Platinum Group Metals (PGMs)

The beauty of the original AsterAnts proposal is that it does not require
extensive robotics beyond Earth orbit. The AsterAnt's responsibility is
limited to bringing the meteoroid from where it is back to Earth orbit. In
Earth orbit, perhaps via crew members and/or telepresence, much more
intelligence could be brought to bear on the materials processing problem.

The scheme you outlined requires more intelligence far from Earth. I
prefer the original AsterAnts idea because it does not require that. In
the original AsterAnts proposal, the parts (A) and (B) of your proposal
would instead be in Earth orbit, perhaps controlled from the ground.

I don't think that part A would have to be *that* intelligent. Perhaps it
would be as intelligent as an oil refinery is. (Again, that's just an
intuitive guess. I'm a nullity when it comes to ore processing.) Part B
would have to be considerably more intelligent, since it would have to
interact with a non-structured environment. (I imagine it as a free-floating
robot with a "mouth" to collect regolith and sensors to detect it).

However, Al Globus himself says that the original concept of AsterAnts is
not viable due to meteoroid rotation. The better solution that he thought of
to avoid that obstacle was to use AsterAnts to collect regolith from bigger
asteroids, and in that case they would essentially be B parts. In this
scenario, I don't think that A would increase significantly the complexity
of the system.

Anyhow, I have no idea if a refrigerator-sized ore processing plant is
viable, so maybe I'm building a castle in the air (or in the vacuum ;-)...

Ron Menich

Lucio Coelho