Astro Mining to be announced

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Skybird

It'S a PR gag only. So far we have not found precious or rare metals in acceptable quantities in meteors and asteroids, they were instead quite ordinary and not special at all. But the financial costs to catch even small objects would start in the billions.

What we do not need on Earth is simple iron or nickel from space costing 2 billion dollars per ton. Nor do we need cosmic H2O-ice to sell it as a miraculous healing water for 100 million per flacon.

In case he meant it serious I think Cameron simply has not done his homework right.

Mining on the moon, well maybe that has a very (a VEEEERYYYY) longtime perspective, but catching and/or mining on the occasional asteroid or meteor for several billion dollars per mission is - well, Monty Python would have loved the idea.

The real need is for those basic metals to be used in space for construction of new stations and spacecraft, rather than building them here on Earth.

That water is remass for spacecraft, we don't need it down in the grav well.

The real prize is in the outer solar system; Jupiter has as much methane (a common fuel) as Earth has mass. Forget pipelines from Canada, we need space tankers from Europa!