Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Fucking Galileo proved this shit over 400 years ago!! Goddamn it, might as well have a bunch of people figuring that the sun revolves around the earth and all those newfangled ideas like the fact that Saturn has rings on it.

Question regarding the speed of light: the speed of c is lower through transparent materials (say, water). If light were to pass through this medium then re-enter a vacuum does it accelerate back to 186,000 miles/sec? If so, where is it obtaining the energy to do this? Furthermore, can a photon loss all energy and come to rest? If not, why not?

Quadruple stranded DNA found in human cells.http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/...chem.1548.html

You might be a Manimal but not Wolverine.

Asteroid mining's main issue is processing AND returning the stuff to Earth. If that is not cost effective, then the whole enterprise becomes somewhat pointless. The profit has to exceed operating costs. Every returned load will essentially need a re-entry capsule. Unless you can manufacture them in space, then every single one will need to be delivered to the asteroid or LEO. I could maybe see some space station where ore/mineral loads are delivered and then xfered to a re-entry capsule, although this still requires something ferrying materials to and from the mining site.

Actually that asteroid mining company announced their plans just the other day, it would appear that they intend on manufacturing shit in space using 3D printers. So they could well make re-entry modules.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/st...-asteroid.html

In the longer term, the company hopes to process asteroid ores and manufacture devices in space using a 3D printing technology it has patented. The technology, called MicroGravity Foundry, can create high-strength metal components in zero gravity, the company says.

Stephen Covey, another member of the company's board, said Deep Space believes that manufacturing in space is the "first step" toward large platforms and settlements in space.

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ShakyJake_sl said:

Question regarding the speed of light: the speed of c is lower through transparent materials (say, water).

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My understanding is that light doesn't actually slow down when going through transparent materials, it just takes longer to get through them because it bounces off of each particle and essentially takes a longer path through the object.

Edit - just realized there's a video above explaining it :/

Cybsled_sl said:

Asteroid mining's main issue is processing AND returning the stuff to Earth. If that is not cost effective, then the whole enterprise becomes somewhat pointless. The profit has to exceed operating costs. Every returned load will essentially need a re-entry capsule. Unless you can manufacture them in space, then every single one will need to be delivered to the asteroid or LEO. I could maybe see some space station where ore/mineral loads are delivered and then xfered to a re-entry capsule, although this still requires something ferrying materials to and from the mining site.

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There is some effort to simply crash the asteroids into the Saudi-Arabian desert or into the Australian outback. Companies like Excalibur-Almaz and representatives from the Isle of Man (which is where many of the newer for-profit space corporations are registered) are currently negotiating with officials from those countries to get that ball rolling. Last I heard, Australia's representatives were still extremely wary about a weaponized asteroid hitting a city, but that Saudi-Arabia was actually more receptive to the idea.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the resources produced from asteroid mining is worth far, far more in orbit than it is on the ground. Hence the concept of building things in space with it. Instead of paying thousands of dollars a pound to launch a bunch of metal in to space, it might be a lot cheaper to launch mining and manufacturing drones that will produce ship components, fuel and the like in orbit from asteroids.

Tuco_sl said:

Yeah but besides science there's no reason to have stuff in space atm. Mining asteroids is perhaps the first step to having a reason to keep all kinds of shit in space.

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My main issue with roping an asteroid into our orbit is how real is the possibility that a calculation/human error can result in redirecting the asteroid into a crash collision with earth? And what % chance of this happening is acceptable? I'm a bit leery of anything that can lead to destruction of all life on earth, however remote the possibility. And once the technology for near space object redirection is developed, who could get their hands on it.

Pasteton_sl said:

My main issue with roping an asteroid into our orbit is how real is the possibility that a calculation/human error can result in redirecting the asteroid into a crash collision with earth? And what % chance of this happening is acceptable? I'm a bit leery of anything that can lead to destruction of all life on earth, however remote the possibility. And once the technology for near space object redirection is developed, who could get their hands on it.

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That's one of the bigger issues companies and governments are trying to deal with right now. The general work arounds are that you process the asteroid by crashing it onto the moon or you harvest it at a Lagrange point and only the more valuable raw materials (gold, platinum, etc) are actually brought down to earth.

Or you could crash it into the earth and harvest it that way, but the asteroid would need to be of a specific size in order to do that. Rest assured, any asteroid brought into orbit will not be anywhere near a planet killer. That said, it can do some seriously extreme damage to a populated area. Current research is on attaching a shit load of wings/parachutes/retrorockets and guiding it into the desert. It will be a long time before anyone can redirect an asteroid as a terrorist act. Once we have the technology to do this on a regular basis (bringing them in will still take years if not decades), it will be feasible to properly police the "asteroid shipping lanes."

Current aerospace companies already have to deal with ITAR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...ms_Regulations), and the oversight will only get tighter as this becomes more routine. Just about anything that can go into space is a "weapon" under ITAR, so there'll be a lot of oversight. The first several asteroids harvested will likely be crash landed as a proof of concept and for a quick $ grab. Once it's proven (by show casing several raw tons of platinum on TV or something like that), you'll see a lot more invested in harvesting them in orbit. Like Eomer mentioned, most of the need for the materials will be in space anyways, without much reason to bring it back to earth with a few exceptions (gold etc.)

The biggest thing you're like to see brought down to earth in any real quantity is the creation of metal foams as gravity screws up the terrestrial manufacture of steel foam. Metal foams are extremely durable and lightweight, they're just a bitch to do it gravity. One of the first mass-produced space-import money makers you'll see in zero-g is metal foam.