Robert Zubrin: the importance of space for mankind.

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If the focus is the Middle East maybe they will go to Mars. Better to nuke Mars rather than the Middle East and a Mars mission will get rid of the entire regions nuclear weapons.

as i recall there is quite the booty on them islands in the black.

if it werent for the logistical hell of it one could actually just dump all the asteroids you want to mine (break them up if theyre too big)
bombard the surface of mars for half a century with them instead of nukes (though we might as well use them, either as fuel or as large mushroomy heating elements)
the resulting mash of heavy metals (providing there is kept some control of the impact energy) would have quite the yield i imagine.

in the process one would have thickened the martian atmosphere by a smidgen, hopefully enough to start some bacteria off in a vague attempt at localized (read isolated) terraforming,

the purpose of which would be to sustain the colonies and worker towns at least partially with oxygen, later maybe even food (dunno how much bacterial waste would need to accumulate in the soil for plant growth)

as far as gemstones go, they dont really have a practical aplication

the value of most is entirely arbitrary, even more when you look at true roughs, my next door neighbour dug out a couple carats of cloudy emeralds form a single rough, not true eye catchers but they look nice enough,

opalescent stones however are extremely beutifull in their complexity, unfortunately you need a biosphere for them to form.

where was i ?? nvm.

true but you would essentially cut down huge costs of zero g mining and if they are broken up sufficiently they could be diffused over a larger crater to catch debris,

ice asteroids would be required for water at some point or the other, water would in my eyes be the largest obstacle to sustainable life in space, its scarce on mars.

well then, off to bed methinks, work in 10 hours and im running on my 30th.
luckilæy im almost done migrating those horrible small buisness servers, man that console is finicky about how it wants things done.
you cant even rename a specific OU to a specific name as it requires the standard MyBusiness tag for the console to search for, gargh ,

space mining will involve setting off nuclear charges rather than dynamite.

Loved the video (watched the second one); great idea and I think Zubrin may have perhaps nailed the biggest challenge: getting a bunch of bureaucrats to make this much sense.

I'm curious about the injection-stage induced artificial gravity as well. People have been talking about centrifuges all this time and I'm curious to how dragging a cone effectively yields an effect to people inside a vessel (I'm sure its right, I'm seeing it suggested in other places, but I want to try and get my head around it).

Centrifugal force is not gravity however, I wonder if very long term studies (10-15 years or more of CF as opposed to "real" gravity) will show significant differences.

Note that oxyliques, panclastites and even black powder contain an oxidizer, LOX, N2O4 and KNO3, respectively, thus all 3, and basically any non-thermobaric explosive, would work in space. Do not forget that naval torpedoes' warheads use of conventional, if modified, explosives, that in the late 19th century the German Empire was testing torpedoes with panclastite warheads and that all chemical rockets operate on the same basic principle as chemical explosives: An oxidizer and 1 or more propellants. How do you think underwater firearms operate?