Blue Origin General Discussion - thread 6

[meekGee]

As much as I want Blue's vision to succeed, this is exactly what concerned me about it. That moving heavy industry off Earth would take at least a few hundred years to be remotely feasible, or several hundred to a few thousand at Blue's pace...

I don't even know what that means.

Are we going to move car factories to space? shipyards?

Make terrestrial cement in space?  Steel, or plastics?

This makes no sense.

I get Asteroid mining for in-space applications, but I don't get "move heavy industries away from earth".  Even with miles long O'Neil cylinders.

I get self-sufficiency where there are basic resources like on a planet or maybe on large asteroids. I can even, if I squat and squint and om and ignore entropy, maybe accept self-sufficiency on something like an O'Neil cylinder.

But I don't get how heavy industry can be moved away from Earth and into orbit.

[Eric Hedman]

As much as I want Blue's vision to succeed, this is exactly what concerned me about it. That moving heavy industry off Earth would take at least a few hundred years to be remotely feasible, or several hundred to a few thousand at Blue's pace...

I don't even know what that means.

Are we going to move car factories to space? shipyards?

Make terrestrial cement in space?  Steel, or plastics?

This makes no sense.

I get Asteroid mining for in-space applications, but I don't get "move heavy industries away from earth".  Even with miles long O'Neil cylinders.

I get self-sufficiency where there are basic resources like on a planet or maybe on large asteroids. I can even, if I squat and squint and om and ignore entropy, maybe accept self-sufficiency on something like an O'Neil cylinder.

But I don't get how heavy industry can be moved away from Earth and into orbit.

The reason you don't get it is because it doesn't make sense barring a massive unexpected quantum jump in spaceflight technology that is highly unlikely to happen anytime in the next half century.  It is just ivory tower talk for the foreseeable future.  The reality of physics and economics will always win in the long haul.

[TrevorMonty]

There are low energy ways to get into space but they need massive infrastructure. Checkout Issac Arthur videos on orbital rings.

[SpaceLizard]

As much as I want Blue's vision to succeed, this is exactly what concerned me about it. That moving heavy industry off Earth would take at least a few hundred years to be remotely feasible, or several hundred to a few thousand at Blue's pace...

I don't even know what that means.

Are we going to move car factories to space? shipyards?

Make terrestrial cement in space?  Steel, or plastics?

This makes no sense.

I get Asteroid mining for in-space applications, but I don't get "move heavy industries away from earth".  Even with miles long O'Neil cylinders.

I get self-sufficiency where there are basic resources like on a planet or maybe on large asteroids. I can even, if I squat and squint and om and ignore entropy, maybe accept self-sufficiency on something like an O'Neil cylinder.

But I don't get how heavy industry can be moved away from Earth and into orbit.

We already import most things from China et al., it's mostly a question of whether importing everything from 'Space China et al.' will ever be technologically and economically comparable.

[Robotbeat]

There are low energy ways to get into space but they need massive infrastructure. Checkout Issac Arthur videos on orbital rings.

Orbital rings are massively over-rated and they aren't even cheaper to launch stuff with than suitable reusable rockets.

[meekGee]

There are low energy ways to get into space but they need massive infrastructure. Checkout Issac Arthur videos on orbital rings.

Just read what it is. Holy crap, a super orbital cable surrounding the earth holding stationary cables using magnets?

JB needs to realign and decide what it is that he's pursuing.

The current "move industry off planet" goal is nonsensical. I don't know where he picked it up.

Stick with development of lunar/ space resources for lunar and in-space use, if you don't like planets.

[Robotbeat]

I think they’ve softened on that attitude.

[Coastal Ron]

...
I get Asteroid mining for in-space applications, but I don't get "move heavy industries away from earth".  Even with miles long O'Neil cylinders.

I get self-sufficiency where there are basic resources like on a planet or maybe on large asteroids. I can even, if I squat and squint and om and ignore entropy, maybe accept self-sufficiency on something like an O'Neil cylinder.

But I don't get how heavy industry can be moved away from Earth and into orbit.

We already import most things from China et al., it's mostly a question of whether importing everything from 'Space China et al.' will ever be technologically and economically comparable.

Our modern world has always relied on the ability to move product from one location to another, whether they are perishables or durable goods. Large quantities of products shipped from China is just the latest iteration of that, but it happens globally.

The challenge with moving one particular industry off-world is that unless all of your competitors also move off-world, then the factory in space will always be at a disadvantage. It only works if the factory in space is the only supplier of a particular product, but then it has to be small enough to deliver to Earth (i.e. unlikely you would be building large aircraft or ships in space for use on Earth).

Food production would likely never move to space, since Earth as it exists today has virtually unlimited amounts of air and sun, and usually good access to water and soil.

So yeah, not sure what Jeff Bezos intends by moving "some industries" to space...

[sstli2]

There are low energy ways to get into space but they need massive infrastructure. Checkout Issac Arthur videos on orbital rings.

Just read what it is. Holy crap, a super orbital cable surrounding the earth holding stationary cables using magnets?

JB needs to realign and decide what it is that he's pursuing.

The current "move industry off planet" goal is nonsensical. I don't know where he picked it up.

Stick with development of lunar/ space resources for lunar and in-space use, if you don't like planets.

Everything mentioned in this thread is nonsensical. The only thing that makes sense is launching payloads to Earth orbit.

It's a completely arbitrary distinction to say that "in-space manufacturing" is where you draw the line but "Mars colonization" or "lunar resource mining" is not.

A deep space economy isn't happening in my lifetime, and I'm younger than you are.

[catdlr]

There are low energy ways to get into space but they need massive infrastructure. Checkout Issac Arthur videos on orbital rings.

Just read what it is. Holy crap, a super orbital cable surrounding the earth holding stationary cables using magnets?

JB needs to realign and decide what it is that he's pursuing.

The current "move industry off planet" goal is nonsensical. I don't know where he picked it up.

Stick with development of lunar/ space resources for lunar and in-space use, if you don't like planets.

Everything mentioned in this thread is nonsensical. The only thing that makes sense is launching payloads to Earth orbit.

It's a completely arbitrary distinction to say that "in-space manufacturing" is where you draw the line but "Mars colonization" or "lunar resource mining" is not.

A deep space economy isn't happening in my lifetime, and I'm younger than you are.

I'm in the same bucket, and I'm even older than you think—surely future space travelers working on these projects will thank us long dead citizens for our tax money that went into their development.  (NOT!!)

[meekGee]

There are low energy ways to get into space but they need massive infrastructure. Checkout Issac Arthur videos on orbital rings.

Just read what it is. Holy crap, a super orbital cable surrounding the earth holding stationary cables using magnets?

JB needs to realign and decide what it is that he's pursuing.

The current "move industry off planet" goal is nonsensical. I don't know where he picked it up.

Stick with development of lunar/ space resources for lunar and in-space use, if you don't like planets.

Everything mentioned in this thread is nonsensical. The only thing that makes sense is launching payloads to Earth orbit.

It's a completely arbitrary distinction to say that "in-space manufacturing" is where you draw the line but "Mars colonization" or "lunar resource mining" is not.

A deep space economy isn't happening in my lifetime, and I'm younger than you are.

That's patently false.

A Mars colony may not be to your taste, but there's nothing fundamentally nonsensical about it.  You can argue about who's paying for it, but it's wihin the scope of EM or JB's budgets, not to mention governmental ones.

Same with using in-space resources for in-space applications. It's an economics argument if anything, and doesn't require magic.

Moving industry off Earth so Earth is zoned only for residential and light industrial use (Jeff Bezos's sentiment, I'm not making this up) is in a different category. Allow fusion and carbon nanotube tethers and all the money in the world, and still WTF.

[matthewkantar]

At some tipping point manufacturing in space will make sense. Can deliver things like metals by spinning up spheres and dropping em into into shallow water. Where that tipping point may lie is very hard to discern. Cheap launch, capable robotics, politics, inspace propulsion etc make up a very messy matrix.

Musk has been saying “full self driving in a year or so” for 9 years or so. Current product is tele-supervised. They even need drivers in tunnels.  Certain things that seem doable, even to highly informed experts, might not be as easy as they seem.

[SpaceLizard]

Our modern world has always relied on the ability to move product from one location to another, whether they are perishables or durable goods. Large quantities of products shipped from China is just the latest iteration of that, but it happens globally.

The challenge with moving one particular industry off-world is that unless all of your competitors also move off-world, then the factory in space will always be at a disadvantage. It only works if the factory in space is the only supplier of a particular product, but then it has to be small enough to deliver to Earth (i.e. unlikely you would be building large aircraft or ships in space for use on Earth).

Food production would likely never move to space, since Earth as it exists today has virtually unlimited amounts of air and sun, and usually good access to water and soil.

So yeah, not sure what Jeff Bezos intends by moving "some industries" to space...

My interpretation is along the lines of moving all large scale resource extraction and processes that produce nasty pollutants off Earth and restricting those activities on Earth to no more than artisanal scale. Need 150 tons of lithium? Then you better source it and process it someplace not here. A sort of planetary scale NIMBYism... But in a good way?

[meekGee]

At some tipping point manufacturing in space will make sense. Can deliver things like metals by spinning up spheres and dropping em into into shallow water. Where that tipping point may lie is very hard to discern. Cheap launch, capable robotics, politics, inspace propulsion etc make up a very messy matrix.

Musk has been saying “full self driving in a year or so” for 9 years or so. Current product is tele-supervised. They even need drivers in tunnels.  Certain things that seem doable, even to highly informed experts, might not be as easy as they seem.

How do predictions of self driving figure into this?

Are you trying to force an OT mod purge?

Focus please.

His is BO general discussion.  "Move heavy industries off Earth" as a stated goal of BO. Competing goals in space exploration are relevant as direct comparisons.  AI and self driving cars are just orthogonal and OT.

Seems to me like lately, the folks who don't like the Mars colony idea adopted the line of "well all those goals are not practical", no longer trying to show that the LEO economy is viable but just trashing all goals equally. It's a worrying trend.

I'm calling BS on the specific part quoted above - given that the output of raw materials heavy industries on Earth is Billions of tons per year.

Even allowing sourcing he material "for free" on asteroids, you simply can't bring it down.

Dropping metal spheres onto shallow water (as you suggested) is insane. Either a 1000-ton imact every 10 seconds continuously, or 1,000,000-ton impactor several times a day. How is that solving pollution?

The whole idea is not "100 year distant" or 1000 - it's just a straight forward losing proposition. It's easier to grow civilizations in other places than it is to supply an entire planet's industrial input from orbit.

[Coastal Ron]

At some tipping point manufacturing in space will make sense. Can deliver things like metals by spinning up spheres and dropping em into into shallow water. Where that tipping point may lie is very hard to discern. Cheap launch, capable robotics, politics, inspace propulsion etc make up a very messy matrix.

"Mining" is different than "processing", and processing is generally different than "manufacturing". I think we all see a future in space mining, and it would make sense to do some processing of that material in space too.

However here on Earth, generally you don't put a factory out in the middle of nowhere, you put it next to a supply of support - people, supply chain, power, distribution, etc. And in some cases you put a factory close to your customers, or at least close enough given the transportation systems available.

Just as the biggest source of demand for water on the Moon will be Moon-related, the biggest source of demand for raw material and finished material will be for customers that are doing things in space. So that could be building the infrastructure that is needed for humanity to expand out into space, but I don't expect much of an export market to Earth.

Musk has been saying “full self driving in a year or so” for 9 years or so. Current product is tele-supervised. They even need drivers in tunnels.  Certain things that seem doable, even to highly informed experts, might not be as easy as they seem.

Yes, vision is one thing, but reality can be far different.

[meekGee]

Our modern world has always relied on the ability to move product from one location to another, whether they are perishables or durable goods. Large quantities of products shipped from China is just the latest iteration of that, but it happens globally.

The challenge with moving one particular industry off-world is that unless all of your competitors also move off-world, then the factory in space will always be at a disadvantage. It only works if the factory in space is the only supplier of a particular product, but then it has to be small enough to deliver to Earth (i.e. unlikely you would be building large aircraft or ships in space for use on Earth).

Food production would likely never move to space, since Earth as it exists today has virtually unlimited amounts of air and sun, and usually good access to water and soil.

So yeah, not sure what Jeff Bezos intends by moving "some industries" to space...

My interpretation is along the lines of moving all large scale resource extraction and processes that produce nasty pollutants off Earth and restricting those activities on Earth to no more than artisanal scale. Need 150 tons of lithium? Then you better source it and process it someplace not here. A sort of planetary scale NIMBYism... But in a good way?

But what we need is the combined mass of ships and cars and batteries and laptops and buildings and bridges and chemicals produced on Earth. That's not some random 150 tons of Lithium.

That's the stated goal. I'll also accept moving 50% of said total.  It doesn't matter. Show me in broad strokes how this can be achieved.

I've heard this goal in passing several times but never stopped to think just how empty it is in comparison with others.  It stands alone.

[Coastal Ron]

...
So yeah, not sure what Jeff Bezos intends by moving "some industries" to space...

My interpretation is along the lines of moving all large scale resource extraction and processes that produce nasty pollutants off Earth and restricting those activities on Earth to no more than artisanal scale. Need 150 tons of lithium? Then you better source it and process it someplace not here. A sort of planetary scale NIMBYism... But in a good way?

However here on Earth we use not only power to refine minerals, but air and chemicals. Air is "free" here, but in very short supply in space, and chemicals used for refining here on Earth are in relative abundance here on Earth, but for now at least, hard to find in space.

It is going to be a very iterative process to start up mineral extraction and refining in space, for a number of reasons, including:

- Our ability to find sources of supply out in space.

- The time it takes to get to a source of supply.

- The time, material, and money it will take to develop new processing methods in space to replace the methods we use on Earth.

- Figuring out the source of demand for the material being mined, and creating markets for them.

The common thread in all of this is time and money, and while time may be a concern for Jeff Bezos, money will be too.

[SpaceLizard]

All this makes me think Bezo's money would better spent finding zero-environmental-impact ways to extract and process resources then... Otherwise we are doomed to repeat the same trail of destruction which got us to our current technological pinnacle and associated environmental consequences...

[meekGee]

Maybe, here's a dispassionate view:

Any civilization will have an environmental footprint.  That's not immediately a bad thing.

The main critical failure we have so far on Earth is greenhouse gas emissions.

We could have avoided that decades ago with nuclear power, but through the combined greed and stupidity of the major political parties world wide, we didn't.

That solution didn't require anyone's billions, it was right there. But even if we haven't crossed a climate tip-over point yet, given that we're still going full-tilt in the wrong direction, accept it as a given that we will, and there will be a bleak period in our future. How bleak and when - nobody really knows.  Me, I'm on the pessimistic side, but it's just, like, my opinion.

I'll submit that due to human nature and societal structure, this script was and is unavoidable.

Enter EM and JB.

JB wants to un-pollute Earth.
EM wants to start another one (or several)

JB wants to make Earth idyllic, and EM wants to make imperfect backups. (Familiar pattern huh...)

The approaches are not mutually exclusive, but I'll submit that EM's path has a feasible technological roadmap (as is being followed) that's measured in tens of years and thousands of Starships, while JB's path is not even wrong, it just doesn't add up to a roadmap.

You can do a colony with chemical propulsion, solar cells, heavy equipment. It's not magic, just a large project.

You can't today even draw a picture of what un-polluting Earth looks like.  That's even beyond the picture of how to build billion-ton O'Neil cylinders. We don't know how.  It's not a matter of "we need more Starships".

[SpaceLizard]

Maybe, here's a dispassionate view:

Any civilization will have an environmental footprint.  That's not immediately a bad thing.

The main critical failure we have so far on Earth is greenhouse gas emissions.

We could have avoided that decades ago with nuclear power, but through the combined greed and stupidity of the major political parties world wide, we didn't.

That solution didn't require anyone's billions, it was right there. But even if we haven't crossed a climate tip-over point yet, given that we're still going full-tilt in the wrong direction, accept it as a given that we will, and there will be a bleak period in our future. How bleak and when - nobody really knows.  Me, I'm on the pessimistic side, but it's just, like, my opinion.

I'll submit that due to human nature and societal structure, this script was and is unavoidable.

Enter EM and JB.

JB wants to un-pollute Earth.
EM wants to start another one (or several)

JB wants to make Earth idyllic, and EM wants to make imperfect backups.

The approaches are not mutually exclusive, but I'll submit that EM's path has a feasible technological roadmap (as is being followed) that's measured in 10s of years and thousands of Starships, while JB's path is not even wrong, it just doesn't add up to a roadmap.

You can do a colony with chemical propulsion, solar cells, heavy equipment. It's not magic, just a large project.

You can't today even draw a picture of what un-polluting Earth looks like.  That's even beyond the picture of how to build billion-ton O'Neil cylinders. We don't know how.  It's not a matter of "we need more Starships".

As a stupid greedy human, I'd like both EM's and JB's paths to be feasible and successful...