How much is an asteroid worth?
February 15, 2013
Asteroid fuel mining concept (credit: Deep Space Industries)
When asteroid 2012 DA14 flies by Earth today, we could be watching a fortune fly over our heads and disappear into the void.
DA14 could be worth up to $195 billion in metals and propellant, Deep Space Industries (DSI) said in a statement — if it were in a different orbit … and if we had a space-based asteroid mining operation.
Which we don’t. Problem is, explains DSI, sending fuel, water, and building materials into high Earth orbit costs at least $10 million per ton, even using new lower-cost launch vehicles [like the SpaceX Dragon] just now coming into service.
Nonetheless, DSI, Planetary Resources, and independent experts are aggressively exploring promising future options for asteroid mining.
BREAKING NEWS: Meteorites slam into Russia as meteor seen streaking through morning sky
“A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 500 people,” reports CBS. Could this be related to the DA14 asteroid? The European Space Agency says no.
Fueling satellites
“Getting these supplies to serve communications satellites and coming crewed missions to Mars from in-space sources like asteroids is key — if we are going to explore and settle space,” said Rick Tumlinson, Chairman of DSI. “While this week’s visitor isn’t going the right way for us to harvest it, there will be others that are, and we want to be ready when they arrive.”
According to DSI experts, if 2012 DA14 contains 5% recoverable water, that alone — in space as rocket fuel — might be worth as much as $65 billion. If 10% of its mass is easily recovered iron, nickel and other metals, that could be worth — in space as building material — an additional $130 billion.
Deep Space Industries plans to send small probes called FireFlies to examine asteroids and allow comparisons with readings taken by Earth and space based telescopes. They are to be followed by DragonFly sample return missions, to lay the groundwork for potential space mining operations in the 2020 time frame.
That assumes the future cost of launching to orbit will be a lot lower. If and when that happens, satellite companies will be paying attention. “Each additional year of life for a Sirius XM satellite is worth over $3 billion with some 25 million subscribers paying about $15 per month, not to mention the life-saving benefits of our real-time XM in-flight weather advisories to general aviation,” Dr. Martine Rothblatt, creator and former Chairman/CEO of Sirius XM, told KurzweilAI.
“Due to the relentless need to expend station-keeping fuel to maintain orbital parameters, our satellites must be replaced every 10–15 years, and at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. These numbers clearly indicate the economic value of asteroid-derived station-keeping fuel delivered to Sirius XM satellites on-orbit is in the tens of millions of dollars per year.”
Precious metals from asteroids
So what about mining asteroids for precious metals like platinum and returning them to Earth? That’s a more expensive, longer-range proposition, asteroid mining experts tell us. However, “high-grade platinum-group metal concentrations have been identified in an abundant class of near-Earth asteroids known as LL Chondrites,” according to geologist and asteroid mining expert Brad Blair in a year-2000 report. Blair noted that a 1000-meter-diameter asteroid in that class could provide platinum worth $690 billion, assuming complete recovery of platinum.
John S. Lewis, professor of planetary science and author of Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets, takes it much further. He has estimated that asteroid 3554 Amun is worth $20 trillion, including iron, nickel, and cobalt in addition to platinum — enough to pay off the U.S. national debt, currently approaching $16.5 trillion.
However, that estimate assumes the price of platinum would remain stable given a sudden increase in supply, and that customers would line up to buy all of the platinum that would be offered at that price —”highly unrealistic assumptions,” Blair told KurzweilAI.
Comments (70)
by Katherine MacLean
Good predictive thinking. Above I left a comment that biological variation arriving at success by the random variation of multitudes winnowed by natural selection of failure and success works better in the long run than trying to simplify and standardize life by abstract generalities. Arguing by simplified logic chopping is more fun! but does not work long.We can do it Nature’s way Try everything and get a circus!
by Louis Gelinas
It is nice to see two high profile groups like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries but I would like to point out that what they are saying and planning is old news. Space Development Cooperative has been on the web since May2011 a full 11months prior to PR and 20months ahead of DSI. Many groups have decades of research that these two companies are basing their claims on. They have not done anything new to date but are basking in the media limelight while those before them are cast aside … because they didn’t have money.
I find it a bit sad that our society responds positively to a “new” concept only when big money gets involved.
by Bri
I know it can be frustrating but this happens all the time. One of the most notable examples is the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nickola Tesla. The idea of mining asteroids is very old. We are now coming into an age where that is becoming possible. It doesn’t mean that either company is going to succeed. It’s a horse race. All of venture capital is confronted with the same issue. Choose which one you wish to support or hedge your bets and support both. There are way too many factors that can sideline either endeavor. The winner isn’t allways the best financed. Look at what Craig Ventor achieved. Where as I favor a more egalitarian form of capitalism, I still favor more than one approach. The more the merry. Lightning examines numerous paths to ground. In the end it is the path of least resistance that will succeed.
by Bri
It’s nice to read about this asteroid mining venture. After all the other articles that had pie in the sky ideas as to how to mine asteroids, these ideas are far more attainable. They also are inkeeping with what I have written about. Near earth capture and near earth activities. There should be a strong push to accelerate these developments. From the mitigation of impact risks, to the development of space industries. This venture is right on track for what humanity needs.
by SmartAndSober
Complexity theory and evolutionary biology tell us that we should just do things, instead of spending time coming up with complex plans.
When the chance is here, catch it and never let it go.
by morganism
Easy to get stuff DOWN the gravity well, you just 3D print it into a flying wing.
Cheap to get small stuff UP the ladder, if you have a tug up there for the last stretch. Look at TekLaunch.
Robots will do a lot, but they have a hard time opening things to refill. Gonna have to put some folks up there.
Gold and other PGM are fantastic as manufacturing goods, and will only increase in demand to absorb availability. They also become fabulous powders for 3D printing, and in the post work world , there will be a lot of jewelery makers. Iridium coatings on any bearing makes it 100 times better, and indium can store solar energy directly by just setting it in the sun.
there will be demand, why are we going to let corporations control it ?
by Bri
In relation to the meteor strike in Russia. People don’t realize how frequently they happen. There is a far greater risk than we realize. We were lucky this time. Some of the other recent strikes have been much more powerful. Particularly when they strike wate, which is more likely than hitting land.
by WLGJR
Russia is very loosely populated (very large territory with few cities and towns on their steppe) so people may consider the meteor strike (and the Tunguska Explosion much earlier) as an example of that being loosely populated is good/beneficial.
But, the meteor could land (the probability is not 0, although being very small) on human habitats. That would be horrible because such countries like Russia cannot afford to lose *people*.
Therefore, a high technological, space based system for deflecting meteors and asteroids is mandatory for long-term survival of humanity.
by cosmowrench
If we want to set out in space, wich i think is not a good idea while still in our fleshly prisons, why don’t we go to the moon first? Instead of dreaming about asteroids…how much is the moon worth?
by WLGJR
Can you find on Wikipedia for the rest of us, the price of the few available moon rigoliths?
It has been 43 years since the first Moon landing. I wonder what is preventing us from going back.
by DougW
Ummmm… I gotta question some of the math used in the article as well. On one hand they say “Each additional year of life for a Sirius XM satellite is worth over $3 billion with some 25 million subscribers paying about $15 per month, not to mention…” an in the very next paragraph they say ““Due to the relentless need to expend station-keeping fuel to maintain orbital parameters, our satellites must be replaced every 10–15 years, and at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.” So, if it only costs hundreds of millions to replace the old satellite, how the heck can it ‘be worth’ billions to extend it’s life by one year? I mean we all want more space exploration and movement toward off-earth industry, but come on, we should not be stooping to third-grade level nonsense to try and make our point…..
by Bri
Smoke and mirrors. Greed the new replacement satellite would be far superior to the old one.
by ralph
The cost of something does not equate directly to the value of it. It costs $300M to put a satellite up into orbit for them, they have 9 satellites in orbit, they generate $3B in revenues off the usage of those satellites… I’m guessing most of the fudging (raw numbers say $4.5B/yr) is because they give out so many promotional subscriptions — I get 2 or 3 free months of Sirius a year in my cars without being charged anything.
by Gorden Russell
Now look at the timeline that Deep Space Industries proposes.
If they really do launch their Fireflies in 2020, it could take two years for them to catch up to their targets and report back.
If DSI is ready and waiting then, they can launch the DragonFlies to intercept and return in four years.
Robots are going to be very, very good by the year 2026. By then they will be capable of any job a human can do.
They will have 3-D printers on asteroids by 2028, making rocket engines and rocket fuel and spacecraft.
I want to live to see this, so I’m going to have to give up eating potato chips.
by SmartAndSober
… We would have to devise ways to clean up the exhaust fume trails of our spaceships. They may become excellent resources for recycling in the far future.
by Bri
The big determining factor for price in this article is the cost of going to and bringing back materials from space.. It is clear to see that once we have a space industry, it will be cost effective to remain in space. A space based economy will develope that will have very different valuations than on earth. Needless to say that will stimulate trade between earth and space activities.
by Bruce Wright
Until we find a cheap way to get minerals from asteroids down to the bottom of this gravity well we call Earth, those minerals are going to be more useful in space. As things stand now, we have to launch satellites through the atmosphere at great cost; even some of the ideas for fully-reusable rockets are still pretty expensive on a per-kilogram basis. It’s useful for small, technologically-sophisticated cargoes, but it’s cost prohibitive for bulk cargoes like raw minerals. Mining Mars for raw materials to be used on Earth has the same problem in spades, since you have to get the minerals UP out of the Mars gravity well, and DOWN again into ours, in addition to the space transportation.
Mining the asteroids is much more attractive if you’re going to be using the minerals for space-based construction – large spaceships and L4/L5 habitats, for example. These would be prohibitively expensive to send up piece by piece from the surface of Earth or Mars.
Naturally if and when we manage to perfect a space elevator, some of these considerations will change. Even then, truly bulk materials – raw iron, for example – may not be cost-effective to bring down the elevator; it may be put to better use in space.
by Gorden Russell
Yes, Bruce, everything you say is right. Even the matter for the space elevator will need to come from the carbonaceous asteroids.
But as strong as carbon nanotubes are, I’m afraid that they just might burn, so rocket engines will need to be made from the nickel-iron asteroids.
So the hard part for the first robot miner/manufactory will be to use an ion drive to catch up to a carbonaceous asteroid, while carrying along rocket engines to burn hydrogen and oxygen. Then it can fuel itself after it gets there and push that asteroid along to meet a nickel-iron asteroid where it can make rocket engines for a spacecraft made of carbon nanotubes.
It will take some time to get up to that point, but after that, things will develop according to the law of accelerating returns. It will take a decade or two of small progress to get started, then suddenly it will seem as if the solar system is overloaded with robots in spacecraft on their way to intercept more and more asteroids.
Even before the space elevator is built, the robots can make landing capsules out of the rare metals and weave carbon-fiber parachutes to drop them in Area 51 (or some spot just outside of Las Vegas or Denver).
(I mention Denver because the U.S. Treasury has a mint there. Once a capsule made of platinum is landed outside of town, they can start to mint those trillion dollar coins of platinum that were in the news recently.) (And I mention Las Vegas because they will come up with new slot machines for those trillion dollar coins.) (But then again, that casino tycoon, Sheldon Adelson, will start building gambling halls in the habitats at L4 and L5.)
by Gorden Russell
Oh, I forgot to mention that the habitat casinos will bring in all those three-breasted space whores.
by Bri
You tell True Lies!
by snake0
Nanotubes would have a better survival rate if they were erected from New Zealand, poking out of the giant ozone hole down there.
by WLGJR
Try the Antarctica. I hope we will be intelligent enough to know how to build a space elevator in Antarctica without doing any (or at most very little) damage to the Antarctica biome.
If we melt the ice (just a tiny fraction of Antarctica’s ice sheet), disastrous consequences would follow.
by SmartAndSober
I sense America-centricism in your scenarios, Gorden Russell.
The once-space-tycoon Russia would not be amused to be excluded in this new Great Game (as Kipling called the competition for oil in the Caspian Sea).
Europe Union, China, India and other not yet apparent participant nations (or perhaps corporations) will want to share as well.
by GatorALLin
Love all the asteroid mining ideas/thoughts. For me the amazing story is really that the big meteor hit the earth today in Russia at the VERY same day the half a football sized meteor came at a record close distance. We have been tracking one quite small Meteor that we knew would not hit earth…and then on the same day Russia is actually hit with pieces that contact the earth and leave a crater 6 meters across at a lake edge (that is just one piece of many). What are the odds these are not related in ANY way? What is the statistical chance these 2 unrelated meteors are on the same day and we no NOTHING about the one from Russia unit it hits???
Scientists have played down suggestions that there is any link between the event in the Urals and 2012 DA14, an asteroid expected to race past the Earth on Friday at a distance of just 27,700km (17,200 miles) – the closest ever predicted for an object of that size.
Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, of the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, said there was “almost definitely” no connection.
“One reason is that 2012 DA14 is approaching Earth from the south, and this object hit in the northern hemisphere,” he told BBC News.
“This is literally a cosmic coincidence, although a spectacular one.”
…so what are the actual odds of this happening… Is it one out of Trillions?
by Gorden Russell
You must have posted this before Science Friday came on. There was a man on who said that the piece that hit Russia may have been part of 2012 DA14 some time ago, maybe a century. He said that sometimes when there is a near miss, tidal forces break apart an asteroid. The fragment that hit down in Russia could have been broken off during another near-miss, some time ago.
by GatorALLin
..Hi, thanks for reply…. No I had not heard anything much yet…. maybe too early to post, but thanks for your feedback. I guess the question of…what are the odds that 2 of these meteors coming so close and one hitting…. the odds of that happening today… were …….. 100%. (grin). still seems hella rare and history made today in the meteor world
by Brad
I guarantee similar events have coincided in the history of Earth many times before.
by DougW
What are the odds that a planet like earth would have a moon that perfectly eclipses our sun? Stuff happens…….
by SmartAndSober
I believe that the Moon did *not* perfectly eclipse the Sun, let’s say, in the Mesozoic Era. What we see now is the result of many coincidences.
(Religious people will probably argue that the fact that Moon perfectly ecplise the Sun is the result of divine intervention, so that we Homo Sapiens will live in a time to witness the proof of God’s existence. Or perhaps it was Extraterrestrial Intelligences’ intervention.)
by Bri
In the past the moon was much closer. As time goes by it’s losing it’s momentum and so is slowly drifting away.
by SmartAndSober
Thank you for educating me on that.
by Jod
in b4 secret mining mission to the asteroid surfaces
by SmartAndSober
Is there a possibility for a “secret mining mission”?
What you said sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, Jod.
by ProfessorZ
This is what it’s like to be hit by the shockwave from the meteor that hit Russia this morning. Be sure to watch this one with the sound up (it made me jump out of my chair)
http://youtu.be/b7mLUIDGqmw
by Tom B.
All this really supports the notion that once we learn to exploit the resources of our galactic neighborhood, our current economic models, based on scarcity, will be meaningless.
Capitalism, including small pieces of green paper, will not likely survive the REAL space age.
by WLGJR
The galaxy is finite. The universe is finite. So ultimately there is still scarcity.
How long can sentient lifeforms survive? Billions of years? Ten to the power of billions of years? Will the number be finite?
by Daniel
Everything is relative. From the point of view of the human species, and the economy that we have created, indeed, if we opened up space to exploitation the resources are, in effect, limitless.
Perhaps from the point of view of a distant descendant of ours, or a descendant of our technology, this universe may be limited, and will want to expand into others. That is science fiction however, while the fact that we are now working on ways to get off this planet and use what we find out there are MUCH more exciting to me than speculations on whatever ultimate destiny we have. I prefer the perspective of an unlimited, glorious future here at humanities childhood, rather than anticipating a future of futility.
by Gorden Russell
Here is something for you, Tom B., Daniel and WLGJR:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-start-of-the-universe-with-string-theory.html
The Start of the Universe with String Theory
By Andrew Zimmerman Jones and Daniel Robbins from String Theory For Dummies
The big bang theory doesn’t offer any explanation for what started the original expansion of the universe. This is a major theoretical question for cosmologists, and many are applying the concepts of string theory in attempts to answer it. One controversial conjecture is a cyclic universe model called the ekpyrotic universe theory, which suggests that our own universe is the result of branes colliding with each other.
########
Now just think, after the Singularity, with computers in their heads, all these great brains will answer all the questions about branes.
by WLGJR
Prof Hugo de Garis talked, in his essays, about the possibility of String-tech.
Imagine manipulating individual strings and combine them, or reconfigure them in other ways, into intelligent computing structures.
But, to get to that small a scale, we need to first build the nano-computers (in the scale of 10^-9 meter), followed by the femto-computers (in the scale of 10^-15 meter), atto-computers (in the scale of 10^-18 meter) and eventually Planck-computers (in the scale of 10^-35 meter).
http://profhugodegaris.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/femtotech.pdf
Now, to accelerate the progress toward the creation of Artilects, Prof de Garis is posting *free* courses on Youtube.
All Cosmists please attend his courses.
by Gorden Russell
WLGJR, in billions of years we should know enough about string theory and dark matter to bud off new universes as we need them.
But long before then, we should all be energy beings.
by WLGJR
There is a theory stating that the space-time is quantized, in other words are pixelated. We may be able to manipulate the quanta of space-time, in the far future, like how we manipulate atoms in nanotechnological machineries today.
I believe space-time and matter-energy are ultimately one. Like water and the ripple on its surface.
by Bri
Bingo!!!
by WLGJR
Huh? Is this a compliment? Did I say something profound?
by Bri
Oh yes indeed. I’m oftentimes receding to reality as a holodeck. I have personal experiences that lead me to think of it that way. The ripples are waves of information on those pixels. The pixels are analogous to water molecules. The waves of information I refer to as gods home movies. God I invasion as the sum total of all possible states of information or infinity. It’s totally independent of the pixels and yet at the same time the cause of them. Infinity is everywhere, we just perceive the current informational state vibrating on the watersor pixels.
by WLGJR
If we can exploit these effects (quantum mechanics, strings and others) to perform computation, we would make the universe a even more *literal* holodeck.
It is somehow like the fact that nature is not perfect and should be re-maded/modified into perfectness (at least futurists and transhumanists believe so), but some others believe that the Earth is *already* perfect.
We will build a Garden on the Garden Planet.
We want to build a Cosmos-spanning computer inside the Universe that is already, in a sense, a computer.
I wish to call this process “upgrade”.
From Human Body 2.0 (as Kurzweil said in his books) to Earth 2.0.
And, eventually, Milky Way Galaxy 2.0 and Universe 2.0.
(Eliezer Yudkowsky suggested to name our Universe, to distinguish it from other possibly existing universes, “Socrates”. I wonder how many people agree on that.)
by Walter Baltzley
Here is a thought…our universe is an estimated 14 billion years old. The earth is about 4 billion years old. Humanity is an estimated 200,000 years old. The industrial revolution was 200 years ago. Personal Computers 50 years ago. Smart Phones, TEN Years ago. “Cloud Computing” 5 years ago…
I created the idea for the DIGITAL MATTER-NET just last year, and expect it to be fully realized within 20 years…when I suspect it will become obsolete and be replaced with a more advanced version.
Think about it…what will we invent in the next 100 years? 1,000? 10,000? Homo-Sapiens evolved from primates 200,000 years ago…where will we be in another 200,000 years? 2 million years? a BILLION? Will we still be human?
by WLGJR
Sound totally wonderful, but we must also remember that there will be unemployed population that need to be re-educated on science.
Now there is free education, which is great.
Please support Prof Hugo de Garis’ online courses on Math/Physics/ComputerScience on YouTube.
Some of his videos (posted late 2012) have only 1-2 views which is horrible. Please take his FREE course, and (if you can) donate to him.
Disclaimer: I am just a Prof de Garis’ fan.
by malvolio
I think capitalism, as the most efficient allocation of “reachable” resources, will survive. However,, the small pieces of green paper may not survive the Age of Quantitative Easing.
by Walter Baltzley
Capitalism only operates under conditions of SCARCITY…we do not know what will happen when this condition no longer exists.
However, it is likely that powerful interests will attempt to monopolize access to technology that threatens the status-quo, or find a way to restrict access to the abundant resources of the earth in some way…
by Bruce Wright
It’s more like all economies as we know them operate under conditions of scarcity – that’s not just a characteristic of capitalism.
But on the other hand, I really can’t see that changing, only the scale – yes, nanotechnology may (effectively) make each of us 100 or 1000 times wealthier than we are now, but resources are always finite.
by Ben
Resources may be finite but if we find ways to reclaim materials we now see as garbage or waste then we would effectively solve that issue. The universe is enormous at any rate and the Human race is less than a spec in it. That said, if we become a truly space-faring race and we develop an automated resource gathering industry then we will have effectively ended scarcity. At least until we spread across the solar system. Then again if we ever manage to make a molecular assembler ex. Star Trek Replicator, then it would eliminate scarcity to the point of making it necessary to adopt a new form of economy.
by Mike
The “haves” will control it. Just because there is a sudden availability of near-infinite resources, it doesn’t mean YOU will get any of it. The rich will always get richer, why should they share it? Indirectly you may feel the effects, in the same way that you benefit from a cell phone today that you could only have dreamed of 20 years ago. But you’ll be paying monthly bills for the privilege, same as now. Just because something great exists in the world, don’t expect it to ever be free. It doesn’t matter at all that the company has more riches than they could spend in a million lifetimes, stockholders will never be satisfied. And what we consider near-infinite riches today may be just a down-payment on the “must-have” status symbol of the future. Do you really think there will ever be an end to greed?
by Bri
@Mike&Ben: Greed has to go. To tell you the true, I’m confident it will. Greed is based on survival instincts that served us well during our evolution. It doesn’t have to exist now. All aspects of our motivational brain circuitry will be modifiable in the near future. When cell phones become the size of Red blood cells, we will be in a new tell of existence. The flows of information will be rapid. It will fundamentally change how we relat to each other. As an example, let’s look at the recent meteor explosion. In the future, that information can be deceminatex to everyone on the planet in near real time. You will be able to see it,hear it, know the effects it had on the people and the buildings. If your interested you might talk to someone who was there. If your not, you’ll be aware it happened, but you’ll spend your time doing something else. We will interact in ways that will alter our perceptions of other people. A degree of understanding will become the norm, in terms of civics, governance,social psychology, geo political, religiosity. Right now to learn something like Rays book The singularity is Near, you’d have to sit down and read it. With blood cell sized cell phone connected to your brain cells you could a sorb that book in a fraction of the time. Not only that, you’ll have far greater understanding of the material because you could have millions of cell phones connected to many brain centers. Economics is another area that will be transformed. Humans will not work for money. The monetary valuations that drive our society today will be totally altered in ways that woukd take too ling for me to write about effectively here. Think of how many top entertainers or lotto winners, that have spent all thier money. Whitney Houston, Cindy Lauper. MC Hammer, to name a few, have all gone through about 200 million dollars each. Think of the reasons why, think of the commodities that they consumed, think of that in relation to what you will spend in your life, and think of that in terms of what you might spend if you won lotto. What do you buy? Food, clothes, cars, a home. The valuations of all those items will change in drastic ways very soon. If you want a Farrari Testarosa just print one. If Farrari wants too much money for the design, what do you think will happen. The same thing that happened to music. You’ll illegally down load it. Don’t have the proper papers saying it’s yours? Hack it. It will be very easy. Everything us going to chsnge in ways that your just not thinking about. It’s going to force a number of key issues to a head and we will all commune together to solve them. We will be assisted by immensely powerful aI systems and we will comprehend their clarifications of these issues.. So much will be totally different. There won’t be a Bill Gates of asteroid mining, or a Warren buffet. It will be humanities. All is one and one is all. E plurebus, unum. Of many,, one.
by Mike
You think we’ll become a world of caring, sharing peaceful people? I say, the more resources we have, the more that leaders will want to use them to advance their agendas. Religions will battle each other. People will vie for limited spaces — there are more people who want to live in Maui than the island can hold. Not everyone can date the top movie star of the year. There are always limits and plenty of reasons for conflict. Greed isn’t the only one. ‘m not saying that the future is dismal. That just depends on your perspective. We already live in the best and worst age ever, and people will always disagree over which it is. Not everyone thinks the same way you do, and as long as there is disagreement, there will be conflicts, and battles, and wars, etc.
by Bri
I view conflict as a gradient. It’s how it’s resolved that matters. None of the examples you mention will be very relevant in a short while. You could be living in the middle of the Sahara deseart and it could appear to you that you were in Maui. Your spouse could appear to be anyone.. Even how the brain generates these desires can be attenuated. These issues have always been here. They aren’t always addressed with greed. Much of this is a mind set. So many aspects of life are going to be radically altered. I don’t think you are taking this into account enough. Humanity and society changes it’s value systems constantly. We can use our new found abilities to resolve these issues in markedly different ways than are available now. It used to be that people woukd duel for honor, or fight for revolution. Then people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King showed us a new way. One that had never been used before. We need to follow their lead. It can happen. It is happening. We can make it happen mote. It’s a question of will.
by SmartAndSober
“We already live in the best and worst age ever, …” You may as well say that for any previous time in the human history. Spiritually inclined people can live happily in even the darkest parts of history (war, famine, natural disaster and even more).
IMHO, we should all just go with the flow. Instead of striving toward an ideal “End State” (e.g. in religion, it would be Salvation or Moksha, in the modern, science-informed ideologies, it would be creating Utopia or achieving Immortality), we should simply adapt and “live with the flow”.
As Hemaclitus (“The Weeping Philosopher”) said: “Panta Rhei” (In English: All things flow). I believe the best form of existence is not to attempt ot change the flow, but to learn to live with it.
by Katherine MacLean
Of many, Many. Complexity can be handled with complexity. Biological systems do not have to be boiled down to one simple great equation to be controlled, A sand dune does not have to be consolidated into a giant rock to be rolled along by wind in predictable courses. A randomly varied stack of almost duplicated sensors can pick up a full range of sound or light or chemical saturation in water, consolidat the number of responders into one output signal and trigger a measured response. Biological random variation can be an early eyeball, overstimulated by sunlight slamming shut an early clamshell. Sensation moves into survival pro-action without ever needing abstract math, or any other simplification. Predictive action is the survival function and it needs no standardization to work, just a no more than three directions of pick up and variations of fade in the receiving area to compare past traces with current new image to respond to the speed and direction of the image. The frog needs only two eyeballs with fading images of where the fly has just been like a tail to a kite the length of the following streak measuring the speed of the fly. The past image fading in reversed color is overlaid on the current background, as a preceeding streak fading into the future it shows where the fly will be going and a long sticky tongue will be triggered to launch to the exact spot as the fly crosses the bullseye , This well fed frog is living well on a banquet of flies, courtesy of the fading of images to reversed colors on the retinas of its two large golden eyes. Subtract the images from each other shows distance, Subtract the past image from the present shows the direction of motion overlaid the new image ahead of the older fading mage The target shooting by predictive anticpation. Is that intelligence? Predictive anticipation buying and selling i n the stock market. results in great wealth, a fine feeling of satisfaction.
Was this so different.? It was he imperfection of the retina, the lingering and fading of images in the frogs golden eyeballs were the causes of all frog’s successes.
by Gorden Russell
Of course there will never be an end to greed, it is an instinct to store up food for the next coming famine, inherent in all mammals. Back when my son was in middle school, he got a rat for a science project. That little guy would risk his life, reaching out for nuggets of dog food held out to him over the gnashing jaws of a big husky dog that wanted to eat him. When we went to clean out his terrarium we found a pile of dog food the size of a five-pound bag of flour. That was more than he could ever eat. When the Koch brothers scheme and cheat and pay off the congress to increase their 32-billion dollar fortune, they are just acting like that rat.
But the rich often look only as far as the next quarterly report. They have been destroying the world for a long time, just to achieve their short-term goals. They always miss the boat when the next big thing comes along and then some new guy becomes the next billionaire.
This is going to happen in 30 or 40 years when some grad students and their instructor quit the university to found a start-up to design the self-assembling, photovoltaic, carbon nanocells that I always talk about. The people to do this might even be people from Third World countries who educate themselves with online courses. They will start from scratch and give the world the technology of abundance that will drive Exxon Mobil out of business.
When people have the means to use the power of the sun to take carbon dioxide out of the air and spin it into carbon nanotubes and graphene and all the other useful carbon compounds using the elements found in the air and soil, they will grow all their food, shelter, clothing and transportation at home in desert homesteads.
Graphene has been found to filter salt out of seawater through reverse osmosis. Great desalination plants can be grown out upon the continental shelves where they are beyond the horizon and can’t ruin the view for people with seafront vistas. The water will be brought in to the deserts by pipelines grown from carbon nanotubes.
At the same time, carbonaceous asteroids will be towed in to geosynchronous orbits where the same carbon nanocells can grow long, wide cables of perfect carbon nanotubes to lower down to anchor points along the equator.
Millions of people will be able to take space elevators up to habitats and interplanetary spacecraft to shuttle them out to the Lagrange Points where starships using charged particle accelerators as drives, many orders of magnitude larger than the Large Hadron Accelerator will be built.
These ships will use fusion power to run their charged particle accelerators that will be fueled by interstellar hydrogen.
These Bussard ramscoops will have giant radars and powerful lasers lining the rims of their scoops to spot and vaporize all the bits of dust and ice and rock that lie before them as they accelerate at one gravity for years on end.
You only need to accelerate for a little over a year to get up near the speed of light. Once you achieve that velocity, time will slow down for you and you can take all the time you want to go as far as you want, circling the galaxy. (Just stay in the central beltway of the galactic suburbs. There are too many giant stars shooting out gamma ray bursts in the hub and the stars out in the periphery are lacking in metallicity, so Asimov’s stories of Trantnor and the Foundation will need to be set elsewhere.)
Another thing, a starship can carry one of a set of mated wormholes, leaving one on Earth. This will allow instantaneous transportation from home to the ship. People will be able to walk through a doorway to the stars. Heinlein wrote that story back in the 1950s.
And now it is all going to come true.
But only if we get through the coming robot apocalypse.
If the robots that put people out of work don’t continue paying the Unemployment Insurance and Social Security taxes that the workers were paying before they were kicked to the curb, then society will collapse and we will enter a barbarous era ruled by survivalist militia warlords.
Of course, NRA President LaPierre will be one of these warlords, (he has all those guns).
by Bri
The instinct for greed can be altered.
by SmartAndSober
In the way I see it, the total altering the instinct of *greed* equates removing *common sense*. It would result in dysfunctional, emotion-less individuals.
(But probably make very good human-data processors).
by Cybernettr
If and when humans are a thousand or a million times smarter than they are today, there will be no room or need for greed. Those who think that greed rather than hostile AI will still be the problem in the future are clearly engaging in small-scale thinking. The real question is whether we well still be human, as our humaness is to a large degree defined by such negative emotions as greed, avarice and lust.
by Noahfreak
I’ve always thought that the coming technological revolution, once sufficiently advanced, will resemble the expansion west during the growth of the United States. Minus the genocide of course (hopefully).
by Dave
Lifespan is limited. People only have 24 hours in a day. Capitalism will still exist, because people experience death and time limits what an individual can physically attend to or do in a 24 hour period.
Elimination of death as a physical condition might be attainable and with that scientific advance, those lucky to be alive have unlimited time.
Accidents still occur, children still are created. Just a new set of problems to solve when lifespans become unlimited and capitalism fails or succeeds because of this new advance of unlimited lifespan when, not if it occurs.
by Gorden Russell
Well, instead of little green pieces of paper, Canada can start minting pennies again…but out of platinum.
But even if it is a lot cheaper, platinum is valuable for its many uses as a chemical catalyst and in chemistry.
So what if the price goes down? Little girls will be able to get platinum rings out of gumball machines. People will still want to wear that metal.
by WLGJR
It would be great to enbed computers (or even computronium) inside these pennies and rings. Not just good looking but also very useful (intelligent) as well.
by Walter Baltzley
We will always find ways to make expensive trinkets for conspicuous consumption. Take my idea of cloning dinosaurs to make leather boots, or a shirt made out of woven spider-silk, or using an uber-powerful laser to carve an asteroid in the shape of my face….who wouldn’t want THAT?
by Gorden Russell
Who wouldn’t want that? Me, for one. Not until I get some work done on my face. Only after nanocells can sculpt my face to look like Gregory Peck, then I’ll lase a copy into an asteroid.
by Gorden Russell
Right, WLGR, it won’t be long before computers are imbedded in everything.
by Katherine MacLean
The best and most clear and compact discussion of developing our industrial and personal extension into space The string discussion just carried on deserves to get to the pundits and public that do not read Facebook, Applause to Gorden Russel and Bri and all who contributed!
by SmartAndSober
I once thought that this forum is a little bit amateur-ish (over-democratic), as opposed to higher-level (with a clearly “elitist” milieu) like the edge.com and the SL4 forum.
But, the wonderful part of this forum is that many people here are optimistic, which I believe in the long run is a better attitude to uphold than being “realistic” (which is actually pessimism. It is the attitude of people who say “things cannot be done”, which violates the Clarke’s 1st law).