>> If you want to see some real space industry, hope that somebody discovers a gold asteroid. They already have [1]. And a platinum asteroid. And a palladium a

>> If you want to see some real space industry, hope that somebody discovers a gold asteroid. They already have [1]. And a platinum asteroid. And a palladium asteroid. And an Iron, Nickel, whatever-mineral-you-want asteroid. "At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (0.99 mi) contains more than 20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals." "A comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron-nickel ore, or two to three times the annual production for 2004." Supposedly the asteroid '433 Eros' contains more gold than has ever been mined from the Earth in the history of mankind (I can't find a source for this apart from an earlier HN comment though, the paper I found on it was behind a paywall). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining