{"id":23228,"date":"2023-04-14T22:15:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T02:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=23228"},"modified":"2023-04-14T22:19:12","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T02:19:12","slug":"fun-on-a-friday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/fun-on-a-friday-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun on a Friday Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Make a start. \u00a0Make a start.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ve caught up with my chores.\u00a0 All the distractions and alarums and excursions have kept me from writing.\u00a0 Well, what can you do?\u00a0 Life is like that.<\/p>\n

But what to write about?\u00a0 I\u2019m looking for something upbeat.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to talk about the crime epidemic or the 2024 race or even transgender pushback.\u00a0 I\u2019ve expended enough venom on those to last me awhile.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather think about something fun.<\/p>\n

So, how about asteroid mining?<\/p>\n

Until recently talk of this was restricted to science fiction fans.\u00a0 Heinlein had asteroid miners in his juvenile novel \u201cThe Rolling Stones\u201d and it was a staple of many writers in the last century.\u00a0 But now it\u2019s going from fiction to fact as NASA is talking about sending a mission to an asteroid that is believed to be composed almost entirely of metal<\/a>.\u00a0 There\u2019s a mission to send an unmanned mission to reach Psyche 16 in 2026.<\/p>\n

Psyche 16 is a small world<\/a> with a diameter of 140 miles.\u00a0 Its mass has been estimated at 2.29 \u00d71019<\/sup> kg.\u00a0 That\u2019s about 0.0004% of the Earth\u2019s mass.\u00a0 But that\u2019s an enormous mass.<\/p>\n

Now visiting Psyche 16 is a far cry from actually mining gold and platinum from this worldlet and getting it to Earth where it has value.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a start.\u00a0 The actual mechanism for recovering the metals that make up Psyche 16 is an interesting problem.\u00a0 Depending on how fast it is going relative to Earth, changing its orbit has the potential to be a human existence-ending event for planet Earth.\u00a0 Remember, the dinosaurs allegedly bit the dust because a fair-sized asteroid crashed into Earth sixty some odd million years ago.\u00a0 So, diverting large asteroids should be something done with the utmost of careful planning and the least amount of change to our space environment.<\/p>\n

The two choices I come up with are moving it into a stable orbit close to Earth or crashing it into the Moon.\u00a0 Overall, I favor the Moon idea.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019ve been influenced by Heinlein\u2019s story, \u201cThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress.\u201d\u00a0 In that tale the Moon colonists uses a rail gun to boost payloads to escape the Moon\u2019s gravity and splash down in the oceans of Earth.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure that much more careful thought would need to be done to ensure that this kind of logistical method is possible but I\u2019m guessing from a risk perspective where an extinction event is one of the risks it would probably be preferred to leaving that big rock moving close to Earth.<\/p>\n

In the article someone did a back of the envelope calculation and came up with $10,000 quadrillion as the value of the metals in Psyche 16.\u00a0 Of course, why it would be expressed that way instead of as $10 quintillion is unclear to me.\u00a0 But they bring up the point that this would wreck the Earth\u2019s economy by destabilizing the value of gold and other metals.\u00a0 Well, this seems like a silly statement.\u00a0 Extracting even something as valuable as platinum from the Moon and bringing it back to Earth will not be economical unless the price of that metal increases by orders of magnitude.<\/p>\n

Digging gold and platinum out of the Earth is the economical choice and will be for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 But if someday there is a need for metals that can no longer be found on Earth, then maybe asteroid mining might become a thing,<\/p>\n

So, wasn\u2019t that more fun than talking about trannies again?\u00a0 Feel free to comment on my moon crash option.\u00a0 I assure you I haven\u2019t thought through this option much at all so we can dissect it as an occasion for fun.\u00a0 Have at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Make a start. \u00a0Make a start.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ve caught up with my chores.\u00a0 All the distractions and alarums and excursions have kept me from writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3545,4],"tags":[4013,4014,92,2031,4016,4015,711,165,265,3892],"class_list":["post-23228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-science","category-sff","tag-asteroid","tag-asteroid-mining","tag-heinlein","tag-heinlein-juveniles","tag-nasa","tag-psyche-16","tag-robert-a-heinlein","tag-science","tag-science-fiction","tag-space-travel"],"yoast_head":"\nFun on a Friday Night - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/fun-on-a-friday-night\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fun on a Friday Night - Orion's Cold Fire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Make a start. \u00a0Make a start.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ve caught up with my chores.\u00a0 All the distractions and alarums and excursions have kept me from writing.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/fun-on-a-friday-night\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Orion's Cold Fire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-04-15T02:15:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-04-15T02:19:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"photog\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@orionscoldfire\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@orionscoldfire\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"photog\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/fun-on-a-friday-night\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/fun-on-a-friday-night\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"photog\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/#\/schema\/person\/d11e80f83f3825ce9fe38a5303eb64d3\"},\"headline\":\"Fun on a Friday Night\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-04-15T02:15:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-04-15T02:19:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/fun-on-a-friday-night\/\"},\"wordCount\":630,\"commentCount\":4,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"asteroid\",\"asteroid mining\",\"Heinlein\",\"Heinlein Juveniles\",\"NASA\",\"Psyche 16\",\"Robert A. 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