Asteroind Mining: Good Idea or Bad?



You can visit guest blogger Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs 

After spending a year gazing at Vesta , NASA's Dawn spacecraft was set to cruise toward the most massive space rock in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — a voyage that will take nearly three years. 

Dawn slipped into orbit last year around Vesta — about the size of Arizona — and beamed back stunning close-ups of the lumpy surface. Its next destination is the Texas-size Ceres, also known as a dwarf planet (folks, these are some very large pieces of rock!!!). 

Vesta and Ceres are the largest bodies in the asteroid belt littered with chunks of rocks that never quite bloomed into full-fledged planets. As cosmic time capsules, they're ideal for scientists trying to piece together how Earth and the other planets formed and evolved. 

This Being Said: A group of wealthy, adventurous entrepreneurs announced a new venture called Planetary Resources, Inc., which plans to send swarms of robots to space to scout asteroids for precious metals and set up mines to bring resources back to Earth, in the process adding trillions of dollars to the global GDP, helping ensure humanity’s prosperity and paving the way for the human settlement in space. 

“The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system,” said Eric Anderson, who founded the commercial space tourism company Space Adventures. 

Nearly 9,000 asteroids larger than 150 feet in diameter orbit near the Earth. Some could contain as much platinum as is mined in an entire year on Earth, making them potentially worth several billion dollars each. 

The new company is backed by Google’s CEO Larry Page and executive chairman Eric Schmidt, former Microsoft chief architect Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot Jr. The venture also counts on filmmaker James Cameron, former astronaut Tom Jones, former JPL engineer Chris Lewicki, and planetary scientist Sara Seager as advisors.

Platinum Alone Is Worth:  around $23,000 a pound — nearly the same as gold. Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion. One possibility might be to find a useful asteroid and push it closer to Earth. A fairly low-power solar-electric ion engine could nudge a hunk of rock into orbit around the Earth, effectively creating a small second moon that could be easily accessed. 

Asteroids contain water that can be used for drinking and broken into its constituents. Oxygen is valuable for life support in space-based habitats, while liquid oxygen and hydrogen are both used to produce rocket fuel. Having a “gas station” in space could help enable missions to Mars and beyond. Such a refueling depot might allow people to permanently live and work in space, another goal of Planetary Resources. 

Question: Do you think its a good idea to mine asteroids by pulling these monstrosities into our orbit? Better speak up now or forever hold your peace because it's probably going to happen. 

 Reference

Storyteller's Perspective: 5 Things a Storyteller Can Do for You, and 5 Things They Won't

Following in the line of my previous post, here is another handy list about the little-known profession of storytelling.
Let's say you located a storyteller, and you would really, really like to throw some money at them in exchange for their visit to your school / library / museum / festival / theater / children's event. There is a problem, though: Many times organizers are not quite clear on what a storyteller is, and what it is that we do - or don't do. Not making things clear in advance can result in awkward conversations, mutual annoyance, and toddlers having uncontrollable pillowfights on the storytelling stage.
In order to make sailing the ocean of story smoother, here is a handy list.

STORYTELLER'S DON'T...

1. Babysit.
This is important, you guys. Do NOT expect the storyteller to watch the kids while you walk off to have a beer at the festival tent. Storytelling is performance and entertainment, not a child care service. Most of are are not even qualified for that.

2. Train your students.
Don't take a storyteller into your classroom and then sit down in the back to grade papers / read the newspaper. If your students are disruptive, it is not the storyteller's job to break up the story in order to keep regulating them. Do the courtesy of helping to create a classroom environment that allows for the best possible storytelling experience.

3. Work for free.
Okay, so sometimes we do. On very select occasions. But never assume we do it for free just because we enjoy what we do.

4. Do stand-up.
Some of us are funny. A lot of us are funny. Some of our stories are funny. That, however, is still not the same as stand-up comedy. Stories require longer attention and investment from the audience. If you plan on having three hundred mostly drunk people in a hotel restaurant with music in the background, storytelling might not be your best bet.

5. Do background noise.
This is essentially the same as above. If you have people playing cards / having conversations / filling out raffle forms / getting their nails painted, invite someone who does music. There is nothing more annoying that being delegated to being a background radio channel at an event and having to speak your stories while people have their backs turned to you.

Okay, so these five probably sounded outrageous and self-explanatory, but you would be surprised what storytellers run into every so often. Better safe than sorry.
And now for the more entertaining part:

STORYTELLERS DO...

1. Work with adults.
While most of our invitations are for schools and children's events, we do work with teen and adult audiences. In fact, there are many stories that are too long, too serious or too complicated for children. It is always a special pleasure to have engaged grown-up audiences.

2. Educate.
We like telling stories, and we like talking about our stories (yeah, I established that before, didn't I). Storytellers work well with school and library programs because we bring a lot of extra knowledge along with our tales. Storytellers are not just pure entertainment. We also educate and question. We do breakout sessions, classroom discussions, and workshops. A lot of us are educators by origin. Do ask.

3. Adapt.
Ever thought "too bad there are no stories that would go with this theme?" Stop thinking that. Storytellers have vast repertoires and it is part of our job to seek out new stories and new topics. However outrageous your theme for Summer Reading Program or history class is, ask a storyteller if they can work with it. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

4. Travel.
We do. Quite often. You might have to cover the cost, but we will come to you and bring all our stories. Don't let distance stop you if there is a storyteller you really want to hear.

5. Return.
Storytelling is not a one-shot show. Most of us have enough stories and themes to work with for years and years in the same place. And the more we return to the same audience, the more we learn about them, and the better we get at picking the right stories for them. Just because you heard a storyteller once, doesn't mean you heard it all.

In case you are interested, try finding your local storytelling organization. For the USA, you can search through the National Storytelling Network. For Europe, you can look for the Federation for European Storytelling. For the rest of the world, search for storytelling in your respective languages, or look for Facebook groups! There are a lot of us out there.

Cheers!

Csenge (@TarkabarkaHolgy) at
The Multicolored Diary - Adventures in Storytelling
MopDog - The crazy thing about Hungarians...

September Wrap Up

When I was writing Double Negative, I started researching reading and literacy programs. What I discovered made me very nervous about the future of our country. Our low literacy and illiteracy rates are shocking.

Here are two stats from literacy advocacy groups that made me sit up and pay attention.

• 33% of the population in Los Angeles 
• 25% of the population in New York 

have been identified as being low literate or illiterate.

So when I learned that September was National Literacy Month (NLM), I decided to try something to promote literacy awareness, and I targeted writers as participants. Since I didn't know if this would work, I started small. Here's what I did.

• I created a List on Twitter @WeWrite4U_Lit, telling about NLM.
• I wrote 12 Tweets (three sets) for those interested to copy and paste, and I supplied sources.
• I posted a Linky on my blog just so I knew who would be interested.

This is what happened.

• 18 people signed up
• We generated a lot of (I couldn't keep up with them, so I don't have a count) of Tweets and RT's
• Some writers became very creative and Tweeted with the @WeWrite4U_Lit and a free book link
• On International Literacy Day, we joined the #selfielit event and posted selfies as we read books. This turned into a nice promotional bonus for several writers.

For the first time out, I think this was a success. I loved that we were using Social Media for such a positive and important cause. I plan to do it again next year with some changes based on what I learned. 

And so that's a wrap for September. It's been a hot but glorious summer. I hate to see the sun move low in the sky and the days grow short, but it's part of the cycle of things. I know fall will bring its own joys and rewards.