Mar 28, 2011 -- 7:07PM, Bluedog1a wrote:

Aren't asteroids loaded with iron, nickel and other metals?

Some are, yeah. The potential motherlode of minerals is one of the main reasons to do this.

Mar 28, 2011 -- 11:58PM, teilhard wrote:

Any "Minerals" mined from an "Asteroid" for return to be used on The Earth would be WILDLY more Expensive than anything mined on and from The Earth ... UNLESS the mined Materials will be used IN Space ...

That's one possibility. It's also possible we'll discover entirely new minerals or plentiful supply of minerals which are rare on earth (for example, all it takes to form diamond is carbon and very high pressure at low tempratures and carbon is the most fourth abundant element in the universe).

Also, that's only true for now. Raw economics says that we will eventually reach a point where we have stripped so many minerals from the earth's crust that it will become more economically viable to return them from asteroids than to mine them from the earth. It's the same principle as oil. When oil is $20 a barrel, it's only worth going after the liquid crude that practically bursts out of the ground but if you're willing to pay $120 a barrel (and apparently, you are), it's worth it to melt sand and squeeze the petroleum out of it.

Teilhard is right.  The expense involved in getting all these minerals (or whatever) from asteroids would be so wildly expensive as to make the whole project infeasible.

In any case, your own NASA has admitted that they cannot even afford to track asteroids, much less visit them in future.

I can't believe you people are serious.

I think your missing the boat by thinking it should be up to NASA. 

Tell the corporations that the first one to send a man to the asteroids will have exclusive rights to them for a decade. 

Have them pave the way, and incur the expense, and let them have a chunk of the profit for it.  Once they've figured out how to do it, and have proven that they know how, open it up for everyone. 

all