this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Feels like we’d need a very clean way to launch and land enough robots to-from space to iterate for it to have much less environmental impact.
Like a space elevator basically.
You don’t need to land the vehicle with the cargo.
Just slow the cargo down in orbit, maybe slap some heat shielding made from space mined resources on it, and then let the cargo drop. The deorbit stage can stay in earth orbit and wait for the next piece of cargo to come in.
Realistically, once we start seriously mining in space, the only thing that needs to be launched from earth would be human consumables, like minerals for growing crops, preserved foods, and medications that require resources only found on earth.
Moving manufacturing up to space after the mining would seriously cut down on the cost of operations. There’s little reason to drop resources on earth, when you could sell things like refined metals, water, and fuel to other space based companies at a premium, just so they don’t need to launch it themselves.