> Also, they would still have to man the station underwater, whereas in asteroid mining, it's relatively easy to send a fleet of drones for resource gathering a

> Also, they would still have to man the station underwater, whereas in asteroid mining, it's relatively easy to send a fleet of drones for resource gathering and discovery. It's interesting why you would think this. Underwater drones would be an order of magnitude easier. For starters you can control them with amazing high bandwidth just using a simple 10km long cord from a boat. You can pull them in for maintenance every day. They cost ~zero $ to deliver. A fishing boat could do it. I think because SciFi movies delivers space so much we lose perspective of how hard it is and how 'easy' other things are. I'm not sure why China is manning this underwater lab other than it's cool. (like going to the moon)