• _pi@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    If you think corporations are going to outlay the capital to develop a realistic extra-planetary mining technology soup to nuts and in comparable time to public investment, you should be licking Elon Musk’s boots.

    Let them burn their cash on r&d

    Damn if only we could use that cash for something else.

    • tee9000@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      You cant mine without reliable spaceflight, which is whats being proven now. Obviously spacex’s cash would not be used to buy everyone dinner if they stopped spaceflight operations, so im not sure how your take is in the realm of reality. If you want to attribute spacex’s work to elon alone then thats your business.

      • _pi@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        You cant mine without reliable spaceflight, which is whats being proven now.

        The following interplanetary flights to Mars: Sojourner (1997), Spirit (2004–2010), Opportunity (2004–2018), Curiosity (2012–present), Perseverance (2021-Present), and Zhurong (2021-2022) weren’t enough to “prove out reliable space flight” for you?

        You need MarsCoin to do it?

        • lad@programming.dev
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          3 days ago

          I would argue that you mentioned events that were rare and much prepared (also omit failed attempts), while what is required for any resource extraction must be mass-available. On the other hand, I don’t think any space resource mining will be reasonable, as I expect it to require more resources than provide.