Asteroid Belt First

On Wednesday, October 9, 2002, at 03:20 PM, Ed Schonert wrote:

> For $200,000 commitment each of the
> investors would be entitled to emigrate with a family of four.

Presumably you mean the right to emigrate. Without multiple order of
magnitude lower launch cost you're not going to get anyone into orbit
for anything resembling $50,000.

The materials in one asteroid (the largest ) are sufficient to make
orbital space colonies with ~500 times the surface area of the Earth in
usable real estate. See http://lifesci3.arc.nasa.gov/SpaceSettlement/
for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html