
Asteroid mining: Not as crazy as it sounds | ExtremeTech - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/127369-asteroid-mining-not-as-crazy-as-it-sounds
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islon
I bet the Koreans will be better than the rest of the world at asteroid
mining.

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tzs
Spacecraft are generally closed, and will likely contain fans for circulation.
Won't that be a problem?

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burgerbrain
Interestingly, fans are _particularity_ important while sleeping in space.
Otherwise a pocket of CO2 will form around your head until you wake up
gasping.

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Intermediate
I wonder how they going to deal with radiation in space? All these asteroids
are not protected by magnetic field as Earth, so they must be radioactive.

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astine
Probably the same way they've been dealing with it so far. Send robots and
shield any sensitive components.

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Intermediate
What components you are talking about? They are going to mine asteroids, these
asteroids are must be radioactive. So any resource taken from that asteroids
must be radioactive too.

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Retric
Radiation does not work the way you think it does.

Just about everything is slightly radioactive so saying something is
radioactive is next to meaningless, it's a question of scale with some things
being 1,000,000,000 times as radioactive as other things even though they are
both 'safe'. The surface of an asteroid is probably be slightly more
radioactive than average but they are planing on minding 100-500meter wide
objects the vast majority of which are shielded by the ice and rock above
them.

PS: Technically even 'pure' vacuum is slightly radioactive.

