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**ggiifdfalls** · 04-30-2012, 06:36 PM

Well fine, those minerals will be super expensive then. :P I'm gathering the compay would want to recover their outlay, somehow.

If those minerals/isotopes were commercially valuable then by my reckoning it would be less expensive to recreate them on Earth than it would be to extract them from an asteroid and bring them back to earth.

it should be remembered that mining very rarely actually produces a usable end product, most of the value add in the extraction process is seen after some form of processing/refinement. Because of this even if asteroids were to be mined 'off world' then you would still need to get the ore to the Earth for processing.

04-30-2012, 06:36 PM	#16
ggiifdfalls Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 540 Senior Member	Well fine, those minerals will be super expensive then. :P I'm gathering the compay would want to recover their outlay, somehow. If those minerals/isotopes were commercially valuable then by my reckoning it would be less expensive to recreate them on Earth than it would be to extract them from an asteroid and bring them back to earth. it should be remembered that mining very rarely actually produces a usable end product, most of the value add in the extraction process is seen after some form of processing/refinement. Because of this even if asteroids were to be mined 'off world' then you would still need to get the ore to the Earth for processing.
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