Asteroid use

--- In spacesettlers@egroups.com, Marcel Williams
>
> MW: Hollowing out asteroids would be a waste or
> resources. You could probably build dozens of space
> islands with with the materials you hollowed out from
> the asteroid in the first place.

Of course: that's the point which starts making asteroid mining
viable. The asteroid you originally begin mining becomes your factory
floor; with a microG environment down the central spine & a revolving
colony with useable G on the outer edges. It exports power from solar
panels manufactured in situ; & builds the kind of large sail
structures required for next stage space development.

It's called leveraging your asset; & the only way that anything
ressembling commercial spacemining will make sense.

> And industrializing
> the surfaces of the Moon and Mars make far more
> economic sense than trying to build large space
> islands at this time. Their time will come. But their
> time is definitely not in the next 20 or 30 years,
> IMO.
>
> Marcel F. Williams
> 1/4/01

As previously discussed, Mars is a joke as a potential space
industrial site; but the Moon works as a potential link between
different space utilities. Ultimately, though, the resources are in
the asteroids; & the most portable ones - again: assuming you need to
move them; which won't necessarily be true - ar the Earthgrazers
resonant on Earth orbit.

Robert