On 6/15/07, Eugen Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: (...)
Sure, and don't forget to add some hand mirrors, and glass pearls.
It seems that you are trying to equal all rare elements to gold - i.e., something that is valuable just because it is rare - but unfortunately that does not seems to be the case. Platinum for instance has a lot of industrial applications, including the use as a catalyst in fuel cells, and in fact its price has been skyrocketing in past years due to increased demand. (As is the case with many metallic commodities.) (...)
Why asteroids? The Moon is close enough, both in distance, and in terms of delta v.
(...) Unless you know of some reserve of pure metal alloy buried under the regolith, there will always be some raw materials that are of easier exploration in asteroids than by processing zillions of tonnes of regolith - and that adds "distance" in commercial terms. Also, there are a few asteroids that are even closer to us in terms of delta v than the Moon - the gravity well of our neighboring world is not exactly shallow. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&user_secret=7d7fb4d8
