The asteroid belt is roughly 30% metallic, 50% chondrite or stoney, and the rest are water/gas ice balls with some dirt... and average size is estimated to be about 10-20m in diameter. So, we could mine the asteroid belt, use the stone asteroids for 'fuel' for the mass drivers, metallic ones for resources and send the ice balls to Mars.
That'd work. The asteroid belt is conveniently close to Mars.
Which is why there's usually a Belter-Martian split, because the Belters predictably get tired of working so someone else can have a nice place to live.
Yeahhh.. pretty much. I mean, Mars is a shite hole, and it's the bright-lights big city to most Belters...but then by that point anywhere where you don't have to pay to breath and water isn't rationed by default is going to seem like paradise.
They're going to have to watch that dynamic in the future, otherwise the Belters and Martians might start throwing rocks sun-wards at Earth. After all, they have the high 'ground' so to speak.
>> Yeahhh.. pretty much. I mean, Mars is a shite hole, and it's the bright-lights big city to most Belters...but then by that point anywhere where you don't have to pay to breath and water isn't rationed by default is going to seem like paradise. <<
That depends what stage the development is at and how much effort people put into sprucing up the space they have. If it's a colonial situation like usual, that creates an inherent conflict of interest with predictably bad results. But if people are free to homestead on their own, without someone on Earth (or later, Mars) creaming off the benefits of their hard work, then sometimes you get a string of little topias ranging from bad to good to really great.
>> They're going to have to watch that dynamic in the future, otherwise the Belters and Martians might start throwing rocks sun-wards at Earth. After all, they have the high 'ground' so to speak.<<
That also happens pretty often. It's easy to predict and straightforward to avoid, but humans keep wanting to take advantage of each other, which makes actually avoiding these problems more difficult.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-06-27 07:43 pm (UTC)The asteroid belt is roughly 30% metallic, 50% chondrite or stoney, and the rest are water/gas ice balls with some dirt... and average size is estimated to be about 10-20m in diameter. So, we could mine the asteroid belt, use the stone asteroids for 'fuel' for the mass drivers, metallic ones for resources and send the ice balls to Mars.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-06-27 08:27 pm (UTC)Which is why there's usually a Belter-Martian split, because the Belters predictably get tired of working so someone else can have a nice place to live.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-06-27 08:35 pm (UTC)Yeahhh.. pretty much. I mean, Mars is a shite hole, and it's the bright-lights big city to most Belters...but then by that point anywhere where you don't have to pay to breath and water isn't rationed by default is going to seem like paradise.
They're going to have to watch that dynamic in the future, otherwise the Belters and Martians might start throwing rocks sun-wards at Earth. After all, they have the high 'ground' so to speak.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2021-06-27 09:26 pm (UTC)That depends what stage the development is at and how much effort people put into sprucing up the space they have. If it's a colonial situation like usual, that creates an inherent conflict of interest with predictably bad results. But if people are free to homestead on their own, without someone on Earth (or later, Mars) creaming off the benefits of their hard work, then sometimes you get a string of little topias ranging from bad to good to really great.
>> They're going to have to watch that dynamic in the future, otherwise the Belters and Martians might start throwing rocks sun-wards at Earth. After all, they have the high 'ground' so to speak.<<
That also happens pretty often. It's easy to predict and straightforward to avoid, but humans keep wanting to take advantage of each other, which makes actually avoiding these problems more difficult.