Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff. You should know. Two things. Josh, I got the cheek weapon just under the wire on that one. Have you done that every time lately? Um, I've been so harried and frazzled, and you know, Pittsburgh, I might have forgotten, so we may have forgotten. That explains a lot. The second thing is, uh, we recorded some little promos a few minutes ago and you called me Chad and then hey Chad. That was a little weird. Yeah, say hey to Chad. Yeah, hey Chad. We do have a colleague and close friend named Chad, so that explains it. But that would have been really weird if you just called it was. It came out and landed on the table and just laid there like a dead fish in the throes of the end of its life. Let's start calling you Jock. My guy's named Jock. Have you ever met a gay name jock? But they've been like Jock or Jock. There's been movie characters named Jock, but they're always like the bully at the ski instructor school or something like that. You know, they're the guy who gets there, come up. And I don't get come up in it. I mean I get come up. It's like every day. But you shouldn't root for it, I guess, is what I'm saying. I don't think I deserve that. So, Um, Chuck, do you remember in the doomsday scenario episode? What was that terror management? Yes, which had nothing to give a terrorism right. If you've been putting off listening to that episode because you think it has to do with terrorism, nothing, go back and listen to it. You will be pleasantly surprised. Agreed, it was pretty good. Agreed. Um, we mentioned that. I don't know if we mentioned or not, but in a report that we cited, one of the things that these people suggested we needed to do right to save the planet was to get busy learning how to mind asteroids. And I remember reading that and I was like, Oh, what's a good idea? Sure that sounds awesome. Price it is pricey, and I looked a little more into it. Turns out we had an article on the site written by the esteem Kevin Bond. So or yeah, the monster. Uh and uh, it's interesting, it is pricey, and there's a lot of holes in any plan that's given right now. But it depends on what you want to do with this stuff, right. The asteroids are well, there's a huge belt. You want to talk about asteroids first in general, and then we can talk about mining, sure, Josh. An asteroid belt. Well, actually there's more than one asteroid belt, but there's one main asteroid belt. It's not that far away. Nope, it's between it's called the main asteroid belt. You weren't just citing it as such. That's right, And it is between Mars and Jupiter. Mars and Jupiter. Thank you. I'm sorry for talking over and Uh. There's a lot of theories on how the Earth in the Solar System was formed, depends on who you ask. One of the more popular theories is the nebular theory. And within this theory, uh. And this is the Solar System, not the universe. So just just stop emailing right now, go ahead? Did I say universe? Okay? Under the nebular theory, Josh, astronomers and physicists think that the universe was. I'm sorry, the Solar System. We're gonna get in trouble. No, we're not chunk, chunk. You're talking about the Solar system. And you know, the Solar System was a big shapeless cloud of gas and ice dust, and then something set things in motion. Probably an explosion is what they think. Maybe a star exploded, hypothetical, right, and and literally set things in motion right, yes, into a circular motion and rotation, yes, a tight rotation that spun faster and faster and faster, and then started collecting this dust flying around and started forming things originally plan testimal, that's a great word. And then more matters flying around colliding, and then the plantestimals get caught up on this in the process called how do you pronounce that? Accrestion? Accretion? Accretion, And then they eventually catch more dust and gas and form protoplanets, and then eventually they formed the planets that we all think are super groovy today. So like planetesimals are toddlers, proto planets are adolescents, tweens, and then you've got planets, yes, right, and um, now we kind of diverge, like everybody agrees generally who who buys into the nebular theory um that you know that all that what you just said is correct. Yes, but now we reach a de vergence. Right, Yes, So there's this big the main asteroid belt that's between Jupiter and Mars is far enough away from the Sun. There's a there's a big enough distance between Jupiter and Mars with this asteroid belt in between that some people think that that asteroid belt got there because there was a proto plane in it there at one time that was bombarded, maybe hit by something else, some other space junk like a comet, maybe just shot by some other civilization eons ago, right, and it exploded, and that these these these bits of in pieces of this it entered into and uh its own rotation around the Sun and was attracted by Jupiter's gravity because Jupiter is so big that it's it's influences the movement of these asteroid This asteroid belt basically keeps it in line. So that's one theory for how the asteroid belt got there. That was a proto planet, It's not bad. The other theory is a little more widely accepted, which is that the asteroid belt is nothing more than a collection of that original debris that never formed into a uh plan tessimal and then a proto planet and then eventually a planet. And Jupiter Mars are five and fifty five million kilometers apart, which is a great distance. So that's why they thought originally you're first theory or not yours, But their first series was, you know, there probably should have been another planet in there that got broken up. But the other theory says that no, that was it never formed again, probably because of Jupiter's Mask's just reckon everything. So what we ended up with was a main asteroid belt. And there's tens of thousands of asteroids in these belts in this belt, the main belt UM, and most of them are about the size of a pebble by far, the vast majority UM. And then there's just a handful and we're talking like a handful and galactic terms, um, so you know thousands that are big and then bigger and big est, and the biggest one is still not that big. Series c R E. Y S right has a diameter of about a thousand kilometers. And if apparently astronomers have figured out that if you uh put all of the mass all of these pieces together every asteroid and the main asteroid belt. If you could put it into a planet or a proto planet, you would still only have a planet about half the size of the Moon for about a thousand the mass of the Earth, So it wouldn't be very big if it were a planet that had broken up. But you know, there's a lot of them flying around, Josh, and you know the odds of let's just say you had a starship, okay, and you wanted to navigate this asteroid field. You know, the odds of successfully doing so are uh, it depends on who you ask. If you were to ask somebody like C three p O, you'd have one in like a sixty and change chance, maybe one in a fifty dred one in a seventy thirty seven one three thousand, seven twenty one. The odds are very slim. If you listen to a robot, right, But that wasn't in our galaxy. It was in another galaxy, far far away. And maybe I should have said droid instead of robot before the listener male tumbles in yeah, or perhaps did the same. I'm just cover my base, So chuck Um. Size is not the only differentiator of asteroids in the main asteroid belt, right right. Um, they're they're also generally more generally classified UM by the composition of their makeup. And if you look at most asteroids, they look like chunks of the moon, just kind of dull and gray and then not have like a pock mark or something like that. Um. But not all of them are exactly alike. They're made up of generally three different types of stuff, right, Josh, that's the name of our show, so that's appropriate. We have the C type, the S type, and the M type amazon uh, Millennium falcon. I don't think that's right. The C type is about the known asteroids or of C type, and they are sort of like the Sun in composition, but without the hydrogen and helium and some other volatile compounds, right, so they're not going to start burning. Right. Then you got the S type, it's only accounts for about and they have nickel, iron and magnesium. And then you got the M type UM for millennium falcon and that's the smallest number of asteroids are the M type, and they have nickel and iron inside them, right, And the the C type where most of them are in the outer ring, the out the outside of the belt. Right. Uh, the M types in the middle, which makes sense, and then the the silicacious. The S type is the um that stands for yeah, silicacious like silicon, um, carbonaceous carbon, and millennium falcon. M type is metallic. Now the n M type is the kind that we're probably going to be most interested in harvesting, right, Yeah, well we should talk about why why why do we want to harvest asteroids. We're average Joe out there in Jane. They might say, well, what's the big deal? We got all that stuff here on Earth. Well, the the the point is is if it's well, there's two ways of thinking, right. One is that we could go to these asteroids mine all this stuff because there are precious metals found on their platinum, which is very expensive gold, gold, potentially um iron ore, which can be turned into steel um and brought back to Earth and sold. Right. So, if you happen to be some sort of investor, maybe one who's into spaceflight or space exploration, like Richard Branson, let's sure you might be interested in setting up a space mining operation. Go get a bunch of platinum. Nobody owns an asteroid. If you, as a as far as I understand it. If you can make it to that asteroid, you can mine it. It's yours the slogan that's that's I just coin that you can make it, you can mind it right, So you go get a bunch of platinum. You don't have to worry about negotiating with some you know, um junta in a developing country for mineral rights or anything like that, and just go to an asteroid and get the stuff and bring it back right. And and there are people are thinking about this. Large corporations are you know, I have plans in motion if they have ideas. The other and much more reasonable reason to mine and asteroid is to supply a space colony, because then that way you don't have two ferry supplies out of space all the time, which a colony is gonna need a lot of supplies and they're gonna need them pretty much constantly. That's really inefficient, that's really expensive. They actually think a lot of smart people actually think that it will be cheaper to set up an asteroid mining operation two basically mine or to be turned into steel for structures and spacecraft and all that stuff. And there's some pretty clever ideas floating around. The bringing them back to Earth idea um as largely pooh pooed, is it? It is because I mean, there's so much, so much um metal, precious rare otherwise here on Earth that we haven't tapped, and then we won't tap until the price of them is enough to really go to the trouble of getting these because they're harder to get, right, But we are running out of some of that stuff, but we're running out of the easy to get stuff. That's the point, right, So if you take into account that there's a bunch of it there, it's just gonna be more expensive. It will still be less expensive to mind the hard to get expensive stuff on Earth than to go there and back, Right, That's one thing. The other reason that selling it on Earth will is probably not as good of an idea. Is you hear numbers bandied about where like an asteroid is worth twenty trillion dollars? Right? Yeah, you want me to read the stat real quick. According to Jonas Lewis, who is the author and sounds like supporter of asteroid mining, he wrote a book called Mining the Sky, he says, uh, there are perhaps a million asteroids the size of one kilometer in diameter, which would have a massive about two billion tons, and he projects that one of these asteroids could contain, or he says, would contain thirty million tons of nickel mill mill and a half of metal cobalt, seventy tons of platinum, and the platinum alone would be worth more than a hundred and fifty billion dollars. Right, And a NASA report valued the nasaer. NASA valued all of the minerals and ore found in these um asteroids in the main asteroid belt at worth about a hundred billion per each of the six billion people on Earth. It's funny. When I read that, I was like, well, why did they write it like that? And then I multiplied it out and it was some ridiculous ten to the twenty six and I was like, oh, that's why. That's a lot of money. Yeah. But the problem is is that none of these, none of these um outrageous and very attractive numbers, take into account things like actually mining them, transporting the stuff back, and possibly most importantly, the effect that flooding the platinum market with a hundred and fifty billion tons of platinum would totally drop the bottom out of it. Well, that would suck. It wouldn't because you went to all that trouble and now you're shooting yourself and they're like, hey, guess what. Platinum isn't worth anything anymore because we have so much of it. But likely anybody who could finance and undertake a asteroid mining operation would probably set up some sort of like the beers and and sit on this stuff and slowly dole it out right or or do the method ahead of time. They wouldn't just jump into it will nally, right. But using these things for space colonies is a is a pretty reasonable idea. And there's a lot of people who are behind us. Yeah, and and we should point out to that. Uh. One of the ways that they find out, because you know, they're not landing on asteroids and drilling into them. Now, one of the ways they find out what potentially is inside the the asteroids is uh using something called telescopic spect spectroscopy. I thought I was gonna say it, if I was gonna nail it. It sounds like it. Uh, it sounds like a painful procedure, doesn't that. Yeah, it does. What they do is a bounced light off of it, and they analyze that reflected light um from the asteroid surface and that through the you know, powers of magic, they can tell what might be inside, like magnesium, water, oxygen even And that's important because water can't have space colony without water. Water is key to anything that we want to do pretty much. And you can separate the hydrogen and the oxygen and potentially potentially use that as rocket fuel. Right. The water is very valuable on many levels. And this guy who um, who created the book Mining in the Sky, what's his name, Jonice Lewis, Yeah, mining the skuy he's um Mining in the sky. That's a little more fanciful. He he has a pretty good idea of how optimum um productivity an asteroid could be harvested. Right. Well, yeah, I mean like that this is kind of what would it look like like in this article. I get the impression it's largely based on Lewis's conception of what it should look like, right. Um. And one of the ideas that's bandied about is to use robots, right makes sense, it does. You don't have to feed robots, you don't have to water robots, um, you don't have to pay robots a salary, which you know makes everything a little bit cheaper, although it's expensive to build one. If you can get self replicating robots, if you can create them and you're not afraid of singularity, um, then you you're all the better. You just launch a few into space and be like start reproducing and then get to work. Was an alien of mine? The original crew for the alien? Wasn't that? Like a I think so? Were they in mining operation? I believe so that you mentioned it, Chuck. Another great idea would be solar powered equipment. Sure, because think about it, the solar radiation in outer space is not being subjected to the Earth's atmosphere, the deletrious effects of the Earth's atmosphere, So you're getting a lot more cosmic radiation um, which will power these things a lot more efficiently day or night. Yeah. Uh, you should have light equipment, even though um it's pretty much a zero gravity situation. You still got to get it out there, and just lighter is better and more efficient. Well, you just brought up a humdinger of a point. Right, gravity gravity, it's a big one. Then there's two things. There's a lack of gravity on these asteroids, and these asteroids rotate, they move, and sometimes they move pretty fast compared to their size. Some asteroids rotate um as often as once an hour, some take two days, depending on their size. But if you're on an asteroid that's going upside down every half hour, every hour, right, it's no good. Now you can fall off, you know. And then if you factor in weightlessness, then you have even greater problems because let's say you undertake a strip mining operation. When you loosen that or it's just gonna float right off, you're basically breaking up these pieces that form these planetesimals in other cases, and then protoplanets. You're breaking that stuff up, and some of the asteroids aren't. It's not just like a chunk of rock. Some asteroids are um less dense than others. There's a pretty sizeable asteroid out there, I can't remember which one it is. Um that is as that's thought to have about the density of water, but it's solid material. It's just not packed together. So weightlessness, rotation and possible low density of some of these asteroids is gonna make this a little harder than you would think. But they got some ideas. They do have some ideas, especially to take into consideration weightlessness. Right, Yeah, Well, one thing they in This all sounds very rudimentary, but it makes sense. They thought about using a big canopy to collect this stuff as it flies off. They have considered the idea of using rocket boosters to keep the asteroid from spinning and uh, you know, level it out. I saw one um idea they had was to use magnets called rake magnets, so they would literally just uh, sort of in the shape of a rake, a giant magnet that would combs very smart and whatever loose mineral or metals were on top would stick to the magnet that would suck. To lose the rake magnet in the space though, it floats off and you're like, man, we lost another rake magnet in dollars. Plus. The other point too, with gravity is what zero gravity taketh away, she also giveth because it makes everything much lighter and easier to cherry like that, I mean gravity a woman. I guess, uh, it's everything is lighter, so you know, you won't have to have like the massive crane to lift the equipment because zero gravity and almost zero gravity, right, yes, And ferrying back and forth between the asteroid belt and say the moon. Let's say we put a colony on the Moon is going to take less fuel. We use up a substantial amount of fuel getting into outer space. Once we're in outer space, we use way less, you know. And then also the other cool thing is once you you're set up up there, you can mine an asteroid and then you can take it for all it's worth and just move to the next asteroid. You don't have to go back and forth and back and forth. And that two raise is kind of a point, like, I know this is a very nascent field and the fact that it's not in existence yet, but um, nobody's talking about what effect this could possibly have if we start basically just mine and asteroid belt like nothing. Let's say we remove all the iron ore from the main asteroid belt. What happens to say the rotation Do they start flipping out? Um, there's no there's no talk about even going to the main asteroid belt. These are right now. They're talking about just getting ones that have kind of wandered away called near Earth objects the Earth asteroids, because a lot closer to the Earth is much better, and sometimes they're closer than the Moon is, so it would really be easy to ferry to the Moon. Right the Moon. But I can't help. But wonder if eventually, you know, in a century, we ramp up in are in the main asteroid belt, like really undertaking mining operations, It'll have some sort of horrible effect that no one figured out until it was too late. I'll start spinning into Earth or something. Still, though it's a good idea, it's probably a necessity if we start to call a nice space. Um. But don't let anybody tell you it's an easy idea, right. For example, one last example of how difficult this can um and I very much recommend people go read Ronald breaks Um the Great Space Mining con I think is what he called it. He Poopoo's it, right, he he Poopoo's it. He Poopoo's bringing it back to Earth. Things. Got a lot of great examples. Uh, he says, you know, using it for space is a good idea. Um. But one of the thing is he points out is when we go and get or right, say, iron ore, we get them from veins. There's like a vein there and we can get a bunch at once. Right. That's because of Earth's biogeochemical processes that help collect or like or into the same place the Earth has a magnetic field. All of this stuff contributes taking a bunch of iron ore and putting it together. Asteroids have not been subjected to these processes, right, So we don't know if it's the same. It could be completely spread out. There might be a bunch in there um using what telescopic spect what spectroscopy? Okay, Um, we know there's a bunch there, but we don't necessarily know in what kind of density that it occurs. So you sunk a hundred billion dollars into getting up there to find out that you can't use the same processes that you do on Earth. Basically, I think they probably just do exploratory missions first before sinking in the whole hundred billion. Maybe, so we'll find out. We'll find out what Richard Branson's made of in the next year or two. Okay, yeah, I bet he listens to this. So we got a bunch on the site. You've got anything else? Uh? No, I like these little, uh theoretical musings every now and then. Oh, I've got one. The Kuiper Belt, the mel Kuiper Belt. So there's a there's another asteroid belt way larger that goes basically out to the frontiers of the Solar System. Yeah. Um. And the cool thing about this, the Kuiper Belt, is that it was proposed by Gerard Kuiper in ninety one. He's like, there's an asteroid belt out there, and this is probably roughly where it is and how wide it is and how dense it is, and in it was confirmed by um observers who saw the observers you know, from other planets, I guess, And he said, I'm naming it after me. Now I think he's probably dead. Of what I'm saying is he said mathematically, he said there's an asteroid belt out there, and then forty years later they're like, there's one right there. It's pretty cool. We should have named after him Keiper Keiper Belt. So that's it. I think it'll happen. I think we have pillaged the Earth and we will assume be pillaging the Solar System likewise. Okay, if you want to learn more about asteroids, type in that word's going to bring up a lot of cool articles we combined to how asteroid mining will work and how asteroid belts work. Um, and you can type that into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com, which brings up listener mail. Josh, I'm gonna call this listener mail from my friend Ryan. Is this legal? I don't think you can do this? He sent us a legit email. I was like, you know, dude, I'm gonna read this. I'm gonna plug your band while I do it. Yeah, but that's not the reason, um, because this is actually pretty cool. Uh. Hey, dude, he didn't say everyone. He was just emailing me while mowing the yard. Earlier today, I listened to your podcast on how to Start your Own Nation. Great job, as always. I took a particular interest in checking that one out because a couple of years ago, I produced a segment for a TV show h G four Underground that never aired on the subject of micro nations, and I ended up researching many of the topics you covered on the show. In particular, you talked about the sovereign nation outside of Reno, the Republic of Malasia. I spent an entire day with his excellency President Kevin Ball in Malasia, which is actually just a house in a housing edition in a little desert town, and he sent me a picture of him with this tute and he's dressed like onwards. Yeah, he's got like the sash and everything. You can recognize it by the Molassian flag flying in the front yard and miniature cannon replica near the front door. I kind of knew going into it that he wasn't very serious about the whole thing, but definitely realized upon arrival that he and the other members of the micro Nation culture are all just big role playing nerds. My first clue was his enormous collection of Star Trek memorabilia. I interviewed neighbors who just described him as a nice fellow who's just a little eccentric. And I've attached the picture and maybe I'll put that on Facebook. I'll see f Ryan minds. But Ryan is in a band called Debate Team and they are awesome and I have their album and it's that like self produced, like the truest of indie uh styles and and putting out your own music. And Ryan's like an old friend and we were pas together and now he's like directing stuff and I'm doing this, and uh, we're all like very proud of each other. You should leave his album on our Facebook. You know. I have posted something before, I'll post it again, but um, if you want to check out Facebook dot com slash debate team. It's good power pop. Uh, it's just awesome. I love it. I'm a fan. What what else? What's another example of power pop? Um? I don't know that. I mean the drummer for his band is also the drummer from Okay go Are they power pop? I would say, Okay goes. Probably. I can see that. I like them, but it's not like they're like them. They're debate teams around awesome thing. Let me change that. I like that one song that they had that the first video for the which was the chick Mills. Yeah, but they're I mean, those dudes are like killing it on the music videos. Yeah, and they're like Internet gods and everything. Yeah. Cool, guys? Is it? The Strokes are sort of power poppy? Okay, yes, totally. You might call them rock and roll rooney rooney. Yeah, I don't know. This guy's ay good? They're yeah, they're pretty good, all right. They have some very catchy tunes. All right, Well, if you like power pop, we want to hear all about it. We do want to hear about it, Josh, But we got to let people know about something that we're doing. Oh yeah, we have a next weekend, the fourth of July weekend. Uh, you're gonna be able to listen to us on Serious XM channel what is it one O four Channel one or they're doing a Stuff you Should Know America of Stuff you Should Know About America weekend and they're playing like twenty of our podcast over the course of the weekend on a little pop up channel, and uh, it's gonna be punctuated with some little shorts from our friends at Stuff You Miss in History Class de Bleian and Sarah, who are awesome, and also our live show that we're recording in New York on July one with some very special friends from the Onion and potentially other special guests. They're going to play that several times. Dude. We're basically all over channel one or four on Serious XM for like a whole weekend pretty much. It's going to be pretty awesome. And you can also listen to Stuff you Should Know Now on w fm U ninety one point one in the New York metro area and ninety point one in the Hudson Valley. Right, that's right. Friday's from seven to eight pm. You can support us on the radio, and they're cutting together some of our archives in the new and exciting ways. So there you have it. That's it. Yeah um. If you want to send us an email about what power pop yeah yeah yeah, or if you're a member of a power pop band, sure shoot it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff. You should know. Two things. Josh, I got the cheek weapon just under the wire on that one. Have you done that every time lately? Um, I've been so harried and frazzled, and you know, Pittsburgh, I might have forgotten, so we may have forgotten. That explains a lot. The second thing is, uh, we recorded some little promos a few minutes ago and you called me Chad and then hey Chad. That was a little weird. Yeah, say hey to Chad. Yeah, hey Chad. We do have a colleague and close friend named Chad, so that explains it. But that would have been really weird if you just called it was. It came out and landed on the table and just laid there like a dead fish in the throes of the end of its life. Let's start calling you Jock. My guy's named Jock. Have you ever met a gay name jock? But they've been like Jock or Jock. There's been movie characters named Jock, but they're always like the bully at the ski instructor school or something like that. You know, they're the guy who gets there, come up. And I don't get come up in it. I mean I get come up. It's like every day. But you shouldn't root for it, I guess, is what I'm saying. I don't think I deserve that. So, Um, Chuck, do you remember in the doomsday scenario episode? What was that terror management? Yes, which had nothing to give a terrorism right. If you've been putting off listening to that episode because you think it has to do with terrorism, nothing, go back and listen to it. You will be pleasantly surprised. Agreed, it was pretty good. Agreed. Um, we mentioned that. I don't know if we mentioned or not, but in a report that we cited, one of the things that these people suggested we needed to do right to save the planet was to get busy learning how to mind asteroids. And I remember reading that and I was like, Oh, what's a good idea? Sure that sounds awesome. Price it is pricey, and I looked a little more into it. Turns out we had an article on the site written by the esteem Kevin Bond. So or yeah, the monster. Uh and uh, it's interesting, it is pricey, and there's a lot of holes in any plan that's given right now. But it depends on what you want to do with this stuff, right. The asteroids are well, there's a huge belt. You want to talk about asteroids first in general, and then we can talk about mining, sure, Josh. An asteroid belt. Well, actually there's more than one asteroid belt, but there's one main asteroid belt. It's not that far away. Nope, it's between it's called the main asteroid belt. You weren't just citing it as such. That's right, And it is between Mars and Jupiter. Mars and Jupiter. Thank you. I'm sorry for talking over and Uh. There's a lot of theories on how the Earth in the Solar System was formed, depends on who you ask. One of the more popular theories is the nebular theory. And within this theory, uh. And this is the Solar System, not the universe. So just just stop emailing right now, go ahead? Did I say universe? Okay? Under the nebular theory, Josh, astronomers and physicists think that the universe was. I'm sorry, the Solar System. We're gonna get in trouble. No, we're not chunk, chunk. You're talking about the Solar system. And you know, the Solar System was a big shapeless cloud of gas and ice dust, and then something set things in motion. Probably an explosion is what they think. Maybe a star exploded, hypothetical, right, and and literally set things in motion right, yes, into a circular motion and rotation, yes, a tight rotation that spun faster and faster and faster, and then started collecting this dust flying around and started forming things originally plan testimal, that's a great word. And then more matters flying around colliding, and then the plantestimals get caught up on this in the process called how do you pronounce that? Accrestion? Accretion? Accretion, And then they eventually catch more dust and gas and form protoplanets, and then eventually they formed the planets that we all think are super groovy today. So like planetesimals are toddlers, proto planets are adolescents, tweens, and then you've got planets, yes, right, and um, now we kind of diverge, like everybody agrees generally who who buys into the nebular theory um that you know that all that what you just said is correct. Yes, but now we reach a de vergence. Right, Yes, So there's this big the main asteroid belt that's between Jupiter and Mars is far enough away from the Sun. There's a there's a big enough distance between Jupiter and Mars with this asteroid belt in between that some people think that that asteroid belt got there because there was a proto plane in it there at one time that was bombarded, maybe hit by something else, some other space junk like a comet, maybe just shot by some other civilization eons ago, right, and it exploded, and that these these these bits of in pieces of this it entered into and uh its own rotation around the Sun and was attracted by Jupiter's gravity because Jupiter is so big that it's it's influences the movement of these asteroid This asteroid belt basically keeps it in line. So that's one theory for how the asteroid belt got there. That was a proto planet, It's not bad. The other theory is a little more widely accepted, which is that the asteroid belt is nothing more than a collection of that original debris that never formed into a uh plan tessimal and then a proto planet and then eventually a planet. And Jupiter Mars are five and fifty five million kilometers apart, which is a great distance. So that's why they thought originally you're first theory or not yours, But their first series was, you know, there probably should have been another planet in there that got broken up. But the other theory says that no, that was it never formed again, probably because of Jupiter's Mask's just reckon everything. So what we ended up with was a main asteroid belt. And there's tens of thousands of asteroids in these belts in this belt, the main belt UM, and most of them are about the size of a pebble by far, the vast majority UM. And then there's just a handful and we're talking like a handful and galactic terms, um, so you know thousands that are big and then bigger and big est, and the biggest one is still not that big. Series c R E. Y S right has a diameter of about a thousand kilometers. And if apparently astronomers have figured out that if you uh put all of the mass all of these pieces together every asteroid and the main asteroid belt. If you could put it into a planet or a proto planet, you would still only have a planet about half the size of the Moon for about a thousand the mass of the Earth, So it wouldn't be very big if it were a planet that had broken up. But you know, there's a lot of them flying around, Josh, and you know the odds of let's just say you had a starship, okay, and you wanted to navigate this asteroid field. You know, the odds of successfully doing so are uh, it depends on who you ask. If you were to ask somebody like C three p O, you'd have one in like a sixty and change chance, maybe one in a fifty dred one in a seventy thirty seven one three thousand, seven twenty one. The odds are very slim. If you listen to a robot, right, But that wasn't in our galaxy. It was in another galaxy, far far away. And maybe I should have said droid instead of robot before the listener male tumbles in yeah, or perhaps did the same. I'm just cover my base, So chuck Um. Size is not the only differentiator of asteroids in the main asteroid belt, right right. Um, they're they're also generally more generally classified UM by the composition of their makeup. And if you look at most asteroids, they look like chunks of the moon, just kind of dull and gray and then not have like a pock mark or something like that. Um. But not all of them are exactly alike. They're made up of generally three different types of stuff, right, Josh, that's the name of our show, so that's appropriate. We have the C type, the S type, and the M type amazon uh, Millennium falcon. I don't think that's right. The C type is about the known asteroids or of C type, and they are sort of like the Sun in composition, but without the hydrogen and helium and some other volatile compounds, right, so they're not going to start burning. Right. Then you got the S type, it's only accounts for about and they have nickel, iron and magnesium. And then you got the M type UM for millennium falcon and that's the smallest number of asteroids are the M type, and they have nickel and iron inside them, right, And the the C type where most of them are in the outer ring, the out the outside of the belt. Right. Uh, the M types in the middle, which makes sense, and then the the silicacious. The S type is the um that stands for yeah, silicacious like silicon, um, carbonaceous carbon, and millennium falcon. M type is metallic. Now the n M type is the kind that we're probably going to be most interested in harvesting, right, Yeah, well we should talk about why why why do we want to harvest asteroids. We're average Joe out there in Jane. They might say, well, what's the big deal? We got all that stuff here on Earth. Well, the the the point is is if it's well, there's two ways of thinking, right. One is that we could go to these asteroids mine all this stuff because there are precious metals found on their platinum, which is very expensive gold, gold, potentially um iron ore, which can be turned into steel um and brought back to Earth and sold. Right. So, if you happen to be some sort of investor, maybe one who's into spaceflight or space exploration, like Richard Branson, let's sure you might be interested in setting up a space mining operation. Go get a bunch of platinum. Nobody owns an asteroid. If you, as a as far as I understand it. If you can make it to that asteroid, you can mine it. It's yours the slogan that's that's I just coin that you can make it, you can mind it right, So you go get a bunch of platinum. You don't have to worry about negotiating with some you know, um junta in a developing country for mineral rights or anything like that, and just go to an asteroid and get the stuff and bring it back right. And and there are people are thinking about this. Large corporations are you know, I have plans in motion if they have ideas. The other and much more reasonable reason to mine and asteroid is to supply a space colony, because then that way you don't have two ferry supplies out of space all the time, which a colony is gonna need a lot of supplies and they're gonna need them pretty much constantly. That's really inefficient, that's really expensive. They actually think a lot of smart people actually think that it will be cheaper to set up an asteroid mining operation two basically mine or to be turned into steel for structures and spacecraft and all that stuff. And there's some pretty clever ideas floating around. The bringing them back to Earth idea um as largely pooh pooed, is it? It is because I mean, there's so much, so much um metal, precious rare otherwise here on Earth that we haven't tapped, and then we won't tap until the price of them is enough to really go to the trouble of getting these because they're harder to get, right, But we are running out of some of that stuff, but we're running out of the easy to get stuff. That's the point, right, So if you take into account that there's a bunch of it there, it's just gonna be more expensive. It will still be less expensive to mind the hard to get expensive stuff on Earth than to go there and back, Right, That's one thing. The other reason that selling it on Earth will is probably not as good of an idea. Is you hear numbers bandied about where like an asteroid is worth twenty trillion dollars? Right? Yeah, you want me to read the stat real quick. According to Jonas Lewis, who is the author and sounds like supporter of asteroid mining, he wrote a book called Mining the Sky, he says, uh, there are perhaps a million asteroids the size of one kilometer in diameter, which would have a massive about two billion tons, and he projects that one of these asteroids could contain, or he says, would contain thirty million tons of nickel mill mill and a half of metal cobalt, seventy tons of platinum, and the platinum alone would be worth more than a hundred and fifty billion dollars. Right, And a NASA report valued the nasaer. NASA valued all of the minerals and ore found in these um asteroids in the main asteroid belt at worth about a hundred billion per each of the six billion people on Earth. It's funny. When I read that, I was like, well, why did they write it like that? And then I multiplied it out and it was some ridiculous ten to the twenty six and I was like, oh, that's why. That's a lot of money. Yeah. But the problem is is that none of these, none of these um outrageous and very attractive numbers, take into account things like actually mining them, transporting the stuff back, and possibly most importantly, the effect that flooding the platinum market with a hundred and fifty billion tons of platinum would totally drop the bottom out of it. Well, that would suck. It wouldn't because you went to all that trouble and now you're shooting yourself and they're like, hey, guess what. Platinum isn't worth anything anymore because we have so much of it. But likely anybody who could finance and undertake a asteroid mining operation would probably set up some sort of like the beers and and sit on this stuff and slowly dole it out right or or do the method ahead of time. They wouldn't just jump into it will nally, right. But using these things for space colonies is a is a pretty reasonable idea. And there's a lot of people who are behind us. Yeah, and and we should point out to that. Uh. One of the ways that they find out, because you know, they're not landing on asteroids and drilling into them. Now, one of the ways they find out what potentially is inside the the asteroids is uh using something called telescopic spect spectroscopy. I thought I was gonna say it, if I was gonna nail it. It sounds like it. Uh, it sounds like a painful procedure, doesn't that. Yeah, it does. What they do is a bounced light off of it, and they analyze that reflected light um from the asteroid surface and that through the you know, powers of magic, they can tell what might be inside, like magnesium, water, oxygen even And that's important because water can't have space colony without water. Water is key to anything that we want to do pretty much. And you can separate the hydrogen and the oxygen and potentially potentially use that as rocket fuel. Right. The water is very valuable on many levels. And this guy who um, who created the book Mining in the Sky, what's his name, Jonice Lewis, Yeah, mining the skuy he's um Mining in the sky. That's a little more fanciful. He he has a pretty good idea of how optimum um productivity an asteroid could be harvested. Right. Well, yeah, I mean like that this is kind of what would it look like like in this article. I get the impression it's largely based on Lewis's conception of what it should look like, right. Um. And one of the ideas that's bandied about is to use robots, right makes sense, it does. You don't have to feed robots, you don't have to water robots, um, you don't have to pay robots a salary, which you know makes everything a little bit cheaper, although it's expensive to build one. If you can get self replicating robots, if you can create them and you're not afraid of singularity, um, then you you're all the better. You just launch a few into space and be like start reproducing and then get to work. Was an alien of mine? The original crew for the alien? Wasn't that? Like a I think so? Were they in mining operation? I believe so that you mentioned it, Chuck. Another great idea would be solar powered equipment. Sure, because think about it, the solar radiation in outer space is not being subjected to the Earth's atmosphere, the deletrious effects of the Earth's atmosphere, So you're getting a lot more cosmic radiation um, which will power these things a lot more efficiently day or night. Yeah. Uh, you should have light equipment, even though um it's pretty much a zero gravity situation. You still got to get it out there, and just lighter is better and more efficient. Well, you just brought up a humdinger of a point. Right, gravity gravity, it's a big one. Then there's two things. There's a lack of gravity on these asteroids, and these asteroids rotate, they move, and sometimes they move pretty fast compared to their size. Some asteroids rotate um as often as once an hour, some take two days, depending on their size. But if you're on an asteroid that's going upside down every half hour, every hour, right, it's no good. Now you can fall off, you know. And then if you factor in weightlessness, then you have even greater problems because let's say you undertake a strip mining operation. When you loosen that or it's just gonna float right off, you're basically breaking up these pieces that form these planetesimals in other cases, and then protoplanets. You're breaking that stuff up, and some of the asteroids aren't. It's not just like a chunk of rock. Some asteroids are um less dense than others. There's a pretty sizeable asteroid out there, I can't remember which one it is. Um that is as that's thought to have about the density of water, but it's solid material. It's just not packed together. So weightlessness, rotation and possible low density of some of these asteroids is gonna make this a little harder than you would think. But they got some ideas. They do have some ideas, especially to take into consideration weightlessness. Right, Yeah, Well, one thing they in This all sounds very rudimentary, but it makes sense. They thought about using a big canopy to collect this stuff as it flies off. They have considered the idea of using rocket boosters to keep the asteroid from spinning and uh, you know, level it out. I saw one um idea they had was to use magnets called rake magnets, so they would literally just uh, sort of in the shape of a rake, a giant magnet that would combs very smart and whatever loose mineral or metals were on top would stick to the magnet that would suck. To lose the rake magnet in the space though, it floats off and you're like, man, we lost another rake magnet in dollars. Plus. The other point too, with gravity is what zero gravity taketh away, she also giveth because it makes everything much lighter and easier to cherry like that, I mean gravity a woman. I guess, uh, it's everything is lighter, so you know, you won't have to have like the massive crane to lift the equipment because zero gravity and almost zero gravity, right, yes, And ferrying back and forth between the asteroid belt and say the moon. Let's say we put a colony on the Moon is going to take less fuel. We use up a substantial amount of fuel getting into outer space. Once we're in outer space, we use way less, you know. And then also the other cool thing is once you you're set up up there, you can mine an asteroid and then you can take it for all it's worth and just move to the next asteroid. You don't have to go back and forth and back and forth. And that two raise is kind of a point, like, I know this is a very nascent field and the fact that it's not in existence yet, but um, nobody's talking about what effect this could possibly have if we start basically just mine and asteroid belt like nothing. Let's say we remove all the iron ore from the main asteroid belt. What happens to say the rotation Do they start flipping out? Um, there's no there's no talk about even going to the main asteroid belt. These are right now. They're talking about just getting ones that have kind of wandered away called near Earth objects the Earth asteroids, because a lot closer to the Earth is much better, and sometimes they're closer than the Moon is, so it would really be easy to ferry to the Moon. Right the Moon. But I can't help. But wonder if eventually, you know, in a century, we ramp up in are in the main asteroid belt, like really undertaking mining operations, It'll have some sort of horrible effect that no one figured out until it was too late. I'll start spinning into Earth or something. Still, though it's a good idea, it's probably a necessity if we start to call a nice space. Um. But don't let anybody tell you it's an easy idea, right. For example, one last example of how difficult this can um and I very much recommend people go read Ronald breaks Um the Great Space Mining con I think is what he called it. He Poopoo's it, right, he he Poopoo's it. He Poopoo's bringing it back to Earth. Things. Got a lot of great examples. Uh, he says, you know, using it for space is a good idea. Um. But one of the thing is he points out is when we go and get or right, say, iron ore, we get them from veins. There's like a vein there and we can get a bunch at once. Right. That's because of Earth's biogeochemical processes that help collect or like or into the same place the Earth has a magnetic field. All of this stuff contributes taking a bunch of iron ore and putting it together. Asteroids have not been subjected to these processes, right, So we don't know if it's the same. It could be completely spread out. There might be a bunch in there um using what telescopic spect what spectroscopy? Okay, Um, we know there's a bunch there, but we don't necessarily know in what kind of density that it occurs. So you sunk a hundred billion dollars into getting up there to find out that you can't use the same processes that you do on Earth. Basically, I think they probably just do exploratory missions first before sinking in the whole hundred billion. Maybe, so we'll find out. We'll find out what Richard Branson's made of in the next year or two. Okay, yeah, I bet he listens to this. So we got a bunch on the site. You've got anything else? Uh? No, I like these little, uh theoretical musings every now and then. Oh, I've got one. The Kuiper Belt, the mel Kuiper Belt. So there's a there's another asteroid belt way larger that goes basically out to the frontiers of the Solar System. Yeah. Um. And the cool thing about this, the Kuiper Belt, is that it was proposed by Gerard Kuiper in ninety one. He's like, there's an asteroid belt out there, and this is probably roughly where it is and how wide it is and how dense it is, and in it was confirmed by um observers who saw the observers you know, from other planets, I guess, And he said, I'm naming it after me. Now I think he's probably dead. Of what I'm saying is he said mathematically, he said there's an asteroid belt out there, and then forty years later they're like, there's one right there. It's pretty cool. We should have named after him Keiper Keiper Belt. So that's it. I think it'll happen. I think we have pillaged the Earth and we will assume be pillaging the Solar System likewise. Okay, if you want to learn more about asteroids, type in that word's going to bring up a lot of cool articles we combined to how asteroid mining will work and how asteroid belts work. Um, and you can type that into the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com, which brings up listener mail. Josh, I'm gonna call this listener mail from my friend Ryan. Is this legal? I don't think you can do this? He sent us a legit email. I was like, you know, dude, I'm gonna read this. I'm gonna plug your band while I do it. Yeah, but that's not the reason, um, because this is actually pretty cool. Uh. Hey, dude, he didn't say everyone. He was just emailing me while mowing the yard. Earlier today, I listened to your podcast on how to Start your Own Nation. Great job, as always. I took a particular interest in checking that one out because a couple of years ago, I produced a segment for a TV show h G four Underground that never aired on the subject of micro nations, and I ended up researching many of the topics you covered on the show. In particular, you talked about the sovereign nation outside of Reno, the Republic of Malasia. I spent an entire day with his excellency President Kevin Ball in Malasia, which is actually just a house in a housing edition in a little desert town, and he sent me a picture of him with this tute and he's dressed like onwards. Yeah, he's got like the sash and everything. You can recognize it by the Molassian flag flying in the front yard and miniature cannon replica near the front door. I kind of knew going into it that he wasn't very serious about the whole thing, but definitely realized upon arrival that he and the other members of the micro Nation culture are all just big role playing nerds. My first clue was his enormous collection of Star Trek memorabilia. I interviewed neighbors who just described him as a nice fellow who's just a little eccentric. And I've attached the picture and maybe I'll put that on Facebook. I'll see f Ryan minds. But Ryan is in a band called Debate Team and they are awesome and I have their album and it's that like self produced, like the truest of indie uh styles and and putting out your own music. And Ryan's like an old friend and we were pas together and now he's like directing stuff and I'm doing this, and uh, we're all like very proud of each other. You should leave his album on our Facebook. You know. I have posted something before, I'll post it again, but um, if you want to check out Facebook dot com slash debate team. It's good power pop. Uh, it's just awesome. I love it. I'm a fan. What what else? What's another example of power pop? Um? I don't know that. I mean the drummer for his band is also the drummer from Okay go Are they power pop? I would say, Okay goes. Probably. I can see that. I like them, but it's not like they're like them. They're debate teams around awesome thing. Let me change that. I like that one song that they had that the first video for the which was the chick Mills. Yeah, but they're I mean, those dudes are like killing it on the music videos. Yeah, and they're like Internet gods and everything. Yeah. Cool, guys? Is it? The Strokes are sort of power poppy? Okay, yes, totally. You might call them rock and roll rooney rooney. Yeah, I don't know. This guy's ay good? They're yeah, they're pretty good, all right. They have some very catchy tunes. All right, Well, if you like power pop, we want to hear all about it. We do want to hear about it, Josh, But we got to let people know about something that we're doing. Oh yeah, we have a next weekend, the fourth of July weekend. Uh, you're gonna be able to listen to us on Serious XM channel what is it one O four Channel one or they're doing a Stuff you Should Know America of Stuff you Should Know About America weekend and they're playing like twenty of our podcast over the course of the weekend on a little pop up channel, and uh, it's gonna be punctuated with some little shorts from our friends at Stuff You Miss in History Class de Bleian and Sarah, who are awesome, and also our live show that we're recording in New York on July one with some very special friends from the Onion and potentially other special guests. They're going to play that several times. Dude. We're basically all over channel one or four on Serious XM for like a whole weekend pretty much. It's going to be pretty awesome. And you can also listen to Stuff you Should Know Now on w fm U ninety one point one in the New York metro area and ninety point one in the Hudson Valley. Right, that's right. Friday's from seven to eight pm. You can support us on the radio, and they're cutting together some of our archives in the new and exciting ways. So there you have it. That's it. Yeah um. If you want to send us an email about what power pop yeah yeah yeah, or if you're a member of a power pop band, sure shoot it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you