To: RightWhale; All
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.
To: RadioAstronomer
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.
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