On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 03:05:44PM -0300, Lúcio de Souza Coelho wrote: > It seems that you are trying to equal all rare elements to gold -
No, I'm trying to point out you're extrapolating future demands from the demands of a primitive society, us. This is guaranteed to produce wildly inaccurate results. If anything, the most important material is carbon, and nonmetals. Everything else is up for preparative transmutation. > i.e., something that is valuable just because it is rare - but > unfortunately that does not seems to be the case. Platinum for > instance has a lot of industrial applications, including the use as a I know, I've got a degree in chemistry. > catalyst in fuel cells, and in fact its price has been skyrocketing in > past years due to increased demand. (As is the case with many metallic > commodities.) How much metal is in your body, apart from CHNOPS? How much transition metals do you need for a mechanosynthesis rig, fractionally? > Unless you know of some reserve of pure metal alloy buried under the > regolith, there will always be some raw materials that are of easier > exploration in asteroids than by processing zillions of tonnes of > regolith - and that adds "distance" in commercial terms. Also, there > are a few asteroids that are even closer to us in terms of delta v Yes? Really? I would like to know which (I don't disagree, I would just want to have a list). How about pingpong latency? 2 s is hard to beat. > than the Moon - the gravity well of our neighboring world is not > exactly shallow. The point is that linear motor can easily achieve escape velocity, and you can deorbit the packets by aerobraking, and land them precisely using purely passive guidance. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&user_secret=7d7fb4d8
