(11-12-2015, 06:49 PM)Pavel Wrote: https://www.rt.com/usa/321639-space-mining-senate-nasa/

Resident space nerd c'min through.

People have been speculating over and (tentatively) bankrolling space mining RnD for a long time. It's an old concept and it's not particularly a good one unless you can get the cost of extraction to be competitive with that of the cost of refinement and extraction on Earth. Hypothetically you can, but to do so you need a working on-orbit industrial economy and cheap access to space before Space Mining is a thing. We will have a mars colony before we are mining Near Earth Asteroids, and that won't just be something our kids will see, it'll be something we, ourselves see. People tend to undercut the rate of aerospace development because they view it as too Star-Trek and gloss over the technological, political and economic realities. GPS, for example, is an instance of how MEO has revolutionized life on earth.

Had to remove the end of your post. I am soooooooo bad

(11-12-2015, 06:49 PM)Pavel Wrote: Had to remove the end of your post. I am soooooooo bad [/color]

(11-17-2015, 04:35 PM)Dunc- Wrote:

(11-12-2015, 06:49 PM)Pavel Wrote: Had to remove the end of your post. I am soooooooo bad [/color]

But it's not a comment section if I can't argue with you over crappy geopolitics!