10-03-2003 20:58									#91
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Um, Drogue, I was sorta kidding

As for asteroid mining: by "tear apart" I mean "extract all useful minerals", which would likely be a very carefully performed mining procedure, not taking a starship-class weapon to it and scooping up what's left... and I wouldn't advocate any asteroid mining that could disrupt nearby planets, but would rather be sure that any debris is properly taken care of (although it could probably just keep going with the belt).

	11-03-2003 05:40									#92
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What's wrong with intensive asteroid mining, even if an asteroid is to be destroyed? There are zillions of them and no one is harmed in the process, unless you believe Nature is the sentient being...

	11-03-2003 06:23									#93
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quote: Originally posted by Kirov What's wrong with intensive asteroid mining, even if an asteroid is to be destroyed? There are zillions of them and no one is harmed in the process, unless you believe Nature is the sentient being...

My concern would be asteroid debris from the mining operation contaminating (or otherwise messing up) an inhabited planet, if it's nearby... if it's just a free-floating belt, the only thing to care about is not spraying stuff everywhere such that mining becomes unsafe.

	11-03-2003 10:39									#94
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quote: Well, I don't see why we should use up the resources of yet another Planet just to further our aims. These resources are finite, and need to be preserved.

Why? They do no-one any good just sitting there. Efficient use of resources is one thing, not using them at all is quite another.

quote: we use all the fossil fuels, core heat, etc. from the Asteroid, then our future is in jeopody (when it runs out).

Hardly. Just find another one.

quote: No it isn't. We can use renewable energy. Not everything can be made renewable. But why use fossil fuels when we have synthetic version, wind, solar, wave, tidal and hydroelectric power? We can not harm Planet and still live. Many billions of other species do it, why should we be the only ones to buck the trend? We can do *some* damage, and still have a sustainable society. Do we want humans to still be here in 10,000, 100,000, 1 million, etc. years? I do, and for that, we must have a sustainable way of life.

Just think about it for a bit; the amount of resources in this solar system alone willl be easily anough to sustain us for thousands of years, by which time we will be able to move on elsewhere, or for that matter will no longer need them regardless.

And, of coruse, you seem to be ignorign the fact that asteroid mining causes no damage to the environemnt, as asteroids don't have environments.

	11-03-2003 18:27									#95
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Something I'd like to toss out... the star we orbit around puts out *oodles* (yes, that is the scientific term ) of energy all the time, and isn't likely to run out any time soon... if we can collect enough of it, though that's far from easy, we could have the energy to do pretty much everything we need given the proper tech. I'm pretty sure we could even make matter from the energy if we really needed to (not likely, just take existing matter and use nano stuff and whatnot to transform it)...

So I don't think we're exactly hurting on the "local" resources side of things.

	12-03-2003 11:48									#96
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Precisely (and we could, theoretically, convert energy into matter, it would just take huge amounts of energy to do so; refer to 'e=mc^2' to work out a figure).

	13-03-2003 07:13									#97
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Fellow Akirians. I shall be away from like now early Mar 13th until late March 16th
I haven't time left to get the region orders in. Most were common sense except the request to erase Borehole nw of Cyclops. the secons was to ask that mining platform NW of Epirirto del aqua be given over, even for a while, to EDA.

In the event that an emergency arises between now and turnchat, consult Drogue and Kirov (excluding boreholes). back late 16th March