Near earth asteroids will IGNITE space.

True. But where and how do we start?

SpaceDev is doing the first asteroid mission, and will prospect the
asteroid. In doing so, SpaceDev will place a claim on it. One way
to make money is to actually return materials from an asteroid. What
this will be is an actual robotic mining mission. The NEAR
spacecraft has proven that it is possible to land on an asteroid.
But even so, we shall still anchor our craft when we land on it.
Since the delta-v required to return to Earth is small, we can carry
a large, heavy duty bag in the craft. We can then mine about 25 kg
of material. For this first mission, I would propose going to an M-
class (metal) asteroid. We can just mine what we see, or we can
specifically look for certain materials, such as gold or platinum.
Then with one small push of the booster, the craft will be headed
back on its way to Earth. We can either let it reenter
and "splashdown", or we can just put the craft in orbit, to be
retrieved by a crew on the ISS, or even on Gene Meyers space
station. We can sell the material to scientific institutions such as
NASA, or many universities such a MIT, Caltech, etc. For the next
mission, we should go to a CC-class (carbonaceous chrondrite)
asteroid. There, we shall dig for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
nitrogen. The material will be very valuable. As an added bonus, we
can have the spacecraft produce its own fuel from the excess hydrogen
and oxygen. These missions would be good places to start.

Not too far into the future, we can send humans, even build a mining
base on an asteroid. First, we will send a mission to a CC-
asteroid. There, we willuse robots to prospect it, and then we would
drop a device powered by solar power that continously sends a radio
or microwave signal on it in order to continuously track it. Then we
would build a survivor-type show to build a team to build the base.
The media, and lots of corporate sponsorship will fund much of the
mission. These people will go through a lot of hard training in the
show. The team will then be selected to go. The ship will be a
derivative of a Gene Meyers Space Island
[http://www.spaceislandgroup.com]. But the ship will be built in
orbit from fuel tanks. However, it will contain many solar panels,
and two or three extra ETs that will serve as the base. The large
number of solar panels will power the ion engine that takes the crew
to the asteroid. At arrival, the extra ETs will be released, and
quickly made into a base. The large ship will continue working, and
the crew might spend much of their time on the ship in order to be
exposed to 1/3 Earth gravity. In an internationally televised event,
these explorers will plant an "Earth" flag on the asteroid. But
instead of stopping there as we did with Apollo, we will actually
start mining. We can even add a new twist, in which the crew will
actually mine their fuel for the return trip. Any more ideas?

--- In spacesettlers@y..., jdr7181@c... wrote:
> --- In spacesettlers@y..., "George Perkins" wrote:
>
> > Space settlements that include asteroid mining as one of its
> > activities or affiliations would be the most economically stable
of
> > all.
>
> Yes, I agree. But I am referring to something different. I want
to