At the moment it costs something like $8,000 per pound of material to be transported to the ISS, which translates to $17,600 per kg.
Few years ago, someone calculated the volume of a Coriolis starport and came up with around 2.8 gigatons. [(Link here](https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/coriolis-station-dimensions-and-mass-recalculated.389655/).)
***So just to get the materials up there based on current pricing, you're looking at $17.6 quadrillion.*** That obviously doesn't include the cost of getting the required manpower up there to construct it (or the infrastructure created up there for them to live and exist within while work is ongoing) or the cost of developing the various technologies we currently don't have yet.
Remember watching a documentary which mentioned an asteroid in the belt which had minerals worth enough to make every human on earth an instant billionaire. However, the documentary goes on to say that mining it and bringing the minerals to earth would make no economic sense and would tank the global economy. So more likely the minerals would be refined in space and used there.
Asteroid Psyche - believed to be a residual planetary core from the early days of the solar system. Almost pure metal. There is a probe going there soon!
We used to think that it may have been the initial formation of a planetary core, but recent studies [have lead us to believe otherwise, because it's less metal-rich and more porous than originally thought.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375145/)
That's part of the reason we're visiting it in 2019. Still really cool stuff.
I am speaking to you from the future year of 2023 to tell you that we did not, in fact, go to 16 Psyche in 2019. BTW buckle up because the next few years are going to be a wild ride for the global economy!
Issue: if everyone's a millionaire, nobody's a millionaire. After a period of instability, everything would cost way more.
Have fun spending thousands of dollars on an apple.
you're missing the point, post-scarcity means that the needs of everybody are fulfilled, be it by AI, Automation, Aliens or any other singularity event. Capitalism and money disappear
People always want more, so even if all material things were satisfied, we’d find new ways to create have and have-nots.
Favourite example is the Eldar in WH40K… they went down some very base and frankly disturbing routes.
I mean.. so is post scarcity lol.
If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty, a utopia like that’ll probably lead to a behavioural sink.
We’re already seeing that trend with the heavily industrialised countries - birth rates are declining, social withdrawal etc. where resources are more abundant as opposed to newly industrialised ones.
I don’t understand the sarcasm, we are already on our way to uncontrolled population growth with very few floating at the top hoarding everything.
What so wrong thinking about *unlimited* ressources and energy that would allow us to transcend current economics?
Population growth is rapidly declining, and you can't "hoard" money. You just make more. Everyone on earth is far richer than they have ever been before. Never has a smaller percentage of humans died of starvation, never have humans had so much material wealth and never has there been a lower chance of dying by violence.
But unlimited energy would be nice.
>we are already on our way to uncontrolled population growth
And how do you think unlimited resources are gonna affect that? Do you think population is gonna go *down* or something?
Just to interject on this, if something abundant on an asteroid is transported back to earth, that resource is no longer scarce on Earth and therefore completely loses its value. Basic supply & demand.
What isn't free is the vessels that deliver it, the people who work on it, etc.
So the resource inputs drop to too-cheap-to-bill-for costs but the services provided will still be charged.
Raw metal subscription service is where this starts, up to *n*Tonnes a month.
The global economy wouldn't tank. It would just make that resource incredibly abundant and cheap. We would probably see a lot more things made out of it and new technology utilizing the cheap material.
It already being in space would probably make it much cheaper to build things in space. Especially since rockets can bring loads of minerals back down to earth
Let's be realistic for one second here...with that kinda money we ain't buying no island, we buying our own tiny moon and terraforming it. Here's to sunbathing under Jupiter's glow at beach Europa or Io...
Probably not much cheaper because the only people who'd have such unfathomable amounts of wealth to invest in harvesting those belts would want to make back on their investment and probably trillions more on top of that. It certainly wouldn't just be given up for free to build something so grand.
Most likely we wouldn't mine asteroids in the belt, instead a metallic asteroid that passes Earth reasonably close (i.e. the objects that we are closely monitoring because they could hit Earth) could be brought into a stable orbit and mined out there. We have did experiments where we altered asteroid orbits slightly so the technology is already here.
While it would still be tremendously expensive, it would be much cheaper (also more environmental friendly) than launching the materials into space from Earth.
> We have did experiments where we altered asteroid orbits slightly so the technology is already here.
I don't know about that.
There's a big difference between nudging something to make sure it misses Earth by whatever margin versus nudging something at the exact time, in the exact direction, with the exact amount of energy required to put it in a stable orbit.
Not to mention that the objects in question are travelling way too fast to enter low Earth orbit to begin with, so how would we even slow it down enough? That's a whole different ballpark regarding the amount of energy required compared to nudging something.
And then of course we're going to have to keep boosting it to prevent its orbit from decaying for as long as it takes us to mine it. I'm curious how many satellite orbits it would destabilize during that time.
Regarding the mining of the thing, SpaceX's uncrewed Starship is projected to have a maximum payload of 300 metric tonnes, the largest payload we've ever been able to launch into low Earth orbit. It's going to take a good number of those flights just to get the mining supplies up there. And you can't even use the full payload on the way up if you also want to use them to bring stuff back down (assuming you don't want your mined materials to burn up on reentry).
***
TL;DR Orbital mechanics are a pain.
You're not going to bring anything back from orbit to Earth, why would you want to do this when you're building a space station? As I said, the initial costs would be enormous. But once you got a small mining/production system up in space, you can start building more directly in space. (And eventually end up with a Dyson Sphere).
Getting things out of orbit into open space is a much bigger pain than bringing things into orbit.
We wouldn't have to necessarily go to leo, you could use an ion thruster to nudge an asteroid into an orbit that will use a gravity assist around the moon, or if necessary because the asteroid is in a very elliptical orbit we could do multiple gravity assists around earth before capturing it. then mine and construct whatever you want in a high orbit, and if you have a bunch of magnetic material and we develop railguns, we could launch stuff back to earth from the asteroid with only the cost of some electricity and ferromagnetic materials, and whatever material you use for a heat shield. definitely not easy, but doable with some advancements in automated production, more efficient rockets, and some other stuff that i'm probably forgetting.
Dont forget however that space shipping in Elite should be way way cheaper than in reality simply because we have full grown cargo space ships and not onetime use rockets.
There have been calculations in 2012 ([http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to-build-the-death-star/](http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to-build-the-death-star/)) how much it would cost to build a Death Star - it was $852 quadrillion. Ok, Death Star is way bigger (140km across) than Coriolis port, but the material reality would probably be in the similar ball park as of cost-per-kg, transportation and construction. So, scaling those calculations down, might give us a good guess value. And how long it would take if it would have to be build from materials from Earth.
Based on your linked article on Coriolis steel content and comparing that to NASAs Death Star steel content of about a million gigatonnes i.e. about . Assuming linear total cost per tonne in between those two, would end up to about $2400 trillion.
Another thing is that Earths total steel production capacity nowadays ([https://worldsteel.org/steel-topics/statistics/world-steel-in-figures-2022/](https://worldsteel.org/steel-topics/statistics/world-steel-in-figures-2022/)) was about 2 billion tonnes. So, that would theoretically *not* be a bottleneck. But our ability to lift it up onto orbit would most certainly be one. Figures for this, anyone?
Altho, NASA have noted ([https://www.wired.com/2015/12/nasa-death-star-asteroid/](https://www.wired.com/2015/12/nasa-death-star-asteroid/)) that you could considerably save cost by building a station around an asteroid - which is what some stations in Elite have done. Maybe even some Coriolis ports have started out this way - anyone know the details of lore here?
I think conceptually, to even attempt this we would first have to figure out how to get the resources we need from the asteroid belt out at mars.
Imagine, consuming asteroids and belching out metal, the process of cold welding might work to reduce the effort required in making the coriolis, but to do that itself would need a closed sealed habitat to refine and form the metals from the asteroids to avoid them cold welding during those processes.
Its not like the money would disappear. What would happen is it would circulated around and around through citizen's hands and into taxes. When the government pays for the materials, that money has now reentered circulation, and would eventually be taxed again and start the cycle over.
You also wouldn't bring everything up from Earth.
You'd bring up enough hardware to develop a refueling and transportation network, and then start redirecting asteroids.
Alternatively, we could stop pretending money is real and just put efforts toward ensuring our species survival. But then again, I say crazy things when I'm tired and the world is burning.
> So just to get the materials up there based on current pricing, you're looking at $17.6 quadrillion
note that at that scale, it'd make sense to start building other infrastructure first that'd make it cheaper to get things into orbit, like an elevator.
Realistically it'd be the launch costs of getting foundries and manufacturing set up in orbit, but that's also an astronomical (pun intended) cost. We *have* the technology for orbital manufacturing, we just haven't implemented it. Might be reason to do it soon enough, but there hasn't been so far because all the uses of the items manufactured are on Earth. Once we have a significant presence in orbit, though, suddenly there are manufactured goods that never have to enter an atmosphere.
So yeah, launch costs of setting up the infrastructure, then semi-normal building costs. So a truly absurd amount, but realistically nowhere near the 17.6 quadrillion figure. There's no way we'd build a Coriolis piecemeal from launched parts.
Okay but hear me out, let's assume reduced costs with Starship and we assume that humanoid robotics helps augment the manpower greatly for construction, okay... now let's reduce the size of the station by 10x because let's face it, we don't have huge ships yet.
Now that? That's attainable in the next 10-15 years (completed), honestly.
There would be an economy of scale which would reduce this price, but more importantly, I think any project like this would only become possible after we have automated off-planet mining and construction.
Its also worth considering the costs are dictated by the concept of earth-to-space manufacturing of orbital stations. By the time humanity can build 2.8 gigaton space stations the more pheasable and more practical way of material processing would revolve around asteroids or pre-existing orbital materials which would considerably gouge the time and price. 17.7qd is still pretty impressive though.
Hmm... maybe the costs of the ISS divided by a factor of thousands?
*Plus*.... Several hundreds of millions **more** to apply proper signs so that people can actually find the mailslot! 😁
If you're legitimately having trouble finding the mail slot take your right hand curve your fingers in the same direction the starport is turning. Congratulations, your thumb is now on the side of the mail slot. Works for all stations!
Lmao that’s definitely going to make it easier. If you have the station locked on it has arrows on the little display in your cockpit to the lower left
100% for docking assist for ships like my Anaconda that are annoying to fit through the slot, but don't rob me of my Courier reverse-slot shenanigans :D
Or when you target it. I just press T to target the station and follow the arrows right when leaving supercruise. So I'm already on my way when I can finally ask for docking.
So look at your right hand palm down, and point your thumb out. Now point your 4 fingers in the same direction the station spins. Your right thumb while pointing out will point at the slot.
Or another way, if the station is spinning upwards to you, the slot is on the left like where your thumb would be.
We dont have a launch system cheap enough to bring the mats from earth, or a ISRU to use materials from asteroids.
Its out of our reach.
The best I can give to you is the Inflatable Kid Party Castle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B330
Or a blurry JWST photo: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/vy9x83/coriolis_station_irl/
>ISRU
However, it is feasible that we *could* start extracting resources from the 'roids in a reasonable timeframe if we invested in it... IMHO that would be a far better investment that travelling to the Moon or Mars as it makes no sense to escape a gravity well, and then immediately trap yourself in another...
We *could* prospect 'roids *now*, and start bringing suitable ones closer to earth orbit. The Moon lagrange points would be a good place for extraction, and some kind of mass driver technology (probably nuclear powered) could nudge the 'roid there. Once there, we could start extracting resources... Maybe use solar mirrors for heat and so on. It would have to be mostly robotic. The 'roid relocation would have to be fully robotic.
There are LOTS of problems to overcome, but there is nothing I see that require anything we're not capable of doing today or 'shortly', with the right amount of investment.
We can barely design space suits that allow for more than basic work in space. There's also the issue of heat, with no air you get heat build up pretty fast and the friction from drilling would quickly melt any drill head as the size of the head would need to exceed the material being drilled as to evenly distribute heat.
Water at current isn't an option, nor are something like heat sinks or any other standard means of pulling heat away from equipment like we have on earth.
"Mostly or fully robotic" = No need for spacesuits...
Drilling would not necessarily be needed... A big solar mirror pointed at a metallic rock would eventually melt it. Then you separate the different metals, and then put them in shade to let them radiate heat. For most challenges in this, we already know solutions.
We haven't done it before, but there are no fundamental new technologies required that we can't feasibly imagine at our current tech level.
The only real challenge is money...
Chemically would be one option (it's how you get 99.9% pure metals on Earth), alternatively you could have some two way centrifuge, crazy fast inside one that'd spin enough to simulate gravity, third option would be by melting points, fourth would be electromagnetism, fifth would be centrifuge with electromagnetism.
There are options, and while you don't have gravity in space, you *can* make centrifugal force. Different melting points could be used.
In the start you wouldn't really need it much refined either... You'd mainly use the 'roids for ice and iron (to make up the bulk of whatever you're building). If you're creating a 3 foot thick wall of iron to provide radiation shielding, you don't care that much how pure it is, and you'd try to find a 'roid made mainly of iron which is common.
Build it and cover the inside with a plastic membrane, and you have your basic living structure, and all you need to boost up from earth is the plastic.
I'll add that stopping the spin of an asteroid wouldn't be too hard comparatively, essentially giving you a body that's tidally locked to the sun, and then you could just do stuff on the dark side of it.
Cooling and static build up are the two biggest problems in vacuum. Like you could definitely do something to drain the heat away, on the rock side it'd just dissipate deeper into the rock and eventually radiate out into space, biggest problem would be loss of material due to liquidation followed by it instantly boiling away (can't have liquids in a vacuum), on the drill side you could have some cooling system embedded into it. Static is another problem where that gets freed as X-rays, so you'd need shielding for that and there's not much else you can do aside pressurize the area somehow.
I will bet for Moon cable, like the earth cable to orbit but a lot cheaper, that can be done with keblar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator
Now, we lack most technology, but can be done. The other problem I see is smelting ore without gravity, maybe a centrifugal blast furnace. Lots of small technologies that nobody needed until ED players requested a space station.
>We could prospect 'roids now, and start bringing suitable ones closer to earth orbit.
No, we can't. We can barely even land a robot on an asteroid reliably with our current technology. No matter what people tell you asteroid mining is still very far from our grasp.
That is not true... We can't land a robot on an asteroid reliably now *because of the low investment we're willing to make...*
We could do this within 20 years if we wanted to.
You are way overestimating our progress in working in space and underestimating the difficulties with any form of asteroid mining. Even if we put all our resources into building and testing infrastructure for asteroid mining we are MAYBE 50 years from it being feasible. And that's not counting the year and a half it takes to get an unmanned probe to the asteroid belt, not to mention the amount of time it would take to take samples of the asteroid and determine if it's suitable for mining. Even if we had the technology, you're looking at a minimum of several years of travel and analysis before even determining if it's worth it to send machinery to an asteroid to mine stuff.
Editing to add: even if you ignore everything above that limits us from mining an asteroid with today's technology, there's still the fact that asteroids are super difficult to detect even under the best of circumstances.
R&D into the required tech for
- pressuring the internal
- getting it into a stable rotation
- internal life support management
- internal resource management
- structural soundness
- building procedures
And then getting the resources there (either from asteroid mining or lifting it from earth.)
Current era: more then the global GDP
We couldn't afford it. First thing you've got to do is build a large space asset mining industry to get that amount of metal in orbit. Then we'd need to solve the material science problems of building a structure this large (consider that it's made of metal and kilometres long. If one side is in the sun and the other side in the shade it will expand considerably. That's just my first engineering problem. There will be tens of thousands more). We'd also need to be able to power it, (given it's a solid cubectahedron it's surface area will probably not provide enough solar capacity for it's huge interior volume) , so we'd need to develop fusion probably.
I don't think it's an impossible project but humanity has not got there yet.
It's essentially a city in space. Given that it's a volumetric construct versus existing on a flat plane like our Earth-bound cities, a Coriolis Starport is considerably larger / denser than its external linear dimensions would suggest.
So take the cost of what it would require to build a city, then multiply that by the costs of:
* building it to withstand the rigors of space,
* surviving in vacuum,
* resisting internal stressors of both rotation and air pressure,
* and shuttling all the materials from surface to orbit.
And you'll get a rough idea of what it would cost. Don't forget to add in the price of developing heretofore unrealized technologies of - at a minimum - force fields / shields to prevent the escape of air from inside the pressurized docking bay through the mailslot.
I always got the impression the interior wasn't pressurised since you don't see people walking around. My head Canon is that the pressurised area is "underground"
Interior is pressurized, thanks to scifi forcefields in mailslot. You can enter with a broken canopy and the countdown stop.
No tested with damaged stations, that have fire.
Minute 4:00 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16GgLzYtpY
Fair enough. And, as it's a fictional game, one interpretation is as valid as any other.
However, I would point out there are interiors with trees / plants; both the more industrial-scale agricultural stations and the more scenic tourist stations with aesthetic landscaping, complete with parks and exposed water features. None of which would survive in vacuum.
Then there's the blue shimmer of the mailslot itself; blue light being associated with standard shields. Why shield the mailslot if there's no pressurization? They obviously don't use shields to prevent unauthorized entry (as anyone who's ever attempted to enter a station without docking permission can attest).
If you go look up close, the water features are holographic.
I think doing water features in a rotating spaceport would be far more trouble than it's worth even for a post scarcity civilisation.
This has got to be the most sci-fi sounding thing I've read about real, currently-existing technology in like... Ever.
> A plasma window's viscosity allows it to separate gas at standard atmospheric pressure from a total vacuum, and can reportedly withstand a pressure difference of up to nine atmospheres. At the same time, the plasma window will allow radiation such as lasers and electron beams to pass. This property is the key to the plasma window's usefulness — the technology of the plasma window permits for radiation that can only be generated in a vacuum to be applied to objects in an atmosphere. Electron-beam welding is a major application of plasma windows, making EBW practical outside a hard vacuum.
This is pretty much what I was thinking as well. I have relatively no knowledge in economics, but I'd imagine just basic effective construction materials and components + the cost to aquire the materials or manufacture components + the cost to EVEN get them to low Earth orbit would range in quadrillions to quintillions USD, if not more. It'd really take a lot because we've never built a structure so massive that has to be mobile (somewhat), support itself (structurally and functionally), and endure such drastic environment changes as you brought out. Forget the technology that needs to be developed, I'd have no clue where to start with that.
With present day technology and infrastructure on Earth orbit, a LOT.
Not only in terms of resources and pay for the construction crew but also in terms of additional costs for habitation and manufacturing too.
If we think about it in Elite's time frame and technology/infrastructure, not too much, but enough to require a couple dozen Community Goal scale efforts plus at the very least about a year, depending on how the resource meanagement can be arranged.
Say that they start by building the power source a smelter and manufacturing module.
Then they only need commanders to haul in resources for the construction and as fast as these modules can crank out assets they can get working on constructing the frame, the hull and other modules.
Initially there won't be much worries for habitats for the construction crew as a carrier can park nearby and commaders have their own vessels.
The only feasible way for earth to build anything like this is have a massive asteroid mining supply chain in place and a ore refining supply chain in space.
The amount of materials for 1 of these would consume so much raw materials from earth that iron coins would be the same value as gold and diamond's
The problem and expense isn't the material, it's getting the material out of the gravity well, getting the mass to whatever orbit is needed, matching the orbit of what's already there, and assembled in 0g/0O. Things weld together in space and can corrode differently. There is a lot of iron and copper in this planet, and this would be like building a large city from scratch, in space.
Not a Coriolis Starport but surley interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtQkz0aRDe8
First Steps in extraterrastial colonization are not as pricey as most people think. Its a step-by-step process
Nobody mentioning the impractical design. The Orbis star ports make more sense. The big hollow atmospheric space in the middle is not economic.
Sure, maybe the idea of a dry dock for constructing space ships, but docking on the outside makes far more sense.
i dont think a society where "cost" or "money" is a concern could manage things like this. They probably all would die off alone on their planet, having been unable to get past hoarding resources and destroying their climate and not being able to function as a cohesive unit enough to get past the fermi paradox filters.
I don't know what the cost would be, but it's funny that people are calculating the cost to transport from up a gravity well. Of course, this would be made with materials refined from an asteroid belt.
The best you could hope for is to automate as much as the process as possible. Drones to locate, mine, refine, and transport the raw materials. Then builder bots to print those raw materials into the structure. In that case, your cost is determined by the price of the initial designs, buying the rights to the asteroid, the cost of the drones to mine/refine, the cost of the drones to build it, the cost of the maintenance and supervision of those bots, and the cost of the energy to power the whole operation.
If you get into some futuristic, hand-wavy scenario where the designs already exist, the drones are already owned and self-repair, energy is abundant enough to be free, and you don't need to worry about the mineral rights? The whole thing would only cost the amount of time for the human efforts.
This is the perfect scenario. We could start mining the satellites of mars, not going to the asteroid belt. Mars would be the place to supply from. Drones can be housed there and materials can be stored there.
Gathering and launching all the materials and manpower from Earth, it just straight up wouldn't be feasible.
If we already had resource extraction and manufacturing capabilities in space? Then likely about what it would cost to build a small city, I would imagine.
For our civilization, the cost would be effectively infinite.
Right now we lack the technology to source materials from asteroids or carry out complex fabrication in orbit, which means everything has to come from the ground. We're also currently limited to launching about 200 metric tons of material at a time, and have the infrastructure to handle about one launch a week going all out.
And this is where we run into a problem. Being in orbit is going to expose all these parts to intense thermal cycling and increased solar radiation. And anything acting as a pressure vessel will be growing steadily more porous due to the constant application of pressure contributing to the formation of microfractures in the material. After a few decades, the parts will have already reached the end of their useful life and need to be replaced with fresh ones.
If we're limited to sending up 200 metric tons a week, the first batches of material sent up will have already worn out before we've even finished primary construction. The station would never be finished - it would just be an endless succession of launching manufactured parts into orbit trying to stay ahead of the station's ongoing disintegration. You really need to be able to do the bulk of the sourcing and manufacturing in situ before a structure like this becomes practical, something that even the most optimistic estimates suggest is decades away.
I think it can work in a different economic approach. It would be build and "payd" by governments or organisations that creates money and maybe used by private corporation that pays a fee to be a part of it. Money isn't a natural good the only need is materials. So I think it's only possible in a system more like modified communism.
Sorry for my English and also I'm not an economist but I think one day it would be possible..
Currently, trillions or more dollars. Or 17 quadrillion like another said. But that’s currently. In the 3300s, the rules are likely much different, as metal extraction and asteroid mining are far more efficient than they would be today, and space has seemingly unlimited metal content when it boils down to it. So it would probably be in the 100s of millions to single digit billions if we compare credits to current USD using our current level of inflation. I mean, considering a cheap ship is around 50k, that’s like buying a car.
Most of the calculations seem way off. If we had this level of tech, we would be mining and assembling the materials in space, moon or asteroids. No way would we be shipping this up from earth.
If you get space launch systems cheap enough you can drive the costs down to make the thing
To do that you have to decide what altitude you want it to orbit at. If you use traditional rockets it's gonna be Wildly expensive, if you use something like a slingshot space launch system it's gonna be less expensive per launch but the slingshot makes it difficult to get higher up in altitude.
Let's say it gets to the point where we're at 1000 dollars per kg for low orbit, that thing looks to be several hundreds (let's say 300k) of thousands of tonnes. Already we're at 1000 × 1000 × 300 000 which is somewhere in the realm of 300 billion just in getting the materials up there, not accounting for installation, staff, material costs, Research & development either. So I'm reckoning, to get it to that point we would need around 600 billion to 1 trillion to get everything started. That's a guess, I'm not an expert in space by any stretch.
It would probably cost the destruction of earth's ecosystem. To mine and launch that much material through the earth's atmosphere would cause its destruction.
The alternative of mining it, smelting it, and constructing it all from say, the moon or asteroids, and shipping it into place is far far beyond our current technical abilities. Possibly ever IMO because the human race is fatally flawed in its ability to not kill each other first.
Considering it's the cheapest, quickest, and easiest to build, I would hazard a guess at somewhere in the 10-100 billion credit range, including the cost to outfit and stock.
iirc the ol' table-top game put 1 microcredit to $0.5 USD and 100 microcredits made 1 credit. Microcredits are/were really only used by the Average Joe, which we Pilot's Federation types are certainly not.
Not a chance. Building something that huge that is completely stable wile being fully pressurized and rotating is beyond our current tech and engineering IMHO.
If humanity unanimously converted to Elon musks version of communism, it would only be a cost of time and resources/man power, potentially half a century is my guess
With our civilizations tech level the cost would be infinitely higher than building a megalopolis. With that in mind you can see that depending a civilization tech level the cost changes dramatically, for example if we had Trek levels of tech with industrial replicators based on energy matter conversion through the use of nebulously endless clean energy and the power of construction via vessels of many sizes and configurations powered by that same endless energy I doubt the prize would surpass the prize of a medium size village since all they had to do is build close to a source of raw matter like a death planetoid or an asteroid belt so long they have a steady supply of dilithium crystals to maintain their anti matter engines.
We currently grumble about how our planet is dying. Our planet is self sustaining, so how could we ever manage in a man made cage where we would be responsible for the replenishment of every life giving necessities. I don’t believe becoming a space fairing species is feasible at all.
At the moment it costs something like $8,000 per pound of material to be transported to the ISS, which translates to $17,600 per kg. Few years ago, someone calculated the volume of a Coriolis starport and came up with around 2.8 gigatons. [(Link here](https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/coriolis-station-dimensions-and-mass-recalculated.389655/).) ***So just to get the materials up there based on current pricing, you're looking at $17.6 quadrillion.*** That obviously doesn't include the cost of getting the required manpower up there to construct it (or the infrastructure created up there for them to live and exist within while work is ongoing) or the cost of developing the various technologies we currently don't have yet.
i wonder what the costs would be if we found rich sources in the astroid belts and such to use.
Remember watching a documentary which mentioned an asteroid in the belt which had minerals worth enough to make every human on earth an instant billionaire. However, the documentary goes on to say that mining it and bringing the minerals to earth would make no economic sense and would tank the global economy. So more likely the minerals would be refined in space and used there.
Asteroid Psyche - believed to be a residual planetary core from the early days of the solar system. Almost pure metal. There is a probe going there soon!
We used to think that it may have been the initial formation of a planetary core, but recent studies [have lead us to believe otherwise, because it's less metal-rich and more porous than originally thought.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375145/) That's part of the reason we're visiting it in 2019. Still really cool stuff.
I am speaking to you from the future year of 2023 to tell you that we did not, in fact, go to 16 Psyche in 2019. BTW buckle up because the next few years are going to be a wild ride for the global economy!
Haha, my bad. 2029. In my defense, [this](https://imgur.com/a/txR15Jr) was pretty much my situation when I wrote that
I so very much Miss the days before 2020.... i really do. I had found a new career, a new purpose in life, and a whole new level of freedom.
I had joined a gym and was stronger and fitter. Instead I am the opposite.
I’ve been buckled, and been on a wild ride since COVID. 🤣
You mean 2029 ?
found the time traveller
Which one lmao
Tanking the economy ain’t so bad if we enter post scarcity.
Entering post scarcity is what would tank the economy. Without enormous differences in wealth, being a billionaire would ne no fun...
I mean, I'm OK with the concept of it not being fun to be a billionaire. Might discourage the hoarding.
It would still be fun for a billionaire as we enter post scarcity. It would be fun for all. But when everyone is super nobody will be.
That is a load of nonsense. Billionaires become meaningless.
Quadrillions would be were it’s at. Inflations a bitch.
Issue: if everyone's a millionaire, nobody's a millionaire. After a period of instability, everything would cost way more. Have fun spending thousands of dollars on an apple.
you're missing the point, post-scarcity means that the needs of everybody are fulfilled, be it by AI, Automation, Aliens or any other singularity event. Capitalism and money disappear
People always want more, so even if all material things were satisfied, we’d find new ways to create have and have-nots. Favourite example is the Eldar in WH40K… they went down some very base and frankly disturbing routes.
>Favourite example is the Eldar in WH40K… that's fiction
I mean.. so is post scarcity lol. If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty, a utopia like that’ll probably lead to a behavioural sink. We’re already seeing that trend with the heavily industrialised countries - birth rates are declining, social withdrawal etc. where resources are more abundant as opposed to newly industrialised ones.
>Capitalism and money disappear Lol get a load of this guy They'll never go away, or we'll go the way of the mouse utopia experiment.
I don’t understand the sarcasm, we are already on our way to uncontrolled population growth with very few floating at the top hoarding everything. What so wrong thinking about *unlimited* ressources and energy that would allow us to transcend current economics?
Population growth is rapidly declining, and you can't "hoard" money. You just make more. Everyone on earth is far richer than they have ever been before. Never has a smaller percentage of humans died of starvation, never have humans had so much material wealth and never has there been a lower chance of dying by violence. But unlimited energy would be nice.
I live in Philadelphia and u just described a utopia. U in Europe somewhere?
>we are already on our way to uncontrolled population growth And how do you think unlimited resources are gonna affect that? Do you think population is gonna go *down* or something?
Just to interject on this, if something abundant on an asteroid is transported back to earth, that resource is no longer scarce on Earth and therefore completely loses its value. Basic supply & demand.
What isn't free is the vessels that deliver it, the people who work on it, etc. So the resource inputs drop to too-cheap-to-bill-for costs but the services provided will still be charged. Raw metal subscription service is where this starts, up to *n*Tonnes a month.
Better hurry and buy low until someone realizes that you are getting a steal on cheap space resources.
Unless you're the guy that transports it back to Earth, and builds a big fence around it, and sells tickets
It loses its capitalistic value for outright profit, but it is absolutely still a valuable material that can be used to reduce costs elsewhere.
But in reality a handful of people would become trillionaires while the rest of us would be no better off.
it would still make the price of anything using rare metals much much cheaper and more environmentally friendly
The global economy wouldn't tank. It would just make that resource incredibly abundant and cheap. We would probably see a lot more things made out of it and new technology utilizing the cheap material. It already being in space would probably make it much cheaper to build things in space. Especially since rockets can bring loads of minerals back down to earth
There's a show called *the Expanse* which discusses this very thing 🤣
Typical belter...
So you're saying we build a rocket find that rock, retire and buy an island somewhere? Lets go
Let's be realistic for one second here...with that kinda money we ain't buying no island, we buying our own tiny moon and terraforming it. Here's to sunbathing under Jupiter's glow at beach Europa or Io...
We can crash those asteroids in France and collect the materials there. There's nothing of value there so it's safe to do it
sabaka!! na go belt inyalowda
The inners always be tinking they own everting
Wellwalla
Oya! Beltalowda!
Yea like the belters would share with earth
Classic Wellwalla.....
Probably not much cheaper because the only people who'd have such unfathomable amounts of wealth to invest in harvesting those belts would want to make back on their investment and probably trillions more on top of that. It certainly wouldn't just be given up for free to build something so grand.
They'd pull a Debeers to keep the price up and limit what enters the market.
Most likely we wouldn't mine asteroids in the belt, instead a metallic asteroid that passes Earth reasonably close (i.e. the objects that we are closely monitoring because they could hit Earth) could be brought into a stable orbit and mined out there. We have did experiments where we altered asteroid orbits slightly so the technology is already here. While it would still be tremendously expensive, it would be much cheaper (also more environmental friendly) than launching the materials into space from Earth.
> We have did experiments where we altered asteroid orbits slightly so the technology is already here. I don't know about that. There's a big difference between nudging something to make sure it misses Earth by whatever margin versus nudging something at the exact time, in the exact direction, with the exact amount of energy required to put it in a stable orbit. Not to mention that the objects in question are travelling way too fast to enter low Earth orbit to begin with, so how would we even slow it down enough? That's a whole different ballpark regarding the amount of energy required compared to nudging something. And then of course we're going to have to keep boosting it to prevent its orbit from decaying for as long as it takes us to mine it. I'm curious how many satellite orbits it would destabilize during that time. Regarding the mining of the thing, SpaceX's uncrewed Starship is projected to have a maximum payload of 300 metric tonnes, the largest payload we've ever been able to launch into low Earth orbit. It's going to take a good number of those flights just to get the mining supplies up there. And you can't even use the full payload on the way up if you also want to use them to bring stuff back down (assuming you don't want your mined materials to burn up on reentry). *** TL;DR Orbital mechanics are a pain.
You're not going to bring anything back from orbit to Earth, why would you want to do this when you're building a space station? As I said, the initial costs would be enormous. But once you got a small mining/production system up in space, you can start building more directly in space. (And eventually end up with a Dyson Sphere). Getting things out of orbit into open space is a much bigger pain than bringing things into orbit.
We wouldn't have to necessarily go to leo, you could use an ion thruster to nudge an asteroid into an orbit that will use a gravity assist around the moon, or if necessary because the asteroid is in a very elliptical orbit we could do multiple gravity assists around earth before capturing it. then mine and construct whatever you want in a high orbit, and if you have a bunch of magnetic material and we develop railguns, we could launch stuff back to earth from the asteroid with only the cost of some electricity and ferromagnetic materials, and whatever material you use for a heat shield. definitely not easy, but doable with some advancements in automated production, more efficient rockets, and some other stuff that i'm probably forgetting.
Building this would require having access to such materials scattered across our solar system and possibly pur galaxy.
Real math, I like it.
Dont forget however that space shipping in Elite should be way way cheaper than in reality simply because we have full grown cargo space ships and not onetime use rockets.
There have been calculations in 2012 ([http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to-build-the-death-star/](http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to-build-the-death-star/)) how much it would cost to build a Death Star - it was $852 quadrillion. Ok, Death Star is way bigger (140km across) than Coriolis port, but the material reality would probably be in the similar ball park as of cost-per-kg, transportation and construction. So, scaling those calculations down, might give us a good guess value. And how long it would take if it would have to be build from materials from Earth. Based on your linked article on Coriolis steel content and comparing that to NASAs Death Star steel content of about a million gigatonnes i.e. about . Assuming linear total cost per tonne in between those two, would end up to about $2400 trillion. Another thing is that Earths total steel production capacity nowadays ([https://worldsteel.org/steel-topics/statistics/world-steel-in-figures-2022/](https://worldsteel.org/steel-topics/statistics/world-steel-in-figures-2022/)) was about 2 billion tonnes. So, that would theoretically *not* be a bottleneck. But our ability to lift it up onto orbit would most certainly be one. Figures for this, anyone? Altho, NASA have noted ([https://www.wired.com/2015/12/nasa-death-star-asteroid/](https://www.wired.com/2015/12/nasa-death-star-asteroid/)) that you could considerably save cost by building a station around an asteroid - which is what some stations in Elite have done. Maybe even some Coriolis ports have started out this way - anyone know the details of lore here?
I think conceptually, to even attempt this we would first have to figure out how to get the resources we need from the asteroid belt out at mars. Imagine, consuming asteroids and belching out metal, the process of cold welding might work to reduce the effort required in making the coriolis, but to do that itself would need a closed sealed habitat to refine and form the metals from the asteroids to avoid them cold welding during those processes.
So there is not enough money on earth to bring the materials up there. There js currently about 80,9 trillions dollars on earth according to the CIA
Its not like the money would disappear. What would happen is it would circulated around and around through citizen's hands and into taxes. When the government pays for the materials, that money has now reentered circulation, and would eventually be taxed again and start the cycle over.
You also wouldn't bring everything up from Earth. You'd bring up enough hardware to develop a refueling and transportation network, and then start redirecting asteroids.
We can print money. Hello
we can also just pump bank numbers up, but that would change everything
Alternatively, we could stop pretending money is real and just put efforts toward ensuring our species survival. But then again, I say crazy things when I'm tired and the world is burning.
Nuh uh dummy,nothing weighs anything in space so they can’t make you pay for weight in space, that’s just leaves us with the material cost /s
> So just to get the materials up there based on current pricing, you're looking at $17.6 quadrillion note that at that scale, it'd make sense to start building other infrastructure first that'd make it cheaper to get things into orbit, like an elevator.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong... But I think that's like... 250-300 years of global GDP by my estimate.
I'm 99% sure the resources are mined from asteroids.
Realistically it'd be the launch costs of getting foundries and manufacturing set up in orbit, but that's also an astronomical (pun intended) cost. We *have* the technology for orbital manufacturing, we just haven't implemented it. Might be reason to do it soon enough, but there hasn't been so far because all the uses of the items manufactured are on Earth. Once we have a significant presence in orbit, though, suddenly there are manufactured goods that never have to enter an atmosphere. So yeah, launch costs of setting up the infrastructure, then semi-normal building costs. So a truly absurd amount, but realistically nowhere near the 17.6 quadrillion figure. There's no way we'd build a Coriolis piecemeal from launched parts.
Okay but hear me out, let's assume reduced costs with Starship and we assume that humanoid robotics helps augment the manpower greatly for construction, okay... now let's reduce the size of the station by 10x because let's face it, we don't have huge ships yet. Now that? That's attainable in the next 10-15 years (completed), honestly.
There would be an economy of scale which would reduce this price, but more importantly, I think any project like this would only become possible after we have automated off-planet mining and construction.
Its also worth considering the costs are dictated by the concept of earth-to-space manufacturing of orbital stations. By the time humanity can build 2.8 gigaton space stations the more pheasable and more practical way of material processing would revolve around asteroids or pre-existing orbital materials which would considerably gouge the time and price. 17.7qd is still pretty impressive though.
You said they calculated the volume though, I assume you mean just the weight right?
Volume discount?
Hmm... maybe the costs of the ISS divided by a factor of thousands? *Plus*.... Several hundreds of millions **more** to apply proper signs so that people can actually find the mailslot! 😁
If you're legitimately having trouble finding the mail slot take your right hand curve your fingers in the same direction the starport is turning. Congratulations, your thumb is now on the side of the mail slot. Works for all stations!
Lmao that’s definitely going to make it easier. If you have the station locked on it has arrows on the little display in your cockpit to the lower left
Only on the back
Also, the slot always faces the body it's orbiting.
Yeah that’s actually a pretty good tip too. I just always say get the docking computer that shit is a blessing
100% for docking assist for ships like my Anaconda that are annoying to fit through the slot, but don't rob me of my Courier reverse-slot shenanigans :D
Alternatively there are red blinking lights on the back and white blinking lights on the front
Or when you request docking the 3D image of the target shows arrows that point to the front
Or when you target it. I just press T to target the station and follow the arrows right when leaving supercruise. So I'm already on my way when I can finally ask for docking.
Ah yes, the Curl right hand rule
Somebody studied magnetic fields in physics class
I've read and tried this for 15 minutes and I still don't get it I feel dumb now
So look at your right hand palm down, and point your thumb out. Now point your 4 fingers in the same direction the station spins. Your right thumb while pointing out will point at the slot. Or another way, if the station is spinning upwards to you, the slot is on the left like where your thumb would be.
Make a fist with your right hand. Stick your thumb out. The station rotates toward your fingertips. That makes your thumb the mail slot
Holy shit this works
We dont have a launch system cheap enough to bring the mats from earth, or a ISRU to use materials from asteroids. Its out of our reach. The best I can give to you is the Inflatable Kid Party Castle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B330 Or a blurry JWST photo: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/vy9x83/coriolis_station_irl/
>ISRU However, it is feasible that we *could* start extracting resources from the 'roids in a reasonable timeframe if we invested in it... IMHO that would be a far better investment that travelling to the Moon or Mars as it makes no sense to escape a gravity well, and then immediately trap yourself in another... We *could* prospect 'roids *now*, and start bringing suitable ones closer to earth orbit. The Moon lagrange points would be a good place for extraction, and some kind of mass driver technology (probably nuclear powered) could nudge the 'roid there. Once there, we could start extracting resources... Maybe use solar mirrors for heat and so on. It would have to be mostly robotic. The 'roid relocation would have to be fully robotic. There are LOTS of problems to overcome, but there is nothing I see that require anything we're not capable of doing today or 'shortly', with the right amount of investment.
We can barely design space suits that allow for more than basic work in space. There's also the issue of heat, with no air you get heat build up pretty fast and the friction from drilling would quickly melt any drill head as the size of the head would need to exceed the material being drilled as to evenly distribute heat. Water at current isn't an option, nor are something like heat sinks or any other standard means of pulling heat away from equipment like we have on earth.
"Mostly or fully robotic" = No need for spacesuits... Drilling would not necessarily be needed... A big solar mirror pointed at a metallic rock would eventually melt it. Then you separate the different metals, and then put them in shade to let them radiate heat. For most challenges in this, we already know solutions. We haven't done it before, but there are no fundamental new technologies required that we can't feasibly imagine at our current tech level. The only real challenge is money...
> separate the different metals How do you separate different metals without gravity?
Chemically would be one option (it's how you get 99.9% pure metals on Earth), alternatively you could have some two way centrifuge, crazy fast inside one that'd spin enough to simulate gravity, third option would be by melting points, fourth would be electromagnetism, fifth would be centrifuge with electromagnetism.
There are options, and while you don't have gravity in space, you *can* make centrifugal force. Different melting points could be used. In the start you wouldn't really need it much refined either... You'd mainly use the 'roids for ice and iron (to make up the bulk of whatever you're building). If you're creating a 3 foot thick wall of iron to provide radiation shielding, you don't care that much how pure it is, and you'd try to find a 'roid made mainly of iron which is common. Build it and cover the inside with a plastic membrane, and you have your basic living structure, and all you need to boost up from earth is the plastic.
I'll add that stopping the spin of an asteroid wouldn't be too hard comparatively, essentially giving you a body that's tidally locked to the sun, and then you could just do stuff on the dark side of it.
So wait, we cant drill something together in space?
Cooling and static build up are the two biggest problems in vacuum. Like you could definitely do something to drain the heat away, on the rock side it'd just dissipate deeper into the rock and eventually radiate out into space, biggest problem would be loss of material due to liquidation followed by it instantly boiling away (can't have liquids in a vacuum), on the drill side you could have some cooling system embedded into it. Static is another problem where that gets freed as X-rays, so you'd need shielding for that and there's not much else you can do aside pressurize the area somehow.
I will bet for Moon cable, like the earth cable to orbit but a lot cheaper, that can be done with keblar. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator Now, we lack most technology, but can be done. The other problem I see is smelting ore without gravity, maybe a centrifugal blast furnace. Lots of small technologies that nobody needed until ED players requested a space station.
>We could prospect 'roids now, and start bringing suitable ones closer to earth orbit. No, we can't. We can barely even land a robot on an asteroid reliably with our current technology. No matter what people tell you asteroid mining is still very far from our grasp.
That is not true... We can't land a robot on an asteroid reliably now *because of the low investment we're willing to make...* We could do this within 20 years if we wanted to.
You are way overestimating our progress in working in space and underestimating the difficulties with any form of asteroid mining. Even if we put all our resources into building and testing infrastructure for asteroid mining we are MAYBE 50 years from it being feasible. And that's not counting the year and a half it takes to get an unmanned probe to the asteroid belt, not to mention the amount of time it would take to take samples of the asteroid and determine if it's suitable for mining. Even if we had the technology, you're looking at a minimum of several years of travel and analysis before even determining if it's worth it to send machinery to an asteroid to mine stuff. Editing to add: even if you ignore everything above that limits us from mining an asteroid with today's technology, there's still the fact that asteroids are super difficult to detect even under the best of circumstances.
We can certainly build an isrun down the line.
Have you seen this Spinlaunch device https://youtu.be/M_50TM3OeEw?si=0-28Rvj9ZSxb1y28 ? I think it is not that expensive.
R&D into the required tech for - pressuring the internal - getting it into a stable rotation - internal life support management - internal resource management - structural soundness - building procedures And then getting the resources there (either from asteroid mining or lifting it from earth.) Current era: more then the global GDP
We couldn't afford it. First thing you've got to do is build a large space asset mining industry to get that amount of metal in orbit. Then we'd need to solve the material science problems of building a structure this large (consider that it's made of metal and kilometres long. If one side is in the sun and the other side in the shade it will expand considerably. That's just my first engineering problem. There will be tens of thousands more). We'd also need to be able to power it, (given it's a solid cubectahedron it's surface area will probably not provide enough solar capacity for it's huge interior volume) , so we'd need to develop fusion probably. I don't think it's an impossible project but humanity has not got there yet.
about three fiddy
dammit i was just a few minutes too late
r/thatguybeatyoutoit
It's essentially a city in space. Given that it's a volumetric construct versus existing on a flat plane like our Earth-bound cities, a Coriolis Starport is considerably larger / denser than its external linear dimensions would suggest. So take the cost of what it would require to build a city, then multiply that by the costs of: * building it to withstand the rigors of space, * surviving in vacuum, * resisting internal stressors of both rotation and air pressure, * and shuttling all the materials from surface to orbit. And you'll get a rough idea of what it would cost. Don't forget to add in the price of developing heretofore unrealized technologies of - at a minimum - force fields / shields to prevent the escape of air from inside the pressurized docking bay through the mailslot.
I always got the impression the interior wasn't pressurised since you don't see people walking around. My head Canon is that the pressurised area is "underground"
Interior is pressurized, thanks to scifi forcefields in mailslot. You can enter with a broken canopy and the countdown stop. No tested with damaged stations, that have fire. Minute 4:00 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16GgLzYtpY
I did not know that! Thankyou
Fair enough. And, as it's a fictional game, one interpretation is as valid as any other. However, I would point out there are interiors with trees / plants; both the more industrial-scale agricultural stations and the more scenic tourist stations with aesthetic landscaping, complete with parks and exposed water features. None of which would survive in vacuum. Then there's the blue shimmer of the mailslot itself; blue light being associated with standard shields. Why shield the mailslot if there's no pressurization? They obviously don't use shields to prevent unauthorized entry (as anyone who's ever attempted to enter a station without docking permission can attest).
If you go look up close, the water features are holographic. I think doing water features in a rotating spaceport would be far more trouble than it's worth even for a post scarcity civilisation.
About plasma shields to prevent depressurization - we already have those: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_window
That is cool
This has got to be the most sci-fi sounding thing I've read about real, currently-existing technology in like... Ever. > A plasma window's viscosity allows it to separate gas at standard atmospheric pressure from a total vacuum, and can reportedly withstand a pressure difference of up to nine atmospheres. At the same time, the plasma window will allow radiation such as lasers and electron beams to pass. This property is the key to the plasma window's usefulness — the technology of the plasma window permits for radiation that can only be generated in a vacuum to be applied to objects in an atmosphere. Electron-beam welding is a major application of plasma windows, making EBW practical outside a hard vacuum.
This is pretty much what I was thinking as well. I have relatively no knowledge in economics, but I'd imagine just basic effective construction materials and components + the cost to aquire the materials or manufacture components + the cost to EVEN get them to low Earth orbit would range in quadrillions to quintillions USD, if not more. It'd really take a lot because we've never built a structure so massive that has to be mobile (somewhat), support itself (structurally and functionally), and endure such drastic environment changes as you brought out. Forget the technology that needs to be developed, I'd have no clue where to start with that.
With present day technology and infrastructure on Earth orbit, a LOT. Not only in terms of resources and pay for the construction crew but also in terms of additional costs for habitation and manufacturing too. If we think about it in Elite's time frame and technology/infrastructure, not too much, but enough to require a couple dozen Community Goal scale efforts plus at the very least about a year, depending on how the resource meanagement can be arranged. Say that they start by building the power source a smelter and manufacturing module. Then they only need commanders to haul in resources for the construction and as fast as these modules can crank out assets they can get working on constructing the frame, the hull and other modules. Initially there won't be much worries for habitats for the construction crew as a carrier can park nearby and commaders have their own vessels.
At bare minimum, $20.
The only feasible way for earth to build anything like this is have a massive asteroid mining supply chain in place and a ore refining supply chain in space. The amount of materials for 1 of these would consume so much raw materials from earth that iron coins would be the same value as gold and diamond's
The problem and expense isn't the material, it's getting the material out of the gravity well, getting the mass to whatever orbit is needed, matching the orbit of what's already there, and assembled in 0g/0O. Things weld together in space and can corrode differently. There is a lot of iron and copper in this planet, and this would be like building a large city from scratch, in space.
Not a Coriolis Starport but surley interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtQkz0aRDe8 First Steps in extraterrastial colonization are not as pricey as most people think. Its a step-by-step process
Nobody mentioning the impractical design. The Orbis star ports make more sense. The big hollow atmospheric space in the middle is not economic. Sure, maybe the idea of a dry dock for constructing space ships, but docking on the outside makes far more sense.
i dont think a society where "cost" or "money" is a concern could manage things like this. They probably all would die off alone on their planet, having been unable to get past hoarding resources and destroying their climate and not being able to function as a cohesive unit enough to get past the fermi paradox filters.
I don't know what the cost would be, but it's funny that people are calculating the cost to transport from up a gravity well. Of course, this would be made with materials refined from an asteroid belt. The best you could hope for is to automate as much as the process as possible. Drones to locate, mine, refine, and transport the raw materials. Then builder bots to print those raw materials into the structure. In that case, your cost is determined by the price of the initial designs, buying the rights to the asteroid, the cost of the drones to mine/refine, the cost of the drones to build it, the cost of the maintenance and supervision of those bots, and the cost of the energy to power the whole operation. If you get into some futuristic, hand-wavy scenario where the designs already exist, the drones are already owned and self-repair, energy is abundant enough to be free, and you don't need to worry about the mineral rights? The whole thing would only cost the amount of time for the human efforts.
This is the perfect scenario. We could start mining the satellites of mars, not going to the asteroid belt. Mars would be the place to supply from. Drones can be housed there and materials can be stored there.
With or without Asteroid Mining coming first?
A lot. You're welcome.
As a Thargoid Spy, I say about three fiddy.
If India built it 1 million, China about 1 billion, UK 700 quadrillion, delayed for 200 years then final cost over 900 quadrillion
'How much would it cost?' Yes.
At least 3$
A few Twitters.
Just slightly north of a buttload.
About half a Death Star
Gathering and launching all the materials and manpower from Earth, it just straight up wouldn't be feasible. If we already had resource extraction and manufacturing capabilities in space? Then likely about what it would cost to build a small city, I would imagine.
For our civilization, the cost would be effectively infinite. Right now we lack the technology to source materials from asteroids or carry out complex fabrication in orbit, which means everything has to come from the ground. We're also currently limited to launching about 200 metric tons of material at a time, and have the infrastructure to handle about one launch a week going all out. And this is where we run into a problem. Being in orbit is going to expose all these parts to intense thermal cycling and increased solar radiation. And anything acting as a pressure vessel will be growing steadily more porous due to the constant application of pressure contributing to the formation of microfractures in the material. After a few decades, the parts will have already reached the end of their useful life and need to be replaced with fresh ones. If we're limited to sending up 200 metric tons a week, the first batches of material sent up will have already worn out before we've even finished primary construction. The station would never be finished - it would just be an endless succession of launching manufactured parts into orbit trying to stay ahead of the station's ongoing disintegration. You really need to be able to do the bulk of the sourcing and manufacturing in situ before a structure like this becomes practical, something that even the most optimistic estimates suggest is decades away.
So wait, you’re saying metal can’t just ‘sit’ in space?
I think it can work in a different economic approach. It would be build and "payd" by governments or organisations that creates money and maybe used by private corporation that pays a fee to be a part of it. Money isn't a natural good the only need is materials. So I think it's only possible in a system more like modified communism. Sorry for my English and also I'm not an economist but I think one day it would be possible..
I like your take. Our society currently isn’t geared to it. It’s only possible in certain demographics
Damn idk but I’d sure like to live in one
Wouldn’t that be amazing. No space taxes!
Trillions, and we would still need to mine asteroids.
I feel that’s where we need to look for resources.
Currently, trillions or more dollars. Or 17 quadrillion like another said. But that’s currently. In the 3300s, the rules are likely much different, as metal extraction and asteroid mining are far more efficient than they would be today, and space has seemingly unlimited metal content when it boils down to it. So it would probably be in the 100s of millions to single digit billions if we compare credits to current USD using our current level of inflation. I mean, considering a cheap ship is around 50k, that’s like buying a car.
Most of the calculations seem way off. If we had this level of tech, we would be mining and assembling the materials in space, moon or asteroids. No way would we be shipping this up from earth.
Thats what I’m saying. What are people getting at? I wouldnt even recommend using resources from earth to do this. Get everything from space.
It would cost no money if humanity could collectively move beyond the limitations of a capitalist economy
I like this comment!
“More than you can afford pal”
If you get space launch systems cheap enough you can drive the costs down to make the thing To do that you have to decide what altitude you want it to orbit at. If you use traditional rockets it's gonna be Wildly expensive, if you use something like a slingshot space launch system it's gonna be less expensive per launch but the slingshot makes it difficult to get higher up in altitude. Let's say it gets to the point where we're at 1000 dollars per kg for low orbit, that thing looks to be several hundreds (let's say 300k) of thousands of tonnes. Already we're at 1000 × 1000 × 300 000 which is somewhere in the realm of 300 billion just in getting the materials up there, not accounting for installation, staff, material costs, Research & development either. So I'm reckoning, to get it to that point we would need around 600 billion to 1 trillion to get everything started. That's a guess, I'm not an expert in space by any stretch.
We’d all be asked to sell our relatives on the Facebook marketplace
It would probably cost the destruction of earth's ecosystem. To mine and launch that much material through the earth's atmosphere would cause its destruction. The alternative of mining it, smelting it, and constructing it all from say, the moon or asteroids, and shipping it into place is far far beyond our current technical abilities. Possibly ever IMO because the human race is fatally flawed in its ability to not kill each other first.
Considering it's the cheapest, quickest, and easiest to build, I would hazard a guess at somewhere in the 10-100 billion credit range, including the cost to outfit and stock. iirc the ol' table-top game put 1 microcredit to $0.5 USD and 100 microcredits made 1 credit. Microcredits are/were really only used by the Average Joe, which we Pilot's Federation types are certainly not.
...why would 100 microcredits make 1 credit? Should be 100 centicredits or 1,000,000 microcredits.
Not a chance. Building something that huge that is completely stable wile being fully pressurized and rotating is beyond our current tech and engineering IMHO.
about tree fiddy
Tree fiddy
*considers the price of all the theoretical technology we haven’t discovered* I’d say it’ll cost about fourteen.
42
bout tree fiddy
Tree fiddy
About tree fitty.
Tree fiddy
At least 17 Dollars I’d say
2£ and half a ciggy
My extensive knowledge of economics and precise calculations lead me to the conclusion it would cost a lot. Thanks for coming to my TED TALK
Yes
Three dolar
It looks like a no man's sky space station
I think Elite Dangerous predates NMS
Bout tree fiddy
At least $200
Tree fiddy is the best I can do, take it or leave it.
I was recommended this sub, I don't know what that is but def looks interesting and would like some context
About tree fiddy
about tree fiddy
tree fiddy
It's only a model
Bout tree fiddy.
3.50
I’d have to say about three fidy
'Bout tree fiddy.
tree fiddy
If humanity unanimously converted to Elon musks version of communism, it would only be a cost of time and resources/man power, potentially half a century is my guess
if reddit could have image responses this would be wall to wall pictures of Dr Evil.
7 billion slaves and 978267388253 trillionbillion dollars
Too much to actually build it.
at the rate we're going, by the time this is possible I'd ballpark a guess at 300-500 Trillion on the low end
With our civilizations tech level the cost would be infinitely higher than building a megalopolis. With that in mind you can see that depending a civilization tech level the cost changes dramatically, for example if we had Trek levels of tech with industrial replicators based on energy matter conversion through the use of nebulously endless clean energy and the power of construction via vessels of many sizes and configurations powered by that same endless energy I doubt the prize would surpass the prize of a medium size village since all they had to do is build close to a source of raw matter like a death planetoid or an asteroid belt so long they have a steady supply of dilithium crystals to maintain their anti matter engines.
We currently grumble about how our planet is dying. Our planet is self sustaining, so how could we ever manage in a man made cage where we would be responsible for the replenishment of every life giving necessities. I don’t believe becoming a space fairing species is feasible at all.
17, 893.76 AUD
Three