The advantage to any space-based mining is not to directly benefit industry on Earth, but to help real manufacturing and other industrial scale operations in space. Doing that could lead to massive benefits for ground-based society, especially if we can automate so scaling to use resources beyond the Earth-Moon system became practical.
The advantage to any space-based mining is not to directly benefit industry on Earth, but to help real manufacturing and other industrial scale operations in space. Doing that could lead to massive benefits for ground-based society, especially if we can automate so scaling to use resources beyond the Earth-Moon system became practical.
Sounds a little like starting a pot for chicken stock because you got an invite to an easter egg hunt.
Resource extraction on earth is super dirty and exploitative, so I’m all for automating it and moving it to space as soon as it’s commercially viable.