Asteroid Mining

Basicly I see things in terms of economics.

It would require more in human assets and equipment plus investment
capital to mine the moon than any asteriods captured and brought to
L4 or L5. At the same time one can be choosy about which asteriods to
grab and bring to the capture points.

Currently I see both moon and asteroids as sources of raw material
from which to construct and support: Space Island habitats, Power and
Comunicatinos Satallites, as well as space craft going further into
space. Add to this space tourism.

Mars on the other hand would be a waste. Too much gravity to operate
space craft cheeply even if asome kind of mining operation for some
vluable minerals were to be started. Not enough gravity to hold an
atmosphere to support colonists.

Better to mine the asteriods first. From their materals one can
build the massive amounts of equipment to mine the moon far more
cheeply than ship it all up from earth. At the same time one can
uickly start work building the first spacee colonies and the
industries whose profits can fund the program.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "ANTIcarrot."
wrote:
> > From: Richard
> > A baby learns to crawl before he (or she) can walk. And learn to
> > walk before running.
>
> IIRC starting to mine the moon would require 10,000 tons on the luna
> surface - as opposed to 4,000tons in low earth orbit for an
asteroid tug.
> The diffference between walking and running in this case is not the
simple