The deep sea is filled with treasure, but it comes at a price | Hacker News Reader

The deep sea is filled with treasure, but it comes at a price

newyorker.com

42 pointsthunderbong39 comments

I am personally conflicted on this. Our current society needs resources that have to come from somewhere. There is a 'perfect world' where we recycle so perfectly that we don't need to mine more but the technology, and social will, to make that a practical reality just aren't here. So, do we mine on land or take from the sea? Both destroy ecosystems. Probably the best route is to start small and increase as we understand more. The reality of what will happen though is likely to be that we will start small and then massively increase capacity to the limit of regulation.

> Our current society needs resources that have to come from somewhere.

If we ban advertising, suddenly our current society needs only a fraction of the resources ...

Not going to happen as such. Has been around for several thousand years, so people on the whole don't seem to mind too much.

Also, very unclear how much advertising (in narrow sense) contributes towards consumption.

Not to mention that we need to clearly define what we're talking about when we say "advertising". Do influencers flaunting new outfits every video count? People who post intentionally lavish lifestyles on Instagram? There are studies proving both of those make users envious and, most likely, spur purchases. But you can't really ban people from showing off.

Everyone talks about asteroid mining, but what about mining the asteroids that have already accumulated on the moon?

Afaik the problem is getting resources back to Earth, but it seems more plausible to me that we could refine more repeatably on the Moon vs. on specific asteroids.

What am I missing?

You need less Δv, on average, to mine near-Earth asteroids, than launching resources off the Moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTAxjJ6KY7M

Exactly. The moon has a gravity well, and while it's a sixth of Earth's, it would still take a lot of energy.

Plus, there's the public relations of mining the moon, versus mining asteroids.

Perfect use for a system like SpinLaunch: - no fuel, just solar energy - the Moon always faces the Earth with the same side - no air to create drag - no need for huge burts of energy - a block of minerals does not mind extreme g-forces

Unlike on earth, a space elevator is actually feasible on the Moon with current technology.

Moon has no atmosphere, so all required Δv can be applied at launching point. It's much much harder to land on Moon, than to launch from Moon.

Lunar escape velocity is still pretty high. 2.4km/s compared to earth’s 11.2km/s.

However, there is a gun that can fire projectiles at 8km/s so it’s possible.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/white-sands/two-...

the fuckin regolith! It’s the worst. It will destroy anything you build. It’s like sand but every grain has been personally sharpened by the devil

That’s a lovely description of regolith. I’m stealing it :D

The moon is hostile to life on a level that humans can’t instinctively grasp. It’s a reminder of what a perfect cradle of life Earth is.

Well, you've gotta make a refinery on the moon, for starters.

Maybe in a few decades, that will be feasible, with lowered marginal costs for doing anything other than floating around in space. But until then, doing pretty much everything is prohibitively expensive, so asking "why not just refine it there?" is putting the cart before the horse.

I wonder if we just went down we might find infinite resources.

Instead of flying 250k miles to the moon, just drill 1 mile downwards.

Plenty of mines are deeper than a mile, several deeper than two miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deepest_mines

It gets somewhat hot, I've heard. The Iceland Deep Drilling Project went a bit deeper (still not 3 miles) and hit magma, which is more interesting as an energy source than as a mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland_Deep_Drilling_Project

#BoreholesIHaveKnown

The potash mine under the city I live in is 1600 meters deep.

For some small finite sub part of infinite .. maybe.

Even if we allow concave Hohlwelttheorie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth#Concave_Hollow_Ea...

https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:14770298

the "infinite resources" aren't realisable due to asymptopic hyperbolic geometry.

The moon doesn't have good stuff.

The attractive thing about asteroids is they are made of stuff we want, rare metals etc.

Isn’t the moon full of craters from asteroids landing on it?

Maybe, but so is the earth

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-we-mine-the-moon-for-resource...

If there are at all any economical amount of metals on the moon then you would either have to build a smelter on the moon or you would need to transport an enormous amount of soil to earth (with just some tiny percent of metal content).

Even with a smelter on the moon, the amount and weight of the metal to transport to earth would be enormous.

And just imagine all the equipment needed. Huge dumper truck, haulers, grinding machines etc. For underground mining you would need concrete etc.

It would require so much fuel and energy to transport the vessels back and forth to make it completely pointless.

This is a great use case for von Neumann self-replicating machines. Little self-replicating space robots that fashion aerodynamic payloads and fire them to a small receiving site on the Earth. Just remember to include a stop signal, lest they consume in an unstoppable, exponential way.

Made me think of this excellent short movie "Solstice - 5"

https://youtu.be/cntb3wcZdTw?si=B7RfsQpVG6QvUQCg

(2021). Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27543323

Interesting that the discussion them was mainly focussed on the feasibility in comparison to asteroid mining.

Is that still a reasonable proposition in the mid- long-term future, or was everyone’s imaginations running a bit wild during the COVID lockdowns of mid-2021?

https://web.archive.org/web/20240309045142/https://www.newyo...

Deep sea mining at several atmospheres, or asteroid mining at <1 atmosphere? Easy answer.

Deep sea of course. How many people have been on the moon and how many in the Marian trench?

Twelve and twenty-seven respectively. Not clear what that proves.

Proves that sea floor is much more accessible than moon surface.

Even if it's double the people, when framed as how tiny a fraction of the population it is, I do not thing it tells us that it that more accessible.

Divide both by a few billion (doesn’t even matter exactly) and they’re the same.

I hope you never get jury duty.

No people have climbed out of their vehicle in the Marian trench to be able to manipulate or build something with their (heavily gloved) hands.

I’m afraid that deep sea mining operations are motivated by greed. It will not be easy to get sustainable solutions out of this and not only deep sea creatures will have losses…

Absolute vandalism.

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