Asteroid Danger Forum: SSI-List
Thread: Asteroid Danger
This is a very ambiguous assessment; which doesn't model well economically:
depending on how i cost certain components of the plan, either the 100m
class of asteroids are the most cost effective to mine & process using near
term technologies or the least profitable Almostas soon as I made the remark I started to question it myself. Especially after Al made the comment about bigger asteroids having deeper layers of regolith. There's certainly no reason to quibble over the difference in gravity wells of a 100m vs. 10 km asteroid; either is negligible. I suppose that I should have only said smaller asteroids would be easier to bring back to HEO. But I'm willing to allow that bringing the entire asteroid back may not necessarily be the most favorable plan. Bringing back a big sack of regolith might be better, at least until the market for space resources in HEO expands considerably.
Mike Combs