You are going to need other elements for some stuff occasionally. Perhaps you can mine dust.
The impression I get from reading it is that he figures either teleoperated mining robots, or mining the asteroids; he spends more than a little time on discussing the great leaps in robotics, and then in claiming that a Venus colony is, from the point of view of orbital mechanics, almost as good as actual asteroid colonies for traveling to & exploiting asteroids.
Seems to me like Mars is probably the best colony world. Much fewer engineering problems, I think. And IIRC Martian soil consists primarily of iron ore. Plus way more water.
Teleop mining robots? That place kills our probes and I don’t think they even have many moving parts. What about some kind of bucket chain?
Well, I never said that they seemed like a good idea to me. (It’s personally hard to think of scenarios in which Venus-proof robots could be economical—unless the asteroids and other rocky planets/moons have all been tapped out, which is far-future enough that I don’t care.) That’s just what he seems to think.
The impression I get from reading it is that he figures either teleoperated mining robots, or mining the asteroids; he spends more than a little time on discussing the great leaps in robotics, and then in claiming that a Venus colony is, from the point of view of orbital mechanics, almost as good as actual asteroid colonies for traveling to & exploiting asteroids.
Seems to me like Mars is probably the best colony world. Much fewer engineering problems, I think. And IIRC Martian soil consists primarily of iron ore. Plus way more water.
Teleop mining robots? That place kills our probes and I don’t think they even have many moving parts. What about some kind of bucket chain?
Well, I never said that they seemed like a good idea to me. (It’s personally hard to think of scenarios in which Venus-proof robots could be economical—unless the asteroids and other rocky planets/moons have all been tapped out, which is far-future enough that I don’t care.) That’s just what he seems to think.