alt Hacker NewsFor it feels like we should work harder to mine critical resources in as low impact way possible. We don’t know what this will do. We don’t really need it. No one would get this consented / permitted within their own seabed, so why do we do it in international waters.
I work in subsea cables and the companies that develop this type of tooling also work in this field, on a purely technical level it’s super cool technology and operationally very very interesting - the riser for nodule collection and how you pump / suck something from 4km down to the surface is wildly cool.
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> we should work harder to mine critical resources in as low impact way possible
This is easy to say in theory. It's harder if you have a population that wants rising material living standards. (Increasing living standards in middle-income economies is vastly more energy and material intensive than at the upper or lower ends of the scale.)
> No one would get this consented / permitted within their own seabed, so why do we do it in international waters.
They do it in international waters because no one would consent in their own seabed.
It’s really the perfect example of libertarianism. When no one is considering the externalities, nothing matters except profit.
> For it feels like we should work harder to mine critical resources in as low impact way possible.
I honestly think this is the reason that asteroid mining should be the future for resource acquisition - not because it's cheaper or easier or anything like that, but because there's so much of it floating around out there and nobody will complain.