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**first_pr** · 05-02-2012, 09:01 PM

Others obviously have too...and they form an opposite opinion of yours....but *shrug*, your entitled to that belief.

this isn't a matter of belief or pessimism (for any conventional definition of the term anyway), it's just that I can seem to find anything, anywhere, that can build a sensible argument to explain how they are going to practically achieve these feats they are talking about.

Mining is a complex process that requires a lot of energy input... it will never be a simple as sending an excavator up to an asteroid and let it start digging...

If other people have thought about this then I'd love to see them present a sensible plan to achieve it.

Some people think that it will be a matter of decades... Given that there are centuries worth of currently economic mineral resources on Earth I just struggle to see why you would go off world to find the same stuff that is here, let alone how you would achieve it.

Like I said before, it would take mineral prices magnitudes higher then they currently are to make exploitation of mineral resources on asteroids commercially viable and if this were the case, it would be highly likley that the prices would drive a change in end use behavior rather then in supply.

05-02-2012, 09:01 PM	#81
first_pr Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 427 Senior Member	Others obviously have too...and they form an opposite opinion of yours....but shrug, your entitled to that belief. this isn't a matter of belief or pessimism (for any conventional definition of the term anyway), it's just that I can seem to find anything, anywhere, that can build a sensible argument to explain how they are going to practically achieve these feats they are talking about. Mining is a complex process that requires a lot of energy input... it will never be a simple as sending an excavator up to an asteroid and let it start digging... If other people have thought about this then I'd love to see them present a sensible plan to achieve it. Some people think that it will be a matter of decades... Given that there are centuries worth of currently economic mineral resources on Earth I just struggle to see why you would go off world to find the same stuff that is here, let alone how you would achieve it. Like I said before, it would take mineral prices magnitudes higher then they currently are to make exploitation of mineral resources on asteroids commercially viable and if this were the case, it would be highly likley that the prices would drive a change in end use behavior rather then in supply.
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