I think we’re all being misled by “mining”: it’s difficult to imagine how having to return something from space will ever be competitive with mining the same thing on earth, regardless of unobtanium.
What mining in space is good for is …. Space economy. And the goal is not to mine things that have value on earth but those that have value in space. For the foreseeable future, the goal of mining in space would be to reduce the cost of the space economy by reducing launches of bulky, heavy, or consumables. Think of all the rocket fuel spent on rocket fuel, water, food, oxygen, construction materials and shielding. Thats much higher cost than just carrying the people. Think of how much cheaper a manned space mission can be if you can instead use what is at your destination. Cutting the required number of launches in half is cutting the costs in half
The only sensible answer.
Even if we discovered unobtainium there, robots would do the mining.
I think we’re all being misled by “mining”: it’s difficult to imagine how having to return something from space will ever be competitive with mining the same thing on earth, regardless of unobtanium.
What mining in space is good for is …. Space economy. And the goal is not to mine things that have value on earth but those that have value in space. For the foreseeable future, the goal of mining in space would be to reduce the cost of the space economy by reducing launches of bulky, heavy, or consumables. Think of all the rocket fuel spent on rocket fuel, water, food, oxygen, construction materials and shielding. Thats much higher cost than just carrying the people. Think of how much cheaper a manned space mission can be if you can instead use what is at your destination. Cutting the required number of launches in half is cutting the costs in half