109 replies to this topic

[Kalepha]

It is perhaps in order that we make a clear distinction between inward and outward. But this would likely turn into either a long or unfinished digression.

To elaborate on the statement, yes, I was referring to a form a self-delusion, although I don’t imply it is always intentional. When I first became a transhumanist, the perceived benefits of designer pharmaceuticals defined my supergoal. It was formulated based on not having thoroughly examined my cognitive processes or the space of alternative possibilities. So now, when I hear talk about humans going into space, cognizant of the disproportionate amount of resources already going into these types of projects compared to cognitive science and artificial general intelligence, the expedited and safer routes, I may sometimes chime in and declare, “What a monumental waste.”

Human beings are fully capable of disciplining themselves to minimize their relatively thoughtless actions against deliberation. Our dull, so-called developed, societies condition too many people to base their morality systems on appealing to primitive sensory modalities at increasingly higher and more wasteful frequencies. I know... because I did... and for far too long.

[macdog]

kraemahz, first off I wish it was easier to remember how to spell your handle LOL

Space Stations really miss the whole point of going into space. The original idea wasn't to go into orbit to just sit in orbit, but to go somewhere. All of the old space station models of NASA were really an attempt to fight the Cold War, with Cold War design mentalities. The point was not so much to have a human presence in space as it was to better than the Russians. Given the nightmares experienced by Mir and the ISS, I hope we completely abandon the idea soon. NASA hired a whole bunch of really great artists to make pretty pictures of space stations and almost no scientist to figure out how to make a truly self-sustaining construct in space.

The one thing a hollow asteroid can do that no completely artificial construct can do is to provide a large open space. This allows the gases to do a lot mixing, and surface areas where plants can scrub the atmosphere. One of the biggest problems with ISS is that apparently it smells absolutely foul in there. On Mir, there was that event when an oxygen generator malfunctioned and the main habitat tube became a raging inferno, it is amazing that no one was hurt or killed.

Lazarus, I do like all your ideas, but so far you haven't responded to my idea of simply tagging one for ownership purposes. Though that you bring up magnetic grappling means we might not have to develop an adhesive to stick an ID chip to, but maybe just a magnet. Of course, the magnet would wipe clean an ID microchip, so what if we just had a simple magnet with a serial number incribed on it?

[Lazarus Long]

Aside from the legal issues presented by the International Space treaties Mac I think you forget the one aspect of all such claims, which is that *physical occupation* is almost always a requisite element.

[kraemahz]

Krae works as a nickname .

Perhaps I was unclear. I'm not talking about continuing our practice of building stations from Earth. Nor am I talking about the current geo orbiting stations. I'm talking about abandoning terrestrial bodies in favor of space-based platforms. We would mine the materials from asteroids or, if necessary, a planet and drag them into empty space where they would be constructed on the spot. This method does not require they are orbiting a body, though they could be orbiting anywhere from Venus to Saturn or orbit the sun. Building our own platforms has many advantages to finding them: we can choose where they are, we don't have to worry about finding ideal locations, or worry about long and costly terraforming of an entire biosphere, we can design them with damage resisting measures, and unlike planets they can move to avoid big objects in their path. They would be built to sustain their own biosphere without constant supplies.

Neither am I saying that all the engineering problems of a space station were solved in the 70's. Most of those artworks are entirely unfeasable, but they show that a space platform doesn't have to be bleak environment and there's nothing inheriently beautiful in a terrestrial body.

[macdog]

krae, I actually do have an affection for planets, but I guess I have a better idea of what you mean now. One of the benefits of terraforming a terrestrial is the benefit of scale. Imagine the smell of 10,000 people's circulating farts. I can't recall which novel it was, but the author makes a comic aside about how people with especially bad gas frequently wind up murdered on long space flights. Even though we keep coming coming back to the issue that Luna is to small to permanently hold an atmosphere, it would hold one for roughly twice the length of the entirety of known human history. There's also the obvious benefit of being able to directly employ solar radiation to both warm the environment and grow plants. I also think a bright green moon with visible bodies of water would be rather pretty in the night sky. Still, the hollow world model is likely the most feasible and the one we might best concentrate our effort.

[macdog]

Lazarus, you're right, I don't know much about the space treaties. Still, I doubt the UN as it presently exists will survive the century. The level of corruption is just enormous, not to mention their generally ineffective nature. they can't even enforce anti-genocide on Earth right now. If ever there was an environment that could allow for rogue operations, it's outer space. Also, we're really starting to move away from strict nationalism and towards a more corporate oriented manner of governance. I think if a private group tagged a 'roid for ownership, other corporations would really just look for next opportunity to get their own rather spend lots of time in legal wrangling over one that's already been tagged. Plus, physical occupation in the next ten years is likely undoable, whereas remote development is. Treaties were made to be broken.

I say we just tag one of those suckers and see what happens.

[Lazarus Long]

Krea asteroids build hollow worlds easier than transporting the material anywhere and once built the idea is that you move the habitat where you want it. Building viable habitat is the real challenge and that is the target model to work on. We are not in disagreement generally we only differ on where to best obtain the materials to build with.

Mac the UN isn't half the obstacle that the international space faring community is however remember settlement is still nine tenths of the law. Get there and claim it and few will dispute it. Nations supposedly cannot claim off world property but the rights of individuals, corporations, and collectives are less clear.

[macdog]

Don't really have a lot to add at this point except to encourage folks to on to the Virgin Galactic website and go through their somewhat wobbly commentary process. For now Virgin Galactic is the only player of note for future colonization, and showing that a grassroots support amongst tech savvy intellectuals may get Sir Richard Branson's attention. That is if he's not to busy getting rich young fools with huge egos to walk a tightrope between hot air balloons. His Rebel Billionaire series ends tonight, and one has to wonder how he'll be spending his spending his time once he gives away his job on reality TV

[Kalepha]

cosmos The chance of survival for humans or post-humans may be increased by the establishment of seperate colonies.

Similarly, I believe that cognitions need more space (including materials) per volitional unit* (the action set between a cognition’s initial state upon stipulating a supergoal and the actualized supergoal). Volume requirements per volitional unit would depend mostly on cognitive processing power against embodiment type.

The variability of these features is ultimately a matter of taste. It can’t be formalized in any way to prove that one type of taste is intrinsically better than another. In the future, to evade social and economic pressures which influence tastes, almost everyone needs, as a recursively self-enhancing cognition, to step off almost everyone else’s VU paths. But this perceived necessity can’t be proven either.

Therefore, ethics-wise, I concur that cognitions inclined to terraform planets as humans, or as relatively incipient cyborg models, shouldn’t be regarded as VU inhibiters. In turn, I shall maintain belief-action coherence by not interfering with such goal systems – facilitating them by contract, if anything.

* I think this term may also be known as a utility function.

Edited by Nate Barna, 05 January 2005 - 03:49 AM.

[macdog]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I, in turn, as a crazy kinetic monkey beast, will not bust up yo sh!t

LOLOLOLOOLL

[vortexentity]

It is hard to live on the one and only human colony we know of and not think that this situation begs our extinction to have all of our family in one place. I have observed Virgin Galactic for a while and followed with great interest the technology they are buying into. It could be better.

I have thought for a while that his mothership idea was limited.

I like the idea of terraforming asteroids. It seems like a good use of a potential problem.

[macdog]

wow, where'd you get that image? Did you make it?

[macdog]

I was a member of what is called "The Mars Society" for awhile, and went to the convention in Boulder, CO in 1999. As far as I can tell they are all Greens. I rather strenuously argued while I was there, and said to David Zubrin himself that terraforming Mars would be akin to the burning of the Library at Alexandria. Man did he freak out! My opinion was so unpopular it became a week of conflict for me, and someone thought it would be funny to sign me up for $500 worth of magazine subscriptions, which it took a lot of effort to cancel. Basically, I'm a Red when it comes to Mars. It has too much to teach us for us to go mess it up just because we it would satisy some egotistical urge within us to plant golf courses all over it.

[Chip]

My goodness, Lazarus, others, I guess you were never aware of the L5 society. They started from a physics class project done at MIT arranged by Gerard O'Neil in the 70s, if I recollect correctly. Their conclusion was that, using presently known science, the available land surface for human habitation could be increased by 300 times within 75 years. The idea is for huge space platforms, in orbit around planets, at Lagrange points and in various orbits around the sun. They would be built largely with moon and asteroid materials. It really appears as the quickest and fastest way to get us out there en masse in the shortest time possible.

Have you seen the documentary on the planned mega city suspended over Tokyo harbor? There is also the concept of floating ocean cities as these are the places where life is least prevalent and our impact on other life therefore lessened. If we don't find our options curtailed substantially in the near future due to the collapse of terrestrial life support systems, we will go in both directions, out and in. Part of that will be mitigated by attention to efficiency and practicality. Terraforming the moon or other satellites or planets may be an option for further on down the line but it appears that our welfare and freedoms are best served by building those large space habitats in great quantities and getting more efficient here on the mother ship.

Now the crucial question we need to answer to make the best possible soonest is how do you run a space colony? I surmise by the chaos here on the mother colony we have yet to learn how to do that.

Chip

Here's a site on space colonization: http://lifesci3.arc....paceSettlement/

Edited by Chip, 06 January 2005 - 01:28 AM.

[jaydfox]

Dang, too much to read to get caught up at the moment, so I will endeavor to do so in the days ahead. I've read Red Mars and the first 2/3rds of Green Mars. That's about all the science and hard sci-fi on Mars that I have.

As for terraforming Mars, I'm of the opinion that we need more time to study it before terraforming. Terraforming is both inevitable and necessary, eventually. I'm not at all against terraforming Mars.

However, if we try to terraform it from the moment we set foot on it, we'll lose more information about Mars, our solar system, planetary evolution, etc., than we can even comprehend today. And if we wait 50 years to start terraforming, technology will advance fast enough that it will probably only set back the viable surface about 10-20 years.

Given that we'll have SENS, or be close to it, by the time we could even start a massive terraforming project, patience should be a virtue that will be back in vogue. Like I said, waiting 50 years to start terraforming will only delay a viable surface 10-20 years, and that will be a trivial amount of time by then.

The farside of Luna, for reasons that are not understood, is much more hilly and wrinkled than the earthside. I think that it's likely that there is a significant reserve of volatiles frozen in shaded canyon. We also know that there are moonquakes. Since plate tectonics can not account for this, a possible explanation is that Luna's interior has large voids filled with ice, gas or liquids, and that every once in awhile the chunks of rock shift a bit over these voids. Luna is also not as dense as it should be, which has all kinds of conspiracy theorists saying it's hollow and full of aliens. I think water is more likely. If we were able to release these gases to a survivable pressure, the atmosphere would take several thousand years before it escaped the gravity well, really enough time to solve that particular problem. There's the small matter of solar radiation (not that small actually) but given enough power from nuclear reactors or solar panels, I think a sufficient electromagnetic feild could be generated to take care of a goodly portion of that. Hopefully the atmosphere I propose would burn up much of the micrometeorite bombardment, but Lunar fashions will probably include a helmet.

(my emphasis added. I emphasized potential gases in bold, and the proposed atmosphere in italics.)

Define what you have in mind as a survivable pressure. There are two factors at work here which will severely limit the pressure you might hope to build up.

First, of course, is Luna's reduced gravity. At 1/6th Terra's gravity, it would take a column of air six times higher to build the same pressure at the bottom of the column.

Second, more interestingly, is the diminishing gravitational field as you move up in altitude. This is similar in many respects to the problem of calculating how strong a Lunar space elevator needs to be, with respect to a Terran space elevator. Luna's gravitational field starts out 6 times smaller than Terra's, and it decreases four times faster per kilometer than Terra's.

A quick calculation shows that in order to maintain 101.3 kPa of pressure, Luna would need an atmosphere about half as massive as the Terra's. The pressure at 823 kilometers altitude would be 1 Pascal, the same pressue observed on Terra at 93 kilometers. If 100 km is considered the "edge of space" on Terra, then the edge of space on Luna would be about 902 kilometers, over half of Luna's radius, or a fourth its diameter.

Even if we go for an atmospheric pressure of 30 kPa at Luna's surface, the atmosphere would still need a mass of 1/6th Terra's atmosphere, and the edge of space would be at over 770 km. That's a lot of air.

I think domes are a much more workable option. With 1/6th the gravity, the domes can be six times bigger than similar domes on Terra. Also, the pressue inside the dome can be used for extra "lift", allowing domes bigger still. I'm thinking domes several kilometers high, and dozens of kilometers across. With strong enough materials and high internal pressures, domes visible from Terra with binoculars should be possible, maybe even domes visible to the naked eye.

[Lazarus Long]

My goodness, Lazarus, others, I guess you were never aware of the L5 society.

What gives you that impression Chip?

[Chip]

Excuse if I'm mistaken, Lazarus, but I gathered you were offering the argument that space colonization using space "stations" or off planet, not asteroid based or moon colonies were not practical because it would require building the materials on Earth and ferrying them out of our gravity well to sites of construction. The plan that is seen as feasible is to build factories at a Lagrange point and some on the moon. Raw moon materials are shot to the Lagrange point factory where they are smelted and refined. Earth would mainly supply hydrogen, oxygen and biologicals, if I remember correctly. If these things are to be spun to use inertia for gravity simulation I suspect it is going to be a lot more secure to use large wheels or cylinders rather than hollowed out asteroids. I shouldn't discount the asteroid shell concept all togethor but they are a bit far away and making our own shells using moon materials appears quite feasible. We could ferry asteroids into stable orbits I presume but it just seems that it is less likely an endeavor than to build colonies with shells of metal and glass with extra moon material being used as part of the radiation shields.

[Lazarus Long]

You are all missing the point entirely, bollide asteroids are mostly nearly pure nickle iron and as you hollow out you are also building externally with the refined high grade alloys smelted in zero gee that begin to build the kinds of habitats the L5 society talk about.

The asteroid is processed into the kinds of environments you are referring to but also much more. I have already suggested elsewhere the idea of using them as Lagrange anchors for space cables descending first on to the moon so as to prove the tech and after the kinks are worked out of such cables maybe we can get such ideas past wold government.

But I am also suggesting converting some of the smaller and mid-sized asteroids into ships that ply the solar system as solar islands and laboratories carrying passenger colonists and where nanotech can be perfected with a lot less existential risk of breakout.

Chip use logic, you can't get there from here if you don't learn to process the asteroids in a variety of effective ways first and there's no contradiction between what you describe doing long term and what I am describing to do in a pragmatic fashion first. Remember we have to pay for these operations too and one way to do that is to sell food, water and air to national space programs as well as extracting highly pure rare metals like titanium, platinum and gold and trading that back Earth side too.

[kraemahz]

Heh, that link you posted Chip is actually from the same link tree the artwork I posted is on. Which reminds me, there's something about asteroids on that site which is very relavent to this argument:

It has been estimated that the total mass of the Main Asteroid Belt may total less than 1/1000th of the mass of the Earth. Indeed, if all asteroids down to the size of meter- or yard-sized boulders or less were combined together, the resulting object would measure less than 1,300 to 1,500 km (810 to 930 miles) across, which is less than one third to one half the diameter of the Earth's Moon. The Main Asteroid Belt is only a small remnant of the material that once resided in the region between Mars and Jupiter, but once may have contained between two to 10 Earth masses of material (Dan Durda, "Ask Astro," Astronomy, December 2000). However, T-Tauri-type Solar winds from a very young Sun, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter developing nearby, and dynamic interactions with other large planetesimals and protoplanets during the first 100 million years, and continuing collisional grinding over the following 4.5 billion years after the formation of the planets, interfered with the formation of a substantial, single planet and caused most of the mass to be lost to the rest of the Solar System and interstellar space.

Based on the composition of meteorites found on the Earth, most asteroids may be composed of three materials: mostly (92.8 percent) silicates (stone); metals (5.7 percent) iron and nickel; and the rest as a mix of the those materials and carbon-rich substances. Asteroids located closer to Mars and Earth that exhibit the same spectra are composed of rocky minerals ("stone") mixed with iron. In contrast, asteroids located farther away from the Sun on the Jupiter side of the Main Asteroid Belt are generally darker and redder, presumably because they were not well heated by the Sun and so have a composition more like the primordial, circum-Solar dust disk out of which the planets accreted about 4.5 billion years ago. Thus, the outer asteroids may more closely resemble the icy planetary bodies of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.

Moral: There's not many asteroids you could actually fit a single person in, let alone a station, and iron composed asteroids would be very difficult to tunnel into without damaging their infrastructure. Not only that, most of them aren't composed much of iron anyway.

[Chip]

Here is a part of a congressional testimony that Gerard O'Neil delivered in 1975.

The baseline mass-driver would be capable of transferring from the moon from 1/2 million to 2 million tons of such materials within a six-year period: that is, from 28,000 to over 100,000 tons of aluminum, 70,000 to 280,000 tons of iron, and corresponding amounts of the other lunar materials. Strangely, though the lunar surface is devoid of life, its most abundant element is the one which we need in every breath we take: oxygen. That oxygen, transported to free space and unlocked from its binding metals by solar energy, would be usable not only for an atmosphere but to fuel rocket engines, reducing by 85% the requirement for fuel carried from the earth.

The lunar surface materials are poor in carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen; in the early years of space colonization these elements would have to be brought from earth. They would be reused, not thrown away. For every ton of hydrogen brought from earth, nine tons of water could be made at the colony site, the remaining eight tons being oxygen from the processing of lunar oxides.

The removal of half a million tons of material from the surface of the moon sounds like a large-scale mining operation, but it is not. The excavation left on the moon would be only 5 yards deep, and 200 yards long and wide: not even enough to keep one small bulldozer occupied for a five-year period.

A few years after the first space community is built we can expect that transport of asteroidal materials to L5 will become practical. No great technical advance is required for that transition; the energy-interval between the asteroids and L5 is only about as great as between the earth and L5. Once the asteroidal resources are tapped, we should have not only metals, glass and ceramics, but also carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen. These three elements, scarce on the moon, are believed to be abundant in the type of asteroid known as, carbonaceous chondritic. Therefore I add my support to those who for several years have been recommending an unmanned rendezvous-probe mission to a selected asteroid. Such a mission has already been studied in detail by NASA, and is well within present technical feasibility If conducted in the late 1970's or early 1980's, with the aim of assaying a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid for its C, N. H content, such a mission would serve the same function that oil well prospecting now serves on earth: the finding and proving of necessary resources for subsequent practical use. No great technical advance is required for that transition; the energy-interval between the astroids and L5 is only about as great as between the earth and L5. Once the astroidal resources are tapped, we should have not only metal, glass and ceremics, but also carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen. These three elements, scarce on the moon, are believed to be abundant in the type of astroid know as carbonaceous chondritic. Therefore I add my support to those who for several years have been recommending an unmanned rendezvous-probe mission to a selected asteroid. Such a mission has already been studied in detail by NASA, and is well within present technical feasibility. If conducted in the late 1970's or early 1980's, with the aim of assaying a carbonaceous chondritic asteroid for its, C, N, H content, such a mission would serve the same function that oil well prospecting now serves on earth: the finding and proving of necessary resources for subsequent practical use.

Appears that a lot of research and thought went into the preparation of that testimony. Asteroids are thought to play a significant part after the first largely-factory colony is built.

I agree with everything you state Lazarus but it does appear that we first use moon and some earth materials. Once we have the facilities to manufacture rocket fuel in space, using the oxygen from the moon for part, then the asteroids come into use.

Chip

[Lazarus Long]

I agree with everything you state Lazarus but it does appear that we first use moon and some earth materials. Once we have the facilities to manufacture rocket fuel in space, using the oxygen from the moon for part, then the asteroids come into use.

The other way around is faster, cheaper and easier to accomplish. No gravity well to climb out of even at one sixth gee. The ore is better grade and it is closer to the surface. And we get to build a tech that mitigates the most dangerous threat we face outside of ourselves in thirty years instead of over a century. Hell, we could have it sooner if there were the will.

[Chip]

The mass driver uses solar derived energy to deliver items from the moon to the Lagrange point. Asteroid mining will take fuel.

I agree again about how important it is for us to map asteroid trajectories and work to nudge some from any possible earth collision but as far as building the scaffold by which we colonize space, the moon is our first mistress (pardon me Robert Heinlein).

[vortexentity]

I am working on a series of animations of asteroid colonies. The image I posted is one of the stills from the animation. I did this one in Bryce 5.

I have some I did where I also show a plasma sail and shield extended from an asteroid. I will dig that one up. I have read a lot about plasma sails and I think they show promise for both redirecting comets from their orbits and also for defense from small debris. I like the idea of the plasma sail and also a plasma shield for protection of asteroid colonies.

[Lazarus Long]

Chip Mass drivers take energy too and what do you think asteroids exist under under, shadows?

They have more solar energy available than the moon as the ones (NEA's) that I start out targeting all get closer to the Sun than the Earth and Moon do. Also I intend to use mass drivers as well for launching shuttles and cargo pods back to Earth and also to move the ship (remember the equal and opposite reaction law?) also you should realize mining produces tailings and what cannot be converted to soils through bacterial decomposition and mixing with human/animal/plant derived organics for farming will be used as reaction mass for plasma thrusters.

Lastly about fuel Solar sails on an asteroid can maneuver it within scale and do not require anything but the manufacture of the materials in space. It is building the manufacturing ability that we need not promises anymore. Asteroids come to us. We can prepare to capture at a distance slightly more than the moon and be looking at a week to two week missions in order to put astronauts on a rock that becomes a home for months to years, and produces materials that can build all kinds of things in space and landside.

[Lazarus Long]

Vortex plasma shielding and drivers are all becoming more feasible but also a lot of shielding is possible by building shielding out of water storage tanks in multi layered outer hulls. This will also reduce the threat of catastrophic atmospheric loss with micro meteorite hits and might even contribute to locating and plugging the holes.

There is also the possibility of using focused intense magnetic fields to take advantage of planetary fields to attract and repel. Also Chip there are more types of trajectories than Hohmann orbits (direct passage) and gravity assisted trajectories are extremely efficient by taking advantage of the various gravity wells that are all along the routing. Remember that the bigger they are the harder they fall )

Slingshot paths are also known as Gravity Assist Trajectories

[Chip]

Yup, gravity assist and lack of gravity assist, as in the interplanetary space highway that uses Lagrange points (apparently at least five for every planet and moon), are factors: http://spaceflightno...0207/21highway/ Add some solar sail utilization as well as fueled rockets and we approach a hybrid way to make lots of space faring more efficient. Here is the home page of the researcher that has pioneered this work, Martin Lo, that describes it in better language that leads to understanding that its knowledge helps in forging efficient interplanetary travel rather than just maneuvering around a planetary body and its moons, http://www.gg.caltec.../~mwl/index.htm The article in his publications area on L1 use as the best far space faring transfer site is interesting.

Lots of new developments since the L5 society's adopted plan. It would be neat if another crew of number crunchers could again consider possible ways and means with the knowledge of coming carbon nanotube fibers, the space highway, etc.

I know very little. Being in that place I need to consider ardent efforts to come up with an efficient plan. Have there been any others besides the L5 society with direct approach to weighing which methodology is most practical for facilitating off planet colonization? I am talking about a team of researchers, under the watchful guise of one or more accomplished statisticians to make sure the comparative cost analysis can hold some degree of trustworthiness.

Appears to me the estimate of 300 times the area of habitable land for people in 75 years might have been a conservative estimate. Now, where is the governing structure that can embrace the goal of massive human presence in space soon rather than the grand stand staging of a manned trip to mars while cutting international space station experiments, curtailing the Hubble's life. You've probably seen the signed letter including many Nobel prize winners denouncing the current US administration as being anti-science. We may have some issues here on Earth we need to resolve before we can collectively muster the intelligence that will be needed to enact any reasonable space colonization plan.

Asteroids can be pushed around using mass drivers. To get to them with sufficient resources to do the work may be more costly than doing so from the moon and Earth to start. I don't know whether or not that would be more efficient than using moon materials with the gravity well fuel requirements that entails. Got any details Lazarus that compares the efficiency of the two strategies? Apparently that MIT class, over a period of six years did consider the relative merits but that was 30 years ago.

I'm not seeking to intimidate. I'm seeking to learn. If I be mistaken in my estimates of what strategy is best, I would like to be informed.

Thank you,

Chip

Edited by Chip, 06 January 2005 - 06:58 PM.

[vortexentity]

The type of solar sail I am thinking of for deflecting orbits for asteroids is like these:

http://bex.nsstc.uah...TAIF02/img6.htm

http://www.space.com...n_020522-1.html




I am thinking of nuclear power for fuel and gas that is unbound from the asteroids materials during mining.

[Lazarus Long]

True Vortex fuels and useful materials are possible on many levels however it is too unpredictable based as a specific date related choice by tonnage for the available NEA opportunities we need to work on first. However once we build to fly in deep space and have viable habitat models we are on scene to assemble much more.

Chip there is an enormous amount of new data including stuff still in the pipeline coming from recent rendezvous's with bollides. The point is what the ones we are seeing are likely composed of.

Truth be known we still have precious limited info, spectrography of their light, guestaments of their mass and density from volume and orbital characteristics, radio telescopes, radar, and now close up photos of few. There are numerous NEA flybys however that are already being tracked and a few of these are on relatively regular ellipses that visit both the inner planets and Mars, a few go on passed the asteroid belt on an angle to the plane of the ecliptic and could be ridden to make a survey of the asteroid belt and have a vastly better opportunity to find the hot rocks and special opportunities to specifically target.

Once you are flying with the rocks into the regions of their orbits then you can also assay and map many potential targets all over one period. The group that sponsors the first deep space mapping mission to the belts might also get to own the rights to not only those maps but also to many of the resources discovered this way.

Aye maytees ye do know I be pirate glad ta meet ya. [pirate]

So are we going to have free market or totally government regulated asteroid mining on them hollow worlds or some pragmatically achieved balance of the two?