ProfessorPeregrine

I actually had the TI-59. I remember I entered a program where you are trying to avoid a missile running on vectors and a mine that was teleporting around on a Cartesian grid, and saved that on one of the magnetic strips. And also programmed the quadratic equation on a magnetic card. It had a base it could attach to that provided power and had a thermal printer strip. That calculator also had a place to put a pre-programmed chip into it. I think I had casino games or something.

If you're wondering how I had all that in high school, well that was what my dad thought would buy my affection when he left my mom for the secretary... Didn't work, but I got a piece of cutting edge hardware for it.

No, there was a small slot that you would feed the magnetic card into from left to right. It had a little motor that would pull it through. I still have mine somewhere.

It's real! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widdershins

Widdershins. It means counter to the sun's direction , and was seen as inauspicious. Counter-clockwise, before clocks.

I think I'm saying that mining on asteroids will probably never be profitable or realistic (with a possible exception of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen CHON once people are living on orbit). Mining on other planets might require understanding different geology and maybe different refining technology. Anything mined on a planet will likely stay there. But there just won't be any ores on asteroids because they never had a chance to differentiate into higher and lower concentrations of various useful metals.

Metallurgical engineer here. One thing I never see talked about on this topic is how astreoids don't have nearly the mechanisms for concentrating matals into ores like planetary bodies do.

So while there may be a higher proportion of, say, iridium on an asteroid than the average of Earth, it is pretty homogenous. You would have to refine the whole thing to get a little bit of iridium. On Earth, it may be more rare on average, but Earth also concentrates metals into ores via heat, gravity and water action so that you can mine a small area to get what your want economically.

Metal meteoroids are mostly iron, which is cheap on Earth and of little use in space. Aluminum, which is useful in space, is one of the most common elements on Earth and even higher on the Moon,, but it's only economically mined in tropical soil that had ages of water erosion. Titanium, different process but similar story.

Given the economics of getting to where you want to mine, mining a non-concentrated rock, and then transporting it back to Earth's for sale I just didn't see any path for mining asteroids.

Once there's is an established human presence in space, there might be a reason to mine organics (CHON) but that is not now and not what people think of when they tout asteroid mining.

After you've had the Ultimate Love Affair that has broken you, leaves you certain love has been poisoned in your system, then, and only then, can you be saved and uplifted by the Post-Ultimate Love Affair. - Harlan Ellison http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0072/ERBAEN0072.htm

Deleted my 8 year old account and posts just last week. Feels great man.

The guy in the photo can't even be bothered to wear his respirator correctly.

Next week on Star Trek...

Shrug maybe they could. They have yet to prove it in the real world in the US, as you mentioned.

I like that my ISP has no profit motive and is driven solely by customer/taxpayer satisfaction.

I wouldn't like it if it became a political football, but so far so good. I think its safe for now because it is the same network used by the fire and police departments. Comcast really tried to kill it off.

I love it! It kind of sells the "we're in the middle of a war and have to slap a bunch of stuff together just to field some more ships for defense" vibe. Even if really it was just a kit bashed computer model.