[RadioAstronomer]

Think of what kind of solar furnace you could construct. You would not even have the atmospheric contaminants to deal with.

There was a book written a few years ago called the "High Frontier" which delved into this subject (including mining the asteroids) quite thoroughly.

[RightWhale]

O'Neill [sp] was one of my asteroid mining gurus. I call space the "Endless Frontier" so as not to step on his "High Frontier". I did an economic analysis, lack of which seemed at the time to be a gap in the dreaming and planning. As a result I am very upbeat on the potential economic return of asteroid mining, but not on many of the other space development ideas.