Asteroid Mining

It's official!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18638807
The b612 foundation is now up and running, looking for investors.

However, for some reason there is no statement what kind of reward you get for donating. Average Joe may only donate a grand, the better off ones maybe 10 grand. Needless to say it's a lot for this untested venture. I doubt we normal people get much.

Besides, asteroid mining still leaves one problem to be resolved: our energy future.
It only gets us rare earth resources but nothing like oil. As if there is oil in space.
We need fusion technology up and running first before we can think of mining helium 3 or water for it.

So I still think the orbital elevator is more important.

older news references from the Alternative Worlds forum

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120430-asteroid-mining-time-to-invest
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/live-webcams-follow-nasa-astronauts-as-they-simulate-asteroi
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120518-danger-space-junk-alert

Cool, gotta read that. I bet you need to mine something good out there to cover the insane cost...

http://www.planetaryresources.com/2012/04/asteroid-mining-plans-revealed-by-planetary-resources-inc/

That's why I have my doubts about it making sense at this point. Yes, we do need rare earth ore but with recycling we can still do for some several decades.
If we got the elevator first we can still do it but in a much cheaper way. And using it to build solar power solves more immediate problems.

I can just see the UMW getting their talons into any space mining effort by demanding it be done by
union miners only.