From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Jun 18 1997 - 20:22:53 MDT
Damien Broderick writes:
> I've already staked my claim to 16 Psyche! I like its 5 year orbit.
Oh, I haven't really picked one yet. I figure at the beginning minimizing
delta-vee while still getting yourself to a rock with sufficient volatiles
will be the main thing, but later on... well, most of those big rocks out
toward Jupiter have low albedos and spectroscopic signatures indicating
polymerized formaldehyde and other organics, and Drexler hasn't said
anything to make me think that carbon atoms aren't going to continue to
be in hot demand. ;)
Something in orbit around Jupiter might be nice too. Nick Szabo made a
nice argument (involving the extraction of energy from Jupiter's intense,
rotating, magnetic field) that Jupiter may well be the industrial capital
of the solar system for a long time to come. Sure, you can get more
energy by hugging up to Sol, but the inner Solar System lacks volatiles,
which means it lacks carbon, which means you have to import a lot of mass.
(Interested parties are referred to Nick's essay:
http://www.best.com/~szabo/comet.mining.html )
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ expectation foils perception -pcd
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