What is the math behind mining resources on asteroids?
Assume it takes 50 billion to get to the point where you can mine your first asteroid, how much of what resource is in that asteroid that they can resell to terrestrial earth dwellers who need it for profit?
Or does this not matter at this point?
Further, what will the harvested resources be used to build? Military hardware? If so then I am very unimpressed with what this would mean to our civilization.
While I think it is "cool" - there are so freaking many problems with humans on earth that I feel we largely ignore our core issues and focus on shiny objects.
Every government on the planet is broken, we a a slave species to debt and we kill, exploit and oppress ourselves.
Now, what would be interesting if the took these resources to build a huge floating city-state in the middle of the ocean (or orbit) however, this would just be future-feudalism as it would be living in the corporation.
EDIT: I love how people on HN downvote without any comment. My point is completely valid, it is also my opinion - you don't need to agree, but it would be nice if you attempted to address my question regarding the economics of this effort.
OK I'll feed the troll. You got downvoted because your comment makes it seem like you didn't read the article, or any of the supplemental articles linked to in this thread. A few quick examples of why I think this - Why did you assume 50 billion - that is not supported at all by the article. Why are you asking what resources are in the asteroid when the article answers that? Why are you assuming they want to resell those to "earth dwellers" when the article mentions applications involving resupplying other space missions?
TL;DR - if we criticized every poorly researched post in detail instead of just downvoting, we'd have no time left in our day to do anything else.
Assume it takes 50 billion to get to the point where you can mine your first asteroid, how much of what resource is in that asteroid that they can resell to terrestrial earth dwellers who need it for profit?
Or does this not matter at this point?
Further, what will the harvested resources be used to build? Military hardware? If so then I am very unimpressed with what this would mean to our civilization.
While I think it is "cool" - there are so freaking many problems with humans on earth that I feel we largely ignore our core issues and focus on shiny objects.
Every government on the planet is broken, we a a slave species to debt and we kill, exploit and oppress ourselves.
Now, what would be interesting if the took these resources to build a huge floating city-state in the middle of the ocean (or orbit) however, this would just be future-feudalism as it would be living in the corporation.
EDIT: I love how people on HN downvote without any comment. My point is completely valid, it is also my opinion - you don't need to agree, but it would be nice if you attempted to address my question regarding the economics of this effort.