The elephant on the table: rubble piles would be fairly trivial to mine! No blasting; no heavy drilling equipment; little need for explosives or high energy. T

The elephant on the table: rubble piles would be fairly trivial to mine! No blasting; no heavy drilling equipment; little need for explosives or high energy. The article is just talking about changing orbits to avoid collision with Earth. Which is arguably much harder when there's nothing firm to push against. Then again maybe they just have to be dispersed, so the dust and small parts burn harmlessly in the atmosphere...