Here's How We Could Build A Death Star, According To NASA
Dec 29, 2015 13:06:24 GMT -6
Nugget, Mystic Wanderer, and 2 more like this
Post by Rickster on Dec 29, 2015 13:06:24 GMT -6
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Hard to imagine this is a real concept by NASA. But it is a idea rolling around in the heads of rocket scientist. Although currently not realistic, none the less a possibility in the future. How would you like to be involved in that conversation, "So yeah we fly out to an asteroid, take everything from it we could use, and hey we build a death star".
I am of a disappearing generation of rotary phones, gumby and pokey, stingray bikes, and a skateboard was a 2 X 4 with roller skates on the bottom. Of a time when there wasn't color TV, computers, telephones, or people killing each other in en masse for no reason. When smoking dope was a felony, cruising was cool, and all we wanted to do was work for money to chase girls.
To think of the possibilities our children and grandchildren will face is something my generation can't conceive. A kid today better pay attention in school if they ever go back to real learning, in thier day equipment will be operated with thought control, and cell phones will be an implant.
It's always the money, the cost of everything. I like to believe things like this are already happening not necessarily a death star, but moon bases, interplanetary travel, and off the book ships to travel freely in our solar system. There is to much money that disappears in our economy and going only where select people know, to not already have these options, now known by whistle blowers, and many witnesses. I would like the day of my 66 impala back, and the only thing the government tracked was taxes, and communist.
"For all you boys and girls who dream of one day ruling the galaxy with a tremendous weapon of mass destruction, NASA has some suggestions for you. The trick is to mine asteroids and use the material to construct the Death Star directly in space.
In a video on Wired, Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, illustrates how the Asteroid Redirect Mission will look at the feasibility of asteroid mining, and although the mission doesn’t exactly show you how to build a Death Star, it will do something nobody has done before. In 2023, a probe will capture a boulder and carry it into lunar orbit, where a group of astronauts will later visit to mine some of the asteroid material."
In a video on Wired, Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, illustrates how the Asteroid Redirect Mission will look at the feasibility of asteroid mining, and although the mission doesn’t exactly show you how to build a Death Star, it will do something nobody has done before. In 2023, a probe will capture a boulder and carry it into lunar orbit, where a group of astronauts will later visit to mine some of the asteroid material."
I am of a disappearing generation of rotary phones, gumby and pokey, stingray bikes, and a skateboard was a 2 X 4 with roller skates on the bottom. Of a time when there wasn't color TV, computers, telephones, or people killing each other in en masse for no reason. When smoking dope was a felony, cruising was cool, and all we wanted to do was work for money to chase girls.
To think of the possibilities our children and grandchildren will face is something my generation can't conceive. A kid today better pay attention in school if they ever go back to real learning, in thier day equipment will be operated with thought control, and cell phones will be an implant.
"But is Muirhead right about using asteroids? Could we start building a mega structure around Earth in 2016? Let's take a quick look at the calculations involved.
According to Wookieepedia, the first Death Star has a radius of 60 kilometers (37 miles), which corresponds to a volume of about 904,000 cubic kilometers (217,000 cubic miles). Finding the mass of such an object is quite difficult, as we don’t exactly know the internal structure, the building materials used, etc.
To simplify this problem, we imagined that the Death Star would be built similarly to an aircraft carrier, so we used the USS Ranger, which has a density of 210 kilograms (460 pounds) per cubic meter. This gives us a mass of 190 trillion tonnes (187 trillion US tons).
"Now, a medium-small asteroid is on paper the perfect candidate: It is about the right mass and it is rich in iron and carbon (to make steel), as well as other material that can be used in the construction. But is it cheaper mining the material on Earth and sending it to space, or to directly mine asteroids?
Sending stuff into space costs about $20,000 (£13,000) per kilogram, so assembling the Death Star would cost us $40,000 billion billion dollars (we're not converting that to £). That's about a billion times more expensive than all the Earth’s economies combined.
The boulder that the Asteroid Redirect Mission will capture is about 450,000 kilograms (500 tons) and the mission will cost $2.6 billions (£1.7 billion). This is the cost of retrieval, so let’s assume that the mining cost is equivalent. If the asteroid is completely mined, the material would cost $10,400 (£6,900) per kilogram. Of course, it's unlikely to have 100 percent of any particular metal, so the prices are likely to be a bit skewed. On paper though, it's possibly comparable."
According to Wookieepedia, the first Death Star has a radius of 60 kilometers (37 miles), which corresponds to a volume of about 904,000 cubic kilometers (217,000 cubic miles). Finding the mass of such an object is quite difficult, as we don’t exactly know the internal structure, the building materials used, etc.
To simplify this problem, we imagined that the Death Star would be built similarly to an aircraft carrier, so we used the USS Ranger, which has a density of 210 kilograms (460 pounds) per cubic meter. This gives us a mass of 190 trillion tonnes (187 trillion US tons).
"Now, a medium-small asteroid is on paper the perfect candidate: It is about the right mass and it is rich in iron and carbon (to make steel), as well as other material that can be used in the construction. But is it cheaper mining the material on Earth and sending it to space, or to directly mine asteroids?
Sending stuff into space costs about $20,000 (£13,000) per kilogram, so assembling the Death Star would cost us $40,000 billion billion dollars (we're not converting that to £). That's about a billion times more expensive than all the Earth’s economies combined.
The boulder that the Asteroid Redirect Mission will capture is about 450,000 kilograms (500 tons) and the mission will cost $2.6 billions (£1.7 billion). This is the cost of retrieval, so let’s assume that the mining cost is equivalent. If the asteroid is completely mined, the material would cost $10,400 (£6,900) per kilogram. Of course, it's unlikely to have 100 percent of any particular metal, so the prices are likely to be a bit skewed. On paper though, it's possibly comparable."
