Thread 719941765

Is cracking planets open for corporations and harvesting them for resources really sustainable for humanities future?

>>719941765 (OP)
no, but it's cool
lets do it anyway

Nah
You could tap resource belts with less risk and more resources overall.
The only real problem, aside from all the autistic technical shit, is that the material wealth of some asteroids is so high that it would devalue platinum, gold, silver etc to the point of cratering the market.

>>719941970
That's fine we'll vault all of that shit and sell it of piece by piece every time the market recovers. The value only ends up fucked if we flood the market with everything at once

>>719941765 (OP)
I want to play the remake, but I'm too much of a pussy. I have played the original trilogy and it was fucking awesome. I guess middle/high school me was braver than late 20's me.

>>719941765 (OP)
The amount of energy required to crack a planet open would vastly outscale the potential profit of trying to process trillions of tons of rock drifting in space for usable ore

>>719942109
>The value only ends up fucked if we flood the market with everything at once
Yeah but the problem is the sheer volume of resources that can come from a single rock. Imagine snagging an asteroid and quadrupling the amount of gold that exists on the planet overnight. People are scared of that shit, so they don't want to waste money making a vessel that can go up, get some gold, come back and not do anything with most of it.
Humanity's currently trying to go to the bottom of the ocean for gold. That shit is more palatable by comparison because it's harder to reach.

>>719941765 (OP)
>Corporations
>Sustainable
>Humanity's Future
These concepts are not compatible

>>719942287
No that's retarded
Getting to the bottom of the ocean is relatively easy since everything goes down there by default the only hurdles are operating down there and getting back up
Space mining is practically impossible right now we can barely manage to keep a low orbit station running. Satellites crash all the time and moon landing equipment is considered lost technology
Operating a mining craft in the kuiper belt isn't feasible even if governments pooled massive resources into it. And worst case scenario you come back with rocks that are just rocks, no precious metals

>>719942501
> moon landing equipment is considered lost technology
Retarded myth perpetuated by midwits
We can’t craft a moonlander like the one from the 60’s and 70’s because the factories and companies and specialists that produced the very specific and delicate parts that made such a thing possible don’t exist anymore because modern manufacturing methods replaced them. We could recreate it with time and effort.

>>719942435
Its a thing in many sci-fi media with space travel like Alien or Avatar or even ones without it like Cyberpunk or Blade Runner. Eventually the corporations run the world, own the countries, distrubute the resources and treat the human species as disposable assets.

>>719941970
fuck the market. find a real use for the material.

>>719942501
>getting down to the bottom of the ocean is easy
>satellites crash all the time
you're a midwit if i've ever seen one

>>719942990
>>getting down to the bottom of the ocean is easy
It is easy compared to leaving earth's orbit and navigating to an asteroid

>>719942501
>considered lost technology
Anon, a Gateway 2000 4DX-66V isn't "lost technology" just because we don't have any factories producing the 486DX CPU for it anymore. The problem is that it would be 1) expensive to rebuild the factories for all the 4DX-66V components, and 2) we have no reason to remake the 4DX-66V rather than make a better PC with modern technology. That is the moon landing dilemma. It's not lost. It's just too expensive to justify building the industry for the old tech rather than designing a new one with modern tech.

>>719943062
The word you're looking for is "expensive." The high pressure of the ocean floor is far more hostile and risky than space faring. That's why he's calling you a midwit. It is technologically easier for us to colonize the Moon than it is to colonize the ocean floor. However, we are lacking in space infrastructure, especially that needed to launch to a destination on a ship that will return heavier than it left. It's not difficult, but it's a lot more expensive than it is to launch one-way probes that will fly by Pluto ten years later for perfect photos. Also, eliminate "leaving earth's orbit" as a factor. That's not difficult in the slightest, nor a factor in the question. We're past the point of even putting satellites in orbit around the Sun, kept perfectly parallel to the Earth for planet selfies from 1,000,000 miles away.

>>719943663
>It is technologically easier for us to colonize the Moon than it is to colonize the ocean floor.
Mars*, not Moon.

>>719941765 (OP)
Yes.
The universe is infinite.

>>719941765 (OP)
I forget, did they ever give any real information on how huge the human population and number of colonized planets is in Dead Space? Not that I don't think cracking open planets and processing the metals in a fuck-huge spaceship is anything but "rule of cool". It's something that makes you imagine there being a really huge demand for metal for society to keep running, so they have to literally break apart planets to keep the system running with finite resources.

>>719943663
>It is technologically easier for us to colonize the Moon than it is to colonize the ocean floor. However, we are lacking in space infrastructure
What we're lacking is a reason. Reaching the moon once was a great milestone but have 0 reason to go back there or start a colony. You better believe that if the moon had a breathable atmosphere and fertile ground we would've already colonized it, but what's the point in our reality? We would jump through a million hoops to build a station on a dead rock that has no hope of ever sustaining itself?

>>719944318
The point is that it's pretty much the best solution to establish a base of operations for future operations in the solar system. A far-off option for expansion would be shit like orbital processing facilities for metals that get harvested from asteroids and such, but that sort of technology is still way beyond what we are able to do right now.

>>719944318
At first, R&D. It's the best place to build and test colonization as Earth is right there to provide immediate support/shipping for anything that goes wrong. It allows testing for all the worst space hurdles of colonization, such as
>extreme temperature swings
>vacuum
>low-G
>no atmosphere or magnetosphere protections
Basically our celestial laboratory. But, as you point out, we lack a reason.

we're kinda disgusting parasites
seriously, I'm surprised "The Swarm" has never been used to describe humanity in scifi

>>719946591
Black lives matter, sister! Show them!

>>719941970
>the material wealth of some asteroids is so high that it would devalue platinum, gold, silver etc to the point of cratering the market.
good, fuck the jewellery industry, literally a complete scam

>"oh this rock that we found is worth $50,000,000. Why? BECAUSE WE FUCKING SAID SO!!"

>>719941970
>The only real problem, aside from all the autistic technical shit, is that the material wealth of some asteroids is so high that it would devalue platinum, gold, silver etc to the point of cratering the market.
Imagine being such a spiritual jew that the thought of limitless resources keeps you up at night because you will lose your monopoly on some backwater world.

>>719942136
Just play small sessions, 20 mins or so.

>>719947457
Obviously what they will do is reclassify shit. The only thing that will have high value in the far future of spacetraveling mankind is locally produced valuable metals and diamonds, everything that is gotten anywhere else than Earth is second-class materials that have value only in industrial uses.

>>719941765 (OP)
Yes
The number must go up and we inherited this universe

>>719947787
>implying Earth at this point won't be a barren irradiated rock while the center of the universe has moved to another world

>>719943249
They wanted to make an updated version of the Rocketdyne F1 a while ago, but that was cancelled. Keeping the Apollo program going would have been cheaper than replacing it with the Shuttle because it would have just been keeping the existing workers and supply chains going.

>>719942976
Gold is useful for electronics.

>>719942245
But what if it's a setting where energy is cheap and certain materials are expensive? Modern ore grades would once have been considered to be mere tailings.

>>719944318
The moon program provided tons of R&D that was then spun off into various useful commercial technologies.

>>719942830
>Eventually
heh

>>719948231
It still isn't at that stage yet. Trump could turn around and have richfags killed overnight if he wanted to, while richfags can't do the same to him.

>>719948231
>average tax rate
Isn't that just saying that the richest 1% of the population paid 23% tax on 99% of the nation's wealth (a fuck huge number), while the 99% paid 24.2% on the last little 1% of the nation's wealth (a tiny droplet of contribution)? Isn't the main rhetorhic that the 1% "doesn't pay taxes at all" due to exploits and loopholes? So why is their average PAID tax rate 23%?

>>719941765 (OP)
>mfs humans were just doing the same thing brethren moons are doing to planets

>>719948759
>a tiny droplet of contribution
Anon, this isn't the days of the gold standard anymore. At the federal level, the government just makes the money printer go brrr. Taxes are used for things like controlling inflation instead of funding the federal government.

>>719942830
>run the world, own the countries, distrubute the resources and treat the human species as disposable assets.
How is this any different than our current state?

>>719948484
>>719948759

>>719948939
There isn't honestly beyond setting. Once we reach the stars it'll be the same mundane blue collar lifestyle, apathy, suffering, indifference.

>>719941970
Diamonds are also worthless, they only have value because mining companies gatekeep and control how much gets into the market.
They'll just do the same with those minerals.

>>719948484
>Trump could turn around and have richfags killed overnight if he wanted to
Erm, anon...Trump IS a richfag. He won't do that to his tribe.

>>719942136
Man that game was something else. That one level were you see a little shit climb out of sight after getting off the tram then once your done shitting yourself through the level, right before you get on the tram it crashes through the glass for one last scare before heading off. Lost my save right at the end when you finally get onto the planet and I'm content dying never having finished it.

>>719941765 (OP)
Well it could be sustainable if space travel logistics made sense. The amount of fuel, propulsion, and educated staff needed to make it all work would have to be at such a high rate of persistent accuracy that the species would basically be falling over itself just to compile resources. So they would be zombies, in a way; without the Necromorph's help.

>>719948759
>99% of the nation's wealth
That's the exact problem. They are not paying the tax of 99% of wealth, that's what they own and get away with. The 1% pay an income tax like everyone else but they can literally decide themselves what their income is. This is only a drop in the bucket of what their assets generate.

And now we can also go into the area that they own assets that are massively state funded, use the best strategies and loopholes possible for tax cuts. Living generally in a system where money generates more money while having money.

>>719948941
>Pointing out that governments in first-world countries are more powerful than fictional shitholes means that you are a Trump supporter
>>719949216
Yes. That's why I said "could" and "if he wanted to", not "will".

>>719949116
Diamonds have industrial uses.

>>719941970
>, is that the material wealth of some asteroids is so high that it would devalue platinum, gold, silver etc to the point of cratering the market.


this is such a gay way of thinking


we must create demand on a scale to meet the supply. expand to the stars and build on a scale fitting for the material wealth of the universe

>>719941765 (OP)
The scale of that thing is retarded, maybe a shitty asteroid, but a planet, no way.

>>719950102
We first need way better robot technology for that. Or do you think they are going to send indians and chinks to the stars?

>>719950028
Yeah, but not that much.
They're used for what, polishing as abrasive material and a handful of cutting tools?
Even then there's usually better alternatives or ones on the same level and while I'm gonna pull this one out of my ass, I can bet the diamonds used for that stuff are dirt cheap ones as opposed to the stuff used in jewelry.

>>719950375
>I can bet the diamonds used for that stuff are dirt cheap ones as opposed to the stuff used in jewelry
That's exactly his point. The diamonds used for jewelry are literally all worthless and artificially inflated because one company controls the market.

>>719950375
Diamonds would probably be used for more things if the jewelry companies weren't keeping the prices so artificially high.

>>719941765 (OP)
The technological difference between a city sized space ship and a dyson swarm is small. One could easily argue that the space ship is even more impressive.

When you have a dyson swarm, you automatically unlock star lifting, and you have enough energy to just fuse all that hydrogen and literally transmute anything you need like the alchemists dreamed of.

>>719941970
The market will expand like it always has. The only people losing out are the ones that went all in on rare metals.

>>719944318
A moon mining colony is probably going to be one of the most profitable industries for a long, long time. It might even beat out asteroid mining.
The moon being a dead rock is irrelevant. In fact it might be better, since you can just pollute and pollute with reckless abandon. Moving heavy industries to the moon can take advantage of on-site mining, low gravity, and the lack of environmental regulations.

Unlike asteroids, the resources are right next to the biggest market in the solar system. Orbital rings (which are not that technologically advanced compared to space elevators) can take people and goods to Earth for cheap.

>>719942757
Bigger issue is our safety standards have skyrocketed since then. Apollo originally used pure oxygen in the cabin lmao. Building deathtraps is faster

>>719952906
>Orbital rings
Ah yeah, just need to build a megastructure that will cost a year worth of the world's gpd to receive one of the most profitable industries. How cheap.

Why would you care about sustainability when you are talking about cracking open other planets? Look how many of them there are in the universe. As long as we leave Earth alone, I say let's do it.

>>719941970
only metals with real actual practical use will retain its value

only if you are a type 2 civ and need that much resources for a dyson sphere

>>719953761
>a type 2 civ
name a more redditor thing than galactic civ types

>>719953341
It's not cheap. But we don't need theoretical wonder materials like 100km long carbon nanotubes to build them.
I meant that it's cheap per launch. It easily pays for itself despite how insanely expensive the startup cost is.

We could start with just mass drivers on the moon. Once the operation develops enough, it would be economical to build an orbital ring so more fragile goods can be sent back down to Earth and not just raw materials.

Once the lunar industrial complex is in full swing, then we can start building the orbital ring here on Earth for a more reasonable cost compared to building it right now.

>>719953761
A dyson sphere comes from a dyson swarm that star lifts metals from the sun it orbits. It is the only economical source of matter in a star system.
I guess you have limitless amounts of energy available already, so you could carve up planets if you wanted to. But the star is right there. And it'll take astronomically less time.

>>719953807
>a scale invented in 1960s is reddit
Okay buddy retard

>>719941765 (OP)
remake was easily top3 horror slop of all time

>>719951071
oh shit that's my image

>>719954087
Damn is this le beauty and le beast parody?

>>719953972
The material needed to begin star lifting must first come from dismantling planets.

>scifi concepts
>let me assume these 10000 uncertain variables while ignoring the 1000000 I don't even know I don't know

>>719941765 (OP)
Beyond retarded idea. Keeping a planet in one piece and instead terraforming it to specific resource needs (forest worlds, ocean worlds, etc.) provides a million times more value over a long period than just harvesting it for minerals. The latter can already be done with gas giants and asteroids.

Not to mention suface space on an actual planet is like 0.00000000000000000001% of the mass in the universe, every planet is a valuable real estate for people to actually live on. Even inner/outer planets can be adjusted in their orbit.

>>719942830
So the banana republic?

>>719954615
>le terraforming
Absolute midwit shit. Humans will never do serious terraforming because it just takes too long. Currently we don't even react to predictable shit that will happen in a decade or two.

>>719954615
>Earth gov doing the space equivalent of slash and burn farming in spess despite being less than 300 years into the setting
>by the time that the markers have entered into production they still didn't feasibly have enough energy sources to keep everything from grinding to a halt
Just how fucking dogshit of a society do you have to be in getting to this point?

>>719954784
>it just takes too long
Objectively doesn't matter. Even a project like a Dyson Swarm is on a scale of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. If we ever become a space faring civilization timeframes will not matter anymore.
Not to mention we have literally done terraforming on our own planet in just the last hundred years.

>>719953843
I would not trust mass drivers on the moon, it'd be way too easy for some random orbital jeet working overtime hours on minimal sleep to accidentally send a payload of tungsten into the middle of a busy city center instead of a safe receiving zone

>>719954784
>local decadent wants his money now
Kek

>>719954963
>Not to mention we have literally done terraforming on our own planet in just the last hundred years
No we didn't. Terraforming is the deliberate manipulation not accidental.
>Objectively doesn't matter
Yes it does. The option that offers faster gratification will be always picked over the sustainable one.

>>719955084
>Terraforming is the deliberate manipulation not accidental.
Do you think we built cities on natural lands, deforested, rerouted rivers etc. by pure accident? What?

>>719955084
>The option that offers faster gratification will be always picked over the sustainable one.
Enjoy the collapse

>>719954940
Reminds me ours honestly. Fucking quantum computers being developed while living standards cannot be maintained.

>>719955136
Terraforming means shaping a planet closer to terra, our planet. When people speak about terraforming earth they speak about rehabilitating earth to be closer to its natural state, not that landscapes were destroyed to build cities, which is the opposite of terraforming.

>>719955341
The Chinese are turning useless deserts into forests and farmland. That is terraforming.
You are a retarded environmentalist.

>>719942976
>>719947457
>BRO, there's no use to these metals!
Gold is the only "precious metal" primarily not used in industry, and it's instead used as a reserve currency. The USA keeps 300 million ounces of it at any time for this purpose, so it could be said to be useless. It's not even used as the primary way of backing our currency anymore, instead left as a strategic reserve.
Silver and platinum both have declining stockpiles and have been at a deficit for years because they're used in pretty much any technology, platinum in cars and silver in any kind of advanced electronics at all. They already have their uses and are used 90% as an industrial metal. They literally cannot mine them fast enough because of how useful they are.
>>719947787
>Locally produced valuable metals and diamonds
No, the governments will just issue fiat currency like they already do now, and back it up with government / economic power, and then you'll make your transactions with internet tokens that represent that currency - like we also already do now when you move money in your bank account and the 1 on the screen represents a 1 dollar bank note from the US treasury.

Is it just 12 year olds making all of these retarded comments or something? Why does this topic confuse so many people, no countries in the world even back their currency with gold anymore.

>>719955456
Terraforming is large scale you fucking retard. You speak about geoengineering. Next you're going to say that building a pool in a garden is terraforming. Don't randomly use terms you don't know what they mean and then seethe and call me retarded words, transmongoloid.

>>719941970
ttbhte mrakret will imorpvoie by t topyu sue.eling paltoitnugm and gold idont thin yoiuall yopu need yto usndfetrand is thaste yoi if oyu sell platingum on to a solar system scale you wil inevitably increwase the price as you will mine the SHJIT Out of weveryiug fucking asteorid and YOU WILL BEFCOME A BILLIONAIRE JUST follow the DSFUCKIFN STEPS

>>719955583
>The scale of transforming a large desert isn't as big as transforming an entire planet, so it isn't applicable!
Retard.

>>719954615
>More value over time than just harvesting it for minerals
>The surface of a planet is like .00000001% of the mass of the universe
The surface of the planet (a thin skin of said planet) is not an efficient use of said minerals, and as humans we can't just go underground without expending a bunch of resources and time and effort we don't need to - the surface of a planet is a tiny amount of space compared to the amount of space you'd get if you had said materials in space and just made cylinders.
And the planets they crack aren't prime real estate, most planets will be in an inhospitable location and will be made up of shit useless materials that only have niche industrial uses.

>>719955456
Fucking retarded piece of shit

>>719955798
Most planets don't even have a proper magnetic field to sustain any kind of atmosphere, so staying there will a bitch and a half anyway.

>>719954615
No it doesn't, are you daft or something? The 40k thing where you dedicate one planet to food, one to industry, one to garrisoning, etc is retarded. Just the cost of shipping food from your food world to the other worlds makes this retarded.

We need to dismantle all rocky material in the solar system and remake it into O'Neil cylinders.

>>719954940
The unitards fucked up everything to be honest.

>>719955773
Yes, terraforming is yet a science fiction concept and has never been done. For smaller scale operations we have more precise words that you can and should use instead. Especially in a fucking scifi thread. That's like calling solar panels dyson sphere panels.

>>719955912
Is that supposed to be the sun?

>>719955583
>Terraforming is large scale you fucking retard
Literally quoting the definition:
>Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make it habitable for humans to live on. [1]

Where is scale mentioned in it? Also what even is the base of your argument?

>>719955912
Yeah, if efficiency is your goal there's literally nothing more efficient than some tubes floating in space - you could make a billion of them with one singular planet, and that's a lowball.
>>719955983
An artificial sun that travels on a fixed path.

>>719955912
>O'neil
Good concept for a vacation resort or transport ship or emergency evacuation ship but I'd make a solid wager that 99.9% of the populace would not feel comfortable living there for their entire life.

>>719950028
>Diamonds have industrial uses.
Yeah, the 5$/piece synthetic, not the (((natural))) ones.

>>719955271
>hmmmmm, I have to work for a living but we are still researching medical cures to alzheimers, curious
Non-argument. Life at any time will have challenges. This doesn't mean we have to stop all quantum computer development to give you 100k a year and a house and a wife, and if we did stop quantum computers you'd get like 1 dollar a year maybe from it so it still isn't an argument.

>>719955993
>is the hypothetical process
Your own definition says it's a hypothetical process, retard-kun...

>>719955993
To be fair, stuff like transforming a desert is little more than advanced gardening compared to shit like adjusting the atmosphere and climate/temperature.

>>719955809
Cope, faggot.
>>719955974
The challenges for Dyson spheres are much larger than the challenges for terraforming. The knowledge for transforming deserts can be applied in part to transforming other planets.

>>719941765 (OP)
Why not? It's not like there aren't trillions upon trillions of planets in the universe, easily reachable if you have FTL as they do in the setting

>>719956147
It's not about stopping the quantum stuff but the fact the as we do that shit the foundation of society is turning into trash at observable speeds. If that (((aspect))) cannot be dealt with properly no amount of quantums will matter as the power goes out and never comes back.

>>719956213
Yes, many lesser technologies are part of bigger technologies, we still don't call small technologies with the name of the big technology. Just call small technologies the name of the small technology. It's not that hard.

>>719954615
If you are worried about resources, dismantling a planet would give more than settling on it and poking at it with a shovel. If you are worried about living space, you can get more by dismantling it and using the resources to create artificial orbital habitats.

>>719956346
Stars are very hot. This is a much bigger problem than modifying the environment of a planet to make it habitable.

>>719956147
>missing the point entirely
Not that anon, but you are dumb as rocks. The fact that you conflated what you said with what anon said, which is entirely mutually exclusive to what anon said, is baffling, as you've presented it in such a way that you appear to know what you're talking about. But you've simply strawmanned the argument in order to talk about your personal political ideologies. Your opinion of what people arbitrarily deserve has nothing to do with systemic economic disparities being brushed aside for hyper advanced technological development with next to no practical use for the common man, who often times ends up paying the taxes to fund the development in the first place.

>>719956304
And if we redirected all quantum computer assets to fix society you'd get a dollar and they'd make up 1,000 new quantum genders, so you've fixed nothing and actually made it worse by involving a bunch of autistic computer retards.
>No amount of X can fix society
So what is the alternative? Redirect the assets? Because if we did that it would just make things worse.
>>719956646
Word salad + no argument. We don't stop technology and advancement because you feel sad. You also misunderstood his argument, which he clarified in his response to me, while I understood it correctly.
>More money for poor people, inequality!
We give most of our money to poor people already, it goes 49% to rich boomers and 49% to poor people of dark skin complexion.

>>719956495
Dyson swarms don't have to be all built at once. Start with a few solar collector satellites. This is easy to do, the only problem is finding an efficient way to transmit the energy. The only real issue is scale but this is not an all-or-nothing situation like terraforming is where either it works perfectly and sustainably at massive scale or it fails. You can easily have just a few satellites to start with.

Terraforming a planet involves shit like, inducing a magnetic field (extremely hard), changing its orbit (extremely hard), inducing an atmosphere (involves tech we don't have), introducing a stable ecosystem, etc. And then you have to hope the magnetic field doesn't dissipate or the atmosphere floats away into space, killing everyone after these have been artificially created.

>>719956482
>dismantle a living space to make an inferior artificial living space

>>719956495
Then take a closer example like calling a space shuttle an interplanetary shuttle. They are really close conceptually but worlds apart practically.

>>719956763
>So what is the alternative?
Removing kikes. Everything else false into place after that.

>>719956819
Planets without proper magnentic field and atmosphere are not proper living spaces, might as well mine them to make stations and ships.

>>719956819
You can live on the surface of a planet. Calculate the area of a sphere.

You can also dismantle the planet to create trillions of cylinders. Calculate the surface area of a multitude of cylinders created from the same volume as the sphere.

In a far future society with planetcracking capabilities, settling on the surface of a planet instead of turning it into a trillion habitats is a criminal waste of resources.

>>719956870
Yeah, so talk about that instead of quantum computers. That's the argument, muh computers muh space ships isn't.
>>719956646
lmao, you were so off, reddit clown. Look at his argument. You lost. We're removing you.

>>719941765 (OP)
no, we will all be dead long before that happens

>>719957032
You will, anyway.

There are trillions of rogue planets floating around, and billions of suns giving away free energy. So yeah, even if you had 10000 ishimuras cracking planets 24/7, they would still need millions of years to process 1% of our galaxy raw material output.

The entire "humanity is running out of resources" in a setting with FTL is just to make the game more "relatable" to modern audiences, and most people can't really wrap their heads around the concept of infinite abundance. Look at Elite dangerous, they have 1000x the population of dead space, trillions and trillions of humans, and yet they have explored and settled less than 2% of the galaxy.

Very few games do the economics of space right, most go for the scarcity of resources because they want to tell stories that are relevant to modern audiences.

>>719956765
Solar panels literally degrade in heat, and the grid costs involved with them are already making bills expensive. High temperatures of stars are a massive challenge for anything.
Terraforming doesn't have to be all at once. You can just go bit by bit in stages.

>>719956495
>Stars are very hot
You fundamentally misunderstand a Dyson swarm. You are not meant to LITERALLY cover the surface of the star. You are meant to cover the energy OUTPUT of the star. That can be done from a completely safe distance, with the only downside naturally being the farther you are the more area you need to cover. We could literally start making a Dyson swarm today, it's not a matter of high end technology just a matter of pure resources and time.

>>719957052
nigga you gonna die too
I'm taking you with me

>>719957060
Not even modern audiences, 1970s audiences. Environmentalism is just muh 1973 oil crisis for 50 years.

>>719941765 (OP)
If superintelligence is able to come about, it'll be those beings doing that.

>>719957086
The further away you go, the less efficient it gets and the more you have to worry about things like planets crashing into it.

>>719941765 (OP)
>sustainable
Nothing is sustainable anon. It's a buzzword to make you think everything is okay, which it might be for a thousand years. But sustainability is entirely incorrect and misleading. Removing anything from an ecosystem makes something unsustainable by nature, including plant/animal life because you are directly removing minerals still.

Taking these from other sources will help preserve the earth though.
That said, cracking planets open is unfeasible and it would probably be better to look for whatever you want floating in space. You'd be better off dropping nano-swarm bombs onto planets to harvest precious metals and leaving them to reproduce for hundreds of years before coming back to collect your juicy metallic honey.

Seem's fucking dangerous to me just leaving machines to themselves though.

>>719957061
NTA, you don't understand solar panels or space.
99% of issues of said panels just go away if you involve space and efficient factories.
>No day / night, can work at maximum efficiency at all times
>No atmosphere decreasing power output
>Don't get dirty
>Can radiate excess heat into space
>Can be moved around at almost no energy cost
>Can be moved to some recycling plant just floating in space and made into new ones
>Precious / rare-earth metals that are hard to get on earth wouldn't be a problem if we were at dsyson-swarm levels of technology, if a panel fails in 10 years you make a new one
>Refinement of said metals also isn't a problem in space, no toxic waste laws
>>719957251
Making up imaginary scenarios in your head that never happen isn't an argument.

>>719957061
>Terraforming doesn't have to be all at once. You can just go bit by bit in stages.
It kind of does have to be all at once. If your colonists all die from solar radiation then you have to have them settle underground. I don't know why anyone would ever agree to live like Morlocks on a world which won't have any economic value for thousands of years. For example, what would Mars export to Earth during its early colony days? What could be more cheaply mined or constructed on Mars than could be produced on the Earth? The cost of transporting anything would make any exports unfeasible.

On the other hand, a solar collector in Earth orbit is essentially just a very primitive form of dyson swarm. You could, given the energy needs and scale of manufacturing and an efficient way to transmit the energy, just keep creating such satellites indefinitely until you have enough to capture the output of the star, as >>719957086 said. They can be done at any variable range as is practical.

>>719955993
>farting is terraforming
lol, lmao even.

>>719957473
You're assuming that it would be colonists living there instead of workers in suits and ships and stuff. Even with the technology developed, terraforming would be ridiculously expensive and resource-intensive and any attempt would need the understanding that there would not be any profits for ages.

>>719957427
Solar panels get damaged by heat and hail, which are much less serious than space's extreme temperatures and asteroids/moons/planets. Radiators are much more expensive than the atmospheric cooling that solar panels have.

>>719957841
what did he mean by this?

>>719958031
Air.
Solar panels on earth can release excess heat into the ais slowly. But you cannae do that in space, captain.

>>719957698
Exactly, it's not a profitable endeavor. It might never be profitable, even with futuristic tech. You might very well find that it makes more sense to just live in a cylinder than to ever settle Mars.

>>719957841
>Heat and hail, much less serious than space's extreme temperatures and asteroids / moons / planets
You don't understand heat or space debris either?
Space temperature is not "extreme", it's a balancing act between radiating heat and absorbing radiation. That's what space ships do. That's what the solar panels we already have in space that have been working for decades do.
>Radiators are expensive
They're not and you don't understand radiators, it's literally a piece of metal.
>Atmospheric cooling
This causes damage and is the source of said heat damage you're talking about
>>719958031
I don't know, I think he's actually just 60 years old and retarded or something. Wrong about literally everything he says.
>>719958119
Space stations and solar panels already radiate heat passively with little pieces of metal, that's literally all a radiator is, a piece of metal.

Global warming is real and dangerous and I'm tired of people here pretending it's nothing.

>>719958119
In space you can retract a solar panel and extend radiators to radiate heat away.

>>719958159
I feel bad for him anon, simple physics is beyond his ken.

>>719958180
We can just build very big radiators and Earth will cool down again.

>>719941970
that's retarded and based on hypothetical information like
>what if we mined this asteroid with a quadrillion ton of gold
in reality we would only tap into these resources if the cost of extracting and transporting them was below the expected value of the resource
>but wouldn't it be cool to think about gold going to 0 XD

>>719958432
Yeah and then we call that terraforming. Everyone wins in this thread.

>>719954615
Terraforming isn't real. What kind of technology do you propose we develop to give planets more mass or restore their magnetosphere?

>>719958483
Anon, by the time we have the technology to do that sort of thing resources will be running out on earth.
It's not some kind of magical lamp where you dig and resources pop into existance. It's finite space with finite resources.

>>719958631
We just plant trees like on earth and turn the desert into green farmland. There is your terraforming.

>>719958483
To be fair once we get space mining gold becomes only slightly expensive and is priced in along with something like some particular hard-to-make common steel alloy instead of something worth thousands an ounce.
We COULD mine it extremely easy if we were space mining because there's no environmental damage, we can manufacture 10 billion tons of chemicals and pile all of the gold ore into a big steel tub - basically a giant leech field - and then just dump the shit byproducts on saturn or some other gravity well where they're contained. No EPA makes mining instantly 1,000 times cheaper.

This also makes trash planets extremely viable and even likely in the future, we'll have entire planets where we basically just drop irradiated materials and chemicals and stuff.
>>719958669
We already are fairly close to having it though, we could certainly do small-scale asteroid mining right now if we wanted to. It's not profitable right now, but very well could be with some minor changes / improvements.
It's more about just waiting right now, we have all of the theoretical small-scale technology but we don't have space factories or anything yet, and there doesn't seem to be a great push to do space mining.

>>719958784
Nta but trees need atmosphere my dude.

>>719958669
I didn't say anything about the tech
we can't really make any assumptions about tech since it's a nonlinear variable and this has to do more with the unit cost of transporting, for example, a ton of space platinum versus earth gold
I'm just saying it's virtually impossible that any space mining of any kind would meaningfully devalue the target resource
put another way, the target resource would have to be obscenely expensive with the current available tech to make that endeavor viable

>>719957251
>the more you have to worry about things like planets crashing into it.

Bring back Lost Planet

>>719941765 (OP)
>create things called "planet crackers"
>never have them crack a single planet
No wonder this shit franchise was canceled

>>719958872
b-but my chinese gardening was supposed to be a part of the big picture

>>719958180
>global heat increases
>plant life flourishes
>plants clean the air
>global heat reduces
You're acting like life didn't evolve over billions of years to exist in equilibrium with constantly shifting conditions

>>719958926
Oh, so am icebreaker is considered normal, but a planetcracker isn't?

>>719941765 (OP)
Is ripping chunks out of a planet from a spaceship really more efficient than going down and mining it?

>>719959005
Ice breaker is a figure of speech for a conversation starter you idiot

Planet crackers are actual ships that apparently do nothing

>>719959064
probably not but it looks cooler

>>719959091
>he doesn't know about the literal icebreakers

>>719958631
>What kind of technology do you propose we develop to give planets more mass
Adding mass by importing asteroids, comets or artificial blackholes. For too big planets you can just mine away extra layers until you are satisfied.
>or restore their magnetosphere
Artificial magnetospheres can be generated by large EM shields at L1 or massive electric currents through underground loops around the planet.
You and a lot of other anons in these threads need to understand that in space science we are not talking about hundreds or thousands of years, but potentially millions. But when our species has literally TRILLIONS of years ahead of themselves potentially as a spacefaring civilizations, this shit doesn't matter.

>>719957251
>The further away you go
>[...] the more you have to worry about things like planets crashing into it.
Planets move in stable orbits, same everything in space, they don't just appear out of nowhere to crash into things

>>719959131
The gum? Yes I know about the gum for minty breath for conversations

>>719959000
Yeah, microplastic being literally everywhere in the spam of like 50 years is totally natural and not proof of extreme unnatural planet destroying pollution.

>>719942136
>Playing Dead Space 1-2
>Sitting on one asscheek out of fear
>Hallway opens to a massive room with ammo boxes and vents

>>719958917
With the prices of gold right now? I don't think so.
Gold at 3,600 an ounce, or 43,000 dollars per troy pound? So 10 pounds is half a million, and said robot that mined the 10 pounds of gold could also be used to extract platinum and silver and rare-earth metals that we can't refine on earth without the EPA raping us and us digging up entire mountains.
The viability is already there, satellites are relatively cheap, we already have 12,000 of them up in space. If we wanted to do space mining and sent an extra 100 objects into space it would be affordable. Even with it not being affordable we're gonna do it anyway, as it's the next step in space colonization.
>>719959064
They have antigravity, so presumably the ship just rips it out then you can manage it in low gravity - much cheaper than working in a gravity well.

>>719959376
>Adding mass by importing asteroids, comets
You're expending massive amounts of energy just to crash rocks into a planet trillions of times from AU away, when you could have just mined those perfectly fine rocks and had a more efficient use of resources? Why would you bother?
> or artificial blackholes.
If you're at this tech level you're not faffing around with planets anymore except to strip mine them for cylinders
>For too big planets you can just mine away extra layers until you are satisfied.
You could just do that with any planet and not have to worry about all the extra steps of trying to make it habitable

>Artificial magnetospheres can be generated by large EM shields at L1 or massive electric currents through underground loops around the planet.
Once again, why would you bother with this massive boondoggle when you could just live in an array of cylinders which would be more energy efficient?

>>719959671
And also, most space shit operates at a loss right now and is justified by either the scientific merit or industries getting side benefits on earth by them, or the military.
So operating at a loss and only 1% profit is actually something they will be doing whether it makes them money or not. They'll have a museum even of "space gold and rocks" and said museum will make Indiannapolis 100 million in tourism revenue in a year and only cost taxpayers 10 billion, so they made their money.

>>719959489
Okay, here is the plan, wipe out India and Africa and turn them into nature preserves.

>>719959514
You should play FEAR. There's so many moments where they put a upgrade at the end of an optional dark hallway. You just know that something scary will happen if you go down it, but you want that health upgrade so you have to suck it up and walk towards it.

>>719959857
We could just wipe india off the map and keep it as a garbage dump, do what they're doing but actually do it correctly, and cap it with a foot of asphalt (this is what toxic waste dumps do)

>>719959671
see this is why I hate these pop sci threads
you're focusing on the sensationalized tech aspect and you're ignoring the economic side
is viable tech already here? sure I'll take your word for it
is it profitable to do so currently? probably not
will it be profitable in the future? only if the demand is large enough since this whole thing hinges on the function of excess demand as a value driver
what is more probable is that if you're the hypothetical space mining company, you have a proof of concept and you write off the economic loss as a marketing cost, then license the technology

>>719960037
One big problem is the massive cost of launching from Earth to space and back. If we established space infrastructure, for example, had the moon as a depot with refineries, had hypothetical space elevators, etc. Then it would be profitable.