Asteroid Mining

I have no engineering or scientific background. I'm just imaginative.
I've already published a novel.

Anyway, I would say on getting the raw materials for building space
islands, the first place to start would be the near earth asteroids
since less equipment will have to be shot up from earth to mine them
along with fewer people to assemble it all, as well as construct all
the necessary bases and supporting facilities.

First, they would have to be moved to the either Lagrange Four or
Lagrange Five. Either one will do.

Second, Mining them. Harvesting their materials. Since it has been
pointed out in previous posts that the main advantage of the Moon is
that gravity helps move the material, I was thinking of two ways to
harvest the asteroids.

First, a huge module, perhaps constructed from a former shuttle drop
tank, that moves up to the asteroid and latches on. Anyone who has
used a drill knows that the motionof the drill pulls the material
from what's being drilled. I was thinking of this method for pulling
away material from the captive asteriod. Say a large enclosed drill
or battery of enclosed drills boring into the side of the asteroid
pulling away its material which is pulled into the module which can
then repackage it for removal at the rear for shipment to a
processing plant. I was also thinking of the borers used for the
Chunnel. A similar device could be used to mine asteroids using
suction to draw in the material.

Second method would be to carve the asteroid into large chunks which
can then be hauled into hangers similar to the ones which will be
used to construct sections to be assembled into space islands to be
broken up and processed.

Among the things that could be constructed at these sights from the
asteroids would be the equipment that would be used to mine the
moon.