[Efksqhyu]

For me I give asteroid/Off Earth mining 50 years and I have also said that up there somewhere.

as a matter of contrast here... the timeline required to get from mineral discovery through to first production (here on Earth) is generally upwards of a decade. Now we already have in place a legislative framework around this stuff... how long do you think it will take for world governments to decide upon a legislative framework for something that doesn't even exist yet. Then think about the environmental hurdles and all this before we've even solved the technological problems.

It's also worthy to point out that in the last 50yrs the achievements of the space exploration industry haven't exactly taken great leaps either. we have the same propulsion and communications technology now as we did then and even though robotics technology has increased, a lot has to do with assess increased levels of of mobile computer processing power.

For mine, the foreseeable future here is a couple of centuries

I understand we can't see into the future, but equally I'm not driving a flying car, nor do I have a jet pack, or power my home by nuclear fusion.