Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on April 05, 2008, 11:03:43 am
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I've been hearing things about certain metals (namely platinum, silver, copper, zinc, and a few other exotic metals) entering "permanent scarcity". I heard somewhere that copper will run out by 2014 and zinc by the 2030's. Is there any truth to this and if so, what to do (as a people)?
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Electronic money...
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I've been hearing things about certain metals (namely platinum, silver, copper, zinc, and a few other exotic metals) entering "permanent scarcity". I heard somewhere that copper will run out by 2014 and zinc by the 2030's. Is there any truth to this and if so, what to do (as a people)?
Yeah, I've heard the same. Certain metals are running out and they say it sucks. What can we do as a group of people? Idk. What to do as an individual? Start buying as much metal (namely platinum) as your financial status allows, and become rich within a few decades when the price jumps through the roof.
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Electronic money...
Agreed, unless you're being sarcastic.
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Start collecting pennies.
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Start mining asteroids.
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Start using PVC
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Start mining asteroids.
You beat me to it.
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You beat me to it.
I'll sell you an acre of mining rights on Ceres for $1000. Get your share now; they'll be snapped up very quickly.
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isnt the earth a big metal ball with alot of rocks stuck to it?
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Like Oil, there'll be plenty left by those dates, but the cost of getting to them using current techniques would be more expensive than the value of the material.
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Jesus people. Mass fabs. Lots and lots of Mass fabs.
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Metal depletion makes me wonder about certain stuff. You know like all the hulks of past blown up military vehicles sitting there in the horizon and decomissioned war ships that just get sunk these days. That's like a lot of wasted metal. Would scrap metal dump people want to take this stuff, or recycling people want to take this stuff?
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They remove all the wiring, plumbing and reactor systems from the ships before they sink them. And most warships are scrapped anyway.
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I'm not talking about polluting the environment with these decomissioned war machines. I'm talking about whether it'd be a good idea or not to recycle all that metal in the name of a metal shortage. Who cares how they get sunk, that's one big hulk of metal still.
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Jesus people. Mass fabs. Lots and lots of Mass fabs.
But we'd need lots of T3 Power plants for that, we just don't have the economy!
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The higher we climb in the research tree, the more we use the branches for nothing more than hitting those underneath us....
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Start mining asteroids.
I was thinking something along those lines, but its hard to do that for two reasons:
1.) we have a stagnant space program that has done nothing to try to make something like asteroid mining even a remote possibility. We have been stuck in low earth orbit for too long. I guess because its just more convenient.
2.) we can't even get people to mars, partly because of the above mentioned reason.
T3 Power plants
What are those?
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T3 Power plants
What are those?
Happen to hear a whooshing sound just now? Yeah, that was the reference flying right over your head.
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He admitted as such. Now do him the courtesy of explaining what a T3 power plant is.
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Aww, do I have to?
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DO IT.
DO IT NOW.
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But I like being in the know. The know is nice. It's warm and comforting. Why would I want to let anyone else in here?
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To be first. Or to bask in the appreciation of one you have enlightened.
Otherwise, somebody could say "google it", or even go ahead and post (http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Aeon_T3_Mass_Fabricator) a (http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Aeon_T3_Power_Generator) link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander).
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I thought it was something real for a moment, but I guess that's just being too optimistic. :p
Anyway, with regards to going to the asteroid belt, appearently we certainly will not be going to the moon or mars (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23955590/)
WASHINGTON - An ambitious vision to take people to the moon and Mars may fall apart before it even gets off the ground because of uncertain planning and inadequate funding, several experts said on Thursday.
A congressional report said NASA's replacement for the space shuttle, the Constellation Program, is in jeopardy, and members of Congress as well as at least one former astronaut agreed at a hearing on the issue.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said the Constellation program, scheduled to begin by 2015, is troubled by engineering, funding and mechanical issues.
For instance, the program was meant to use heat shielding from the 1960s Apollo program, but experts apparently could not replicate the material
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'For instance, the program was meant to use heat shielding from the 1960s Apollo program, but experts apparently could not replicate the material'
Things like that are, quite frankly, just embarrassing, I've always been against this idea of 'Ancients' who once knew everything and then died out (If they knew everything, why didn't they see that coming?), but when an agency admits it's forgotten how to do stuff 45'ish years old, you start to wonder....
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isnt the earth a big metal ball with alot of rocks stuck to it?
How far do you want to drill?
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'For instance, the program was meant to use heat shielding from the 1960s Apollo program, but experts apparently could not replicate the material'
Things like that are, quite frankly, just embarrassing, I've always been against this idea of 'Ancients' who once knew everything and then died out (If they knew everything, why didn't they see that coming?), but when an agency admits it's forgotten how to do stuff 45'ish years old, you start to wonder....
It was probably safety or environmental conerns...
I hope
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i say we get on apophis when it does its fly by, put some big thrusters on it, slow it down, then we can rip and tear and harvest the bastard.
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i say we get on apophis when it does its fly by, put some big thrusters on it, slow it down, then we can rip and tear and harvest the bastard.
Have you seen the first episode of Robotech? :p
Regardless, that would require so much force, just thinking about it is, well, rather pointless at the moment.
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Regardless, that would require so much force, just thinking about it is, well, rather pointless at the moment.
Design another Energia, a few of those should be able to put a stop to it.
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Hmm...
/me thinks.
/me thinks more.
/me thinks even more.
/me thinks too much. :wtf:
Coins are made from a copper-nickel alloy called cupronickel, aren't they? :confused:
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you would want chemical engines to move it. ion drives would take to long and you would fall twards the planet as it slows down. you would want to fire right as the velocity of your ship is prepandicular to the planets gravity vector. here is where the orbit shrinks till it becomes circular, then you kill the engines. once captured you could use ion engines to change its orbit to where you want it gradually over time. you also want to be higher than geosynchronous if you want an orbit that wont decay over time due to tidal effects.
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you would want chemical engines to move it.
The Energia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia) was a chemical engine, one of the most powerful ever made, capable of putting 100 tons into orbit. Since NASA is having problems technically and moniterily (basically in the grand scheme of things becoming increasingly irrelevant), something like this may well be our only chance of pulling this off. :p
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I'd say one of two things would happen, it wouldn't work and billions of dollars of equipment would be wasted, or it would work too well and crash the thing into the earth. Yes, I know, I'm a pessimist, but you know Murphy's law "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong".
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we just need to recycle the metals from old computers & phone lines and switch everything to fiber... or wireless.
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I'd say one of two things would happen, it wouldn't work and billions of dollars of equipment would be wasted, or it would work too well and crash the thing into the earth. Yes, I know, I'm a pessimist, but you know Murphy's law "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong".
learn how orbital mechanics work. a rocket doesnt go up unless they know it can do the job. they use this magic thing called math and crunch the numbers and say yay or ney. if you land the engine on the astroid and orient that thruster retrograde. that does nothing to the orbit. you then slow down by firing the engine, you do this when its closest to earth. you loose speed till you get capture (meaning you entered an objects orbit). after this point the more you burn retrograde, the more your apogee on the other side of the planet decreases (if you were to burn prograde it would increase) till it becomes a perigee (the lowest point of the orbit). when that happens you have a mostly circular orbit, and you turn off the engine.
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If we could slingshot Voyager around Jupiter and aim it for Uranus 30 years ago, then the orbital maths for something like this should actually be relatively easy to be honest.
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If we could slingshot Voyager around Jupiter and aim it for Uranus 30 years ago, then the orbital maths for something like this should actually be relatively easy to be honest.
Agreed, but would it be worth the cost to do it?
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At least nuclear engines are starting to be considered again. They use half the fuel at greater thrust and uses liquid hydrogen as opposed to chemical rockets which require two or more ingredients. Nuclear rockets sounds like something great for deep space and may be great for grabbing asteroids to put in orbit and mine.
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earn how orbital mechanics work.
Orbital mechanics were patented by Boeing. :p
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no they only patented a particular maneuver, and you're in the wrong thread.
as for nuke engines, their all cool and what not, but there are hundreds if not thousands of different engine and thruster systems out there on the drawing boards in labs world wide. the main issue has been the power supply. the best space worthy nuclear power plants we have today still dont produce enough power to run many of those thruster designs. nuclear engines do get around that because the energy source is heat rather than electricity. i see nuclear engines as just an interim solution, a stepping stone between chemical and some uber powerful super engine (not quite warp drive).
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Very much true. Nuclear engines are an upgrade to current chemical rockets, but not a different engine type. They both function pretty similarly, it's just that nuclear puts out more thrust and consumes half the fuel compared to a chemical rocket (it'd be great for going to mars). Any other mission that happens around earth orbit and the moon, those craft could employ a fuel tank that's half the size or just stick with chemical rockets (chemical rockets are great for local space, not deep space, nuclear could let local earth missions have a fuel tank half the size and output more thrust and carry less weight). But, yeah, nuclear rockets is not really an upgrade over chemical rockets, nuclear rockets i consider to be chemical rocket system 2.0, because it still uses chemical fuel and it's a rocket. Just different fuel and heating process. Really it just seems like a chemical rocket with more power and gas mileage. Going nuclear thrust is going to be like buying a car today and selling you're old muscle car.
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I really think it is a shame that we didn't listen to von Braun's ideas about having a permenant presence in space way back when. We only went to the moon in the 60's because the Soviets were talking about going there and we just HAD to get there first. After we went there, popular support for that kind of thing fizzled pretty quickly. And now, we suddenly started talking about going back AFTER China announced its intention to go to the moon.
In any event, Russia is intent on building what amounts to an orbital shipyard (http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/04/13/2025214.shtml) so that way their spacecraft size and range wont be so limited. Frankly this is what we should have done years ago, but apparently couldn't be bothered. Good for them for having the vision we lack.
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Metal depletion has been going on for decades. We've had enough copper for twenty years for the last 40 or 50 years. We just keep moving onto lower and lower grade ore and finding more in previously underexplored regions. There're vast deposits under the sea, hell - there're enough metal ions in the seawater itself to keep us going for millenia if we could extract them cost effectively. While certain highly specific, highly useful minor elements might become scarce (I'm thinking stuff like tantalum, Some of the REEs and PGMs) we're not going to run out of copper, especially as extraction technology gets better and people start (eventually) mining landfills and the like).[/color]
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I'm thinking of putting two huge electrodes at either end of the Mediterranean and creating the worlds biggest electrolysis tank, that should help ;)
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Metal depletion has been going on for decades. We've had enough copper for twenty years for the last 40 or 50 years. We just keep moving onto lower and lower grade ore and finding more in previously underexplored regions. There're vast deposits under the sea, hell - there're enough metal ions in the seawater itself to keep us going for millenia if we could extract them cost effectively. While certain highly specific, highly useful minor elements might become scarce (I'm thinking stuff like tantalum, Some of the REEs and PGMs) we're not going to run out of copper, especially as extraction technology gets better and people start (eventually) mining landfills and the like).[/color]
I have a question for you: How much in the way of world wide Uranium reserves do you think we have? I've heard things like if we built several thousand nucelar reactors that it would burn up all the Uranium in a decade or two. Any truth to that?
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I have a question for you: How much in the way of world wide Uranium reserves do you think we have? I've heard things like if we built several thousand nucelar reactors that it would burn up all the Uranium in a decade or two. Any truth to that?
The real question is, who said that, and how do they know?
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Not really, thanks to breeders, and as I said before, sea water extraction. There's a really good article I read on it online somewhere but I can't find it anywhere at the moment. Here's a good one though that explains some of the economics behind it:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2472
As for Uranium in the current situation... well, based only on the Australian situation, which is all I have any personal knowledge of (and which, ultimately, is what matters the most since we have nearly 2/3rds of the worlds extractable uranium) I suspect we coiuld increase uranioum production a lot quicker than the world could produce the reactors to consume it. Uranium mining is extremely limited in Australia by the government's three mines policy, but Uranium exploration is a totally different thing. It's growing in tandem with the price increases as the former weapons stock gets used up. The result of this is that Australia has access to dozens of proven, mine ready uranium resources, some of which (like the calcrete deposits at Yeelirie) are exceptionally easy to access.
The net result is, as a nation, we're poised to pick up a fairly significant increase in global uranium demand. However, people're also acutely aware of the long term supply problems, and I think the whole peak oil thing at the moment will probably prevent governments from getting over reliant on a restricted energy source again, and thus the development and establishment of breeders is pretty much inevitable. While there's a pickup delay in getting fuel from breeders once they're turned on, I think the world could cover it. And yeah, there's always oceanic extraction if it can be made cost effective (which is inevitable if we start getting dependent on nuclear power - that link explains a lot of that).
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just where is the metal going? it is still on earth, right?
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Probably a fair percentage is in Land-fill sites etc, the computer you are using right now has a moderate amount of copper involved in its construction for example, but not enough to make it cost-efficient to recycle it.
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Yet.
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Nuclear power. Good stuff :yes:
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and I think the whole peak oil thing at the moment
Funny you should mention that, CIBC put out an article the other day warning of $200+ per barrel oil by 2012.
Actually in the US a lot of people (in the general population and in government) are still in denial about peak oil.
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Gas is annoying. E85 is really ****ty, bio-diesel is a good one, and people are still looking for a way to more easily procure hydrogen. It'll be nice once that hydrogen thing gets figured out.
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just where is the metal going? it is still on earth, right?
The vast majority of it, yeah. The problem is finding it in economic concentrations. Best way to think about it is in terms of examples. Ironis a good one. Humans have been smelting iron, for, what, a couple of thousand years? The first iron came from the easiest to access, higest grade ore deposits around, because there was plenty of it and nobody had used up those deposits. As technology got better, it became easier to extract iron from lower grade or unusually hosted sources. Eventually, the modern economic controls developed, and as demand increased, the price increased, and we moved on to lower grade iron deposits, which became economically viable to mine thanks to the relatively high price of iron.
The problem is twofold - number one is that, as Flip alluded to, we're not very careful with our resources, and a lot of metals get lost to landfill, or dumped in the oceans or simply rust away to nothing and disperse through the air. The second problem is that, sooner or later, we're going to run out of ore deposits that are economically viable to mine (either because ore deposits of a suitably high grade simply no longer exist, or because the price required to make them economic puts the commodity out of reach of the market. Disregarding the stuff we send into space, all of the original metal atoms are still on the earth, but they're all either (i.e. under the ocean or whatever) or not economically concentrated.
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so how long before the lost metals turn to ore again?
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I don't know if they ever do.
IDK if it's possible to smelt rust, for example.
Or copper sulfate, or aluminum oxide, ect...
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Hmm... I wonder, how would one "deliver the goods" from a mined asteroid?
Can't think of anything else feasible but orbital bombardment myself :D
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so how long before the lost metals turn to ore again?
Millions, potentially billions of yearts. In most cases they have to be tectonically recycled and then redeposited, though a few special cases might re concentrate on a shorter scale (still in the tens to hundreds of thousands of years though)
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Could it be possible to construct some kind of device that would extract metal atoms from the air?
You mentioned metals "rusting away to nothing" and so now it's dispersed throughout the atmosphere. Now I realize such a device wouldn't be practical, you won't pull bars of iron out of thin air, but those atoms in the air don't have to be lost forever, do they?
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*imagines swinging a big net to try to catch those dirty little atoms*
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Ooh, ooh, what about nanomachinery? Rearrange atoms into useful forms!
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I was picturing something like an air filter that you turn on for 5 years or so and it accumulates a few ounces of whatever metal you're going for.
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assuming we don't get to mars and humanity royaly ****s itself, that might just become reality :D. but we're not that dumb. we will get to mars, though likely china or europe, not the US
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Could it be possible to construct some kind of device that would extract metal atoms from the air?
You mentioned metals "rusting away to nothing" and so now it's dispersed throughout the atmosphere. Now I realize such a device wouldn't be practical, you won't pull bars of iron out of thin air, but those atoms in the air don't have to be lost forever, do they?
It mostly settles onto the ground or into the ocean. Such a machine would be more practical in the ocean - there're thopusands of years of useful metals dissolved there, although you'd have to be careful about extracting it and potentially depriving oceans of micronutrients and such.