So, you want to be an asteroid miner?
So [Williams] started talking to Christopher Dreyer, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines' Center for Space Resources, a research and technology development center that's existed within the school for more than a decade.
It was good timing. Because this summer, Mines announced its intention to found the world's first graduate program in Space Resources—the science, technology, policy, and politics of prospecting, mining, and using those resources. The multidisciplinary program would offer Post-Baccalaureate certificates and Masters of Science degrees. Although it's still pending approval for a 2018 start date, the school is running its pilot course, taught by Dreyer, this semester.
The focus seems to be on space colonies mining what they need in place, more than bringing material back to Earth.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday December 06 2017, @01:24AM
Every bootstrap is expensive. It doesn't mean that it will continue to stay so.
It's only a matter of available energy and the capability to manipulate that energy**. I reckon both of them are a matter of engineering.
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** it doesn't matter if you have petajoules available if the only way you can use them is within a time period of some milliseconds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford