker 1: Were they in mining operation? I believe so that you
16:53
Speaker 1: mentioned it, Chuck. Another great idea would be solar powered equipment. Sure,
16:59
Speaker 1: because think about it, the solar radiation in outer space
17:03
Speaker 1: is not being subjected to the Earth's atmosphere, the deletrious
17:07
Speaker 1: effects of the Earth's atmosphere, So you're getting a lot
17:10
Speaker 1: more cosmic radiation um, which will power these things a
17:13
Speaker 1: lot more efficiently day or night. Yeah. Uh, you should
17:20
Speaker 1: have light equipment, even though um it's pretty much a
17:24
Speaker 1: zero gravity situation. You still got to get it out there,
17:27
Speaker 1: and just lighter is better and more efficient. Well, you
17:31
Speaker 1: just brought up a humdinger of a point. Right, gravity gravity,
17:35
Speaker 1: it's a big one. Then there's two things. There's a
17:37
Speaker 1: lack of gravity on these asteroids, and these asteroids rotate,
17:40
Speaker 1: they move, and sometimes they move pretty fast compared to
17:44
Speaker 1: their size. Some asteroids rotate um as often as once
17:49
Speaker 1: an hour, some take two days, depending on their size.
17:53
Speaker 1: But if you're on an asteroid that's going upside down
17:55
Speaker 1: every half hour, every hour, right, it's no good. Now
18:01
Speaker 1: you can fall off, you know. And then if you
18:05
Speaker 1: factor in weightlessness, then you have even greater problems because
18:10
Speaker 1: let's say you undertake a strip mining operation. When you
18:14
Speaker 1: loosen that or it's just gonna float right off, you're
18:17
Speaker 1: basically breaking up these pieces that form these planetesimals in
18:23
Speaker 1: other cases, and then protoplanets. You're breaking that stuff up,
18:27
Speaker 1: and some of the asteroids aren't. It's not just like
18:29
Speaker 1: a chunk of rock. Some asteroids are um less dense
18:34
Speaker 1: than others. There's a pretty sizeable asteroid out there, I
18:36
Speaker 1: can't remember which one it is. Um that is as
18:40
Speaker 1: that's thought to have about the density of water, but
18:44
Speaker 1: it's solid material. It's just not packed together. So weightlessness,
18:50
Speaker 1: rotation and possible low density of some of these asteroids
18:54
Speaker 1: is gonna make this a little harder than you would think.
18:57
Speaker 1: But they got some ideas. They do have some ideas,
19:00
Speaker 1: especially to take into consideration weightlessness. Right, Yeah, Well, one
19:03
Speaker 1: thing they in This all sounds very rudimentary, but it
19:06
Speaker 1: makes sense. They thought about using a big canopy to
19:08
Speaker 1: collect this stuff as it flies off. They have considered
19:12
Speaker 1: the idea of using rocket boosters to keep the asteroid
19:16
Speaker 1: from spinning and uh, you know, level it out. I
19:20
Speaker 1: saw one um idea they had was to use magnets
19:25
Speaker 1: called rake magnets, so they would literally just uh, sort
19:31
Speaker 1: of in the shape of a rake, a giant magnet
19:33
Speaker 1: that would combs very smart and whatever loose mineral or
19:38
Speaker 1: metals were on top would stick to the magnet that
19:41
Speaker 1: would suck. To lose the rake magnet in the space though,
19:44
Speaker 1: it floats off and you're like, man, we lost another
19:46
Speaker 1: rake magnet in dollars. Plus. The other point too, with
19:51
Speaker 1: gravity is what zero gravity taketh away, she also giveth
19:56
Speaker 1: because it makes everything much lighter and easier to cherry
20:00
Speaker 1: like that, I mean gravity a woman. I guess, uh,
20:04
Speaker 1: it's everything is lighter, so you know, you won't have
20:06
Speaker 1: to have like the massive crane to lift the equipment
20:11
Speaker 1: because zero gravity and almost zero gravity, right, yes, And
20:15
Speaker 1: ferrying back and forth between the asteroid belt and say
20:18
Speaker 1: the moon. Let's say we put a colony on the
20:20
Speaker 1: Moon is going to take less fuel. We use up
20:24
Speaker 1: a substantial amount of fuel getting into outer space. Once
20:28
Speaker 1: we're in outer space, we use way less, you know.
20:31
Speaker 1: And then also the other cool thing is once you
20:34
Speaker 1: you're set up up there, you can mine an asteroid
20:38
Speaker 1: and then you can take it for all it's worth
20:40
Speaker 1: and just move to the next asteroid. You don't have
20:42
Speaker 1: to go back and forth and back and forth. And
20:43
Speaker 1: that two raise is kind of a point, like, I
20:46
Speaker 1: know this is a very nascent field and the fact
20:49
Speaker 1: that it's not in existence yet, but um, nobody's talking
20:55
Speaker 1: about what effect this could possibly have if we start
20:58
Speaker 1: basically just mine and asteroid belt like nothing. Let's say
21:04
Speaker 1: we remove all the iron ore from the main asteroid belt.
21:07
Speaker 1: What happens to say the rotation Do they start flipping out? Um,
21:12
Speaker 1: there's no there's no talk about even going to the
21:15
Speaker 1: main asteroid belt. These are right now. They're talking about
21:18
Speaker 1: just getting ones that have kind of wandered away called
21:21
Speaker 1: near Earth objects the Earth asteroids, because a lot closer
21:25
Speaker 1: to the Earth is much better, and sometimes they're closer
21:28
Speaker 1: than the Moon is, so it would really be easy
21:30
Speaker 1: to ferry to the Moon. Right the Moon. But I
21:32
Speaker 1: can't help. But wonder if eventually, you know, in a century,
21:35
Speaker 1: we ramp up in are in the main asteroid belt,
21:37
Speaker 1: like really undertaking mining operations, It'll have some sort of
21:41
Speaker 1: horrible effect that no one figured out until it was
21:44
Speaker 1: too late. I'll start spinning into Earth or something. Still,
21:48
Speaker 1: though it's a good idea, it's probably a necessity if
21:51
Speaker 1: we start to call a nice space. Um. But don't
21:54
Speaker 1: let anybody tell you it's an easy idea, right. For example,
21:57
Speaker 1: one last example of how difficult this can um and
22:01
Speaker 1: I very much recommend people go read Ronald breaks Um
22:06
Speaker 1: the Great Space Mining con I think is what he
22:09
Speaker 1: called it. He Poopoo's it, right, he he Poopoo's it.
22:11
Speaker 1: He Poopoo's bringing it back to Earth. Things. Got a
22:13
Speaker 1: lot of great examples. Uh, he says, you know, using
22:16
Speaker 1: it for space is a good idea. Um. But one
22:19
Speaker 1: of the thing is he points out is when we
22:21
Speaker 1: go and get or right, say, iron ore, we get
22:26
Speaker 1: them from veins. There's like a vein there and we
22:29
Speaker 1: can get a bunch at once. Right. That's because of
22:32
Speaker 1: Earth's biogeochemical processes that help collect or like or into
22:38
Speaker 1: the same place the Earth has a magnetic field. All
22:40
Speaker 1: of this stuff contributes taking a bunch of iron ore
22:44
Speaker 1: and putting it together. Asteroids have not been subjected to
22:47
Speaker 1: these processes, right, So we don't know if it's the same.
22:50
Speaker 1: It could be completely spread out. There might be a
22:53
Speaker 1: bunch in there um using what telescopic spect what spectroscopy? Okay, Um,
23:00
Speaker 1: we know there's a bunch there, but we don't necessarily
23:02
Speaker 1: know in what kind of density that it occurs. So
23:05
Speaker 1: you sunk a hundred billion dollars into getting up there
23:08
Speaker 1: to find out that you can't use the same processes
23:10
Speaker 1: that you do on Earth. Basically, I think they probably
23:12
Speaker 1: just do exploratory missions first before sinking in the whole
23:16
Speaker 1: hundred billion. Maybe, so we'll find out. We'll find out
23:20
Speaker 1: what Richard Branson's made of in the next year or two. Okay, yeah,
23:23
Speaker 1: I bet he listens to this. So we got a
23:25
Speaker 1: bunch on the site. You've got anything else? Uh? No,
23:28
Speaker 1: I like these little, uh theoretical musings every now and then. Oh,
23:32
Speaker 1: I've got one. The Kuiper Belt, the mel Kuiper Belt.
23:36
Speaker 1: So there's a there's another asteroid belt way larger that
23:39
Speaker 1: goes basically out to the frontiers of the Solar System. Yeah. Um.
23:45
Speaker 1: And the cool thing about this, the Kuiper Belt, is
23:48
Speaker 1: that it was proposed by Gerard Kuiper in ninety one.
23:53
Speaker 1: He's like, there's an asteroid belt out there, and this
23:55
Speaker 1: is probably roughly where it is and how wide it
23:58
Speaker 1: is and how dense it is, and in it was
24:02
Speaker 1: confirmed by um observers who saw the observers you know,
24:09
Speaker 1: from other planets, I guess, And he said, I'm naming
24:11
Speaker 1: it after me. Now I think he's probably dead. Of
24:15
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is he said mathematically, he said there's
24:18
Speaker 1: an asteroid belt out there, and then forty years later
24:21
Speaker 1: they're like, there's one right there. It's pretty cool. We
24:25
Speaker 1: should have named after him Keiper Keiper Belt. So that's it.
24:31
Speaker 1: I think it'll happen. I think we have pillaged the
24:34
Speaker 1: Earth and we will assume be pillaging the Solar System likewise. Okay,
24:39
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about asteroids, type in
24:41
Speaker 1: that word's going to bring up a lot of cool
24:43
Speaker 1: articles we combined to how asteroid mining will work and
24:46
Speaker 1: how asteroid belts work. Um, and you can type that
24:50
Speaker 1: into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com,
24:53
Speaker 1: which brings up listener mail. Josh, I'm gonna call this
24:58
Speaker 1: listener mail from my friend Ryan. Is this legal? I
25:03
Speaker 1: don't think you can do this? He sent us a
25:04
Speaker 1: legit email. I was like, you know, dude, I'm gonna
25:06
Speaker 1: read this. I'm gonna plug your band while I do it. Yeah,
25:09
Speaker 1: but that's not the reason, um, because this is actually
25:12
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Uh. Hey, dude, he didn't say everyone. He
25:17
Speaker 1: was just emailing me while mowing the yard. Earlier today,
25:20
Speaker 1: I listened to your podcast on how to Start your
25:22
Speaker 1: Own Nation. Great job, as always. I took a particular
25:25
Speaker 1: interest in checking that one out because a couple of
25:27
Speaker 1: years ago, I produced a segment for a TV show
25:31
Speaker 1: h G four Underground that never aired on the subject
25:34
Speaker 1: of micro nations, and I ended up researching many of
25:37
Speaker 1: the topics you covered on the show. In particular, you
25:40
Speaker 1: talked about the sovereign nation outside of Reno, the Republic
25:43
Speaker 1: of Malasia. I spent an entire day with his excellency
25:48
Speaker 1: President Kevin Ball in Malasia, which is actually just a
25:52
Speaker 1: house in a housing edition in a little desert town,
25:56
Speaker 1: and he sent me a picture of him with this
25:57
Speaker 1: tute and he's dressed like onwards. Yeah, he's got like
26:01
Speaker 1: the sash and everything. You can recognize it by the
26:04
Speaker 1: Molassian flag flying in the front yard and miniature cannon
26:07
Speaker 1: replica near the front door. I kind of knew going
26:10
Speaker 1: into it that he wasn't very serious about the whole thing,
26:13
Speaker 1: but definitely realized upon arrival that he and the other
26:15
Speaker 1: members of the micro Nation culture are all just big
26:19
Speaker 1: role playing nerds. My first clue was his enormous collection
26:23
Speaker 1: of Star Trek memorabilia. I interviewed neighbors who just described
26:27
Speaker 1: him as a nice fellow who's just a little eccentric.
26:29
Speaker 1: And I've attached the picture and maybe I'll put that
26:32
Speaker 1: on Facebook. I'll see f Ryan minds. But Ryan is
26:35
Speaker 1: in a band called Debate Team and they are awesome
26:40
Speaker 1: and I have their album and it's that like self produced,
26:44
Speaker 1: like the truest of indie uh styles and and putting
26:48
Speaker 1: out your own music. And Ryan's like an old friend
26:51
Speaker 1: and we were pas together and now he's like directing
26:54
Speaker 1: stuff and I'm doing this, and uh, we're all like
26:57
Speaker 1: very proud of each other. You should leave his album
26:59
Speaker 1: on our Facebook. You know. I have posted something before,
27:01
Speaker 1: I'll post it again, but um, if you want to
27:03
Speaker 1: check out Facebook dot com slash debate team. It's good
27:08
Speaker 1: power pop. Uh, it's just awesome. I love it. I'm
27:11
Speaker 1: a fan. What what else? What's another example of power pop? Um?
27:16
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I mean the drummer for his
27:19
Speaker 1: band is also the drummer from Okay go Are they
27:22
Speaker 1: power pop? I would say, Okay goes. Probably. I can
27:24
Speaker 1: see that. I like them, but it's not like they're
27:26
Speaker 1: like them. They're debate teams around awesome thing. Let me
27:29
Speaker 1: change that. I like that one song that they had
27:31
Speaker 1: that the first video for the which was the chick Mills. Yeah,
27:35
Speaker 1: but they're I mean, those dudes are like killing it
27:37
Speaker 1: on the music videos. Yeah, and they're like Internet gods
27:40
Speaker 1: and everything. Yeah. Cool, guys? Is it? The Strokes are
27:43
Speaker 1: sort of power poppy? Okay, yes, totally. You might call
27:47
Speaker 1: them rock and roll rooney rooney. Yeah, I don't know.
27:51
Speaker 1: This guy's ay good? They're yeah, they're pretty good, all right.
27:54
Speaker 1: They have some very catchy tunes. All right, Well, if
27:58
Speaker 1: you like power pop, we want to hear all about it.
28:00
Speaker 1: We do want to hear about it, Josh, But we
28:03
Speaker 1: got to let people know about something that we're doing.
28:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we have a next weekend, the fourth of
28:09
Speaker 1: July weekend. Uh, you're gonna be able to listen to
28:12
Speaker 1: us on Serious XM channel what is it one O
28:16
Speaker 1: four Channel one or they're doing a Stuff you Should
28:20
Speaker 1: Know America of Stuff you Should Know About America weekend
28:23
Speaker 1: and they're playing like twenty of our podcast over the
28:27
Speaker 1: course of the weekend on a little pop up channel,
28:29
Speaker 1: and uh, it's gonna be punctuated with some little shorts
28:34
Speaker 1: from our friends at Stuff You Miss in History Class
28:37
Speaker 1: de Bleian and Sarah, who are awesome, and also our
28:40
Speaker 1: live show that we're recording in New York on July
28:43
Speaker 1: one with some very special friends from the Onion and
28:47
Speaker 1: potentially other special guests. They're going to play that several times. Dude.
28:51
Speaker 1: We're basically all over channel one or four on Serious
28:54
Speaker 1: XM for like a whole weekend pretty much. It's going
28:57
Speaker 1: to be pretty awesome. And you can also listen to
28:59
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know Now on w fm U ninety
29:01
Speaker 1: one point one in the New York metro area and
29:05
Speaker 1: ninety point one in the Hudson Valley. Right, that's right.
29:07
Speaker 1: Friday's from seven to eight pm. You can support us
29:10
Speaker 1: on the radio, and they're cutting together some of our
29:13
Speaker 1: archives in the new and exciting ways. So there you
29:16
Speaker 1: have it. That's it. Yeah um. If you want to
29:20
Speaker 1: send us an email about what power pop yeah yeah yeah,
29:24
Speaker 1: or if you're a member of a power pop band,
29:26
Speaker 1: sure shoot it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works
29:30
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
29:37
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
29:40
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow,
29:47
Speaker 1: brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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