How much do you know about Asteroid Mining?
Quite a lot, actually. It's part of the space systems engineering textbook I'm writing
What I do know is that 2015, two years from now, is a totally and completely unrealistic goal.
That is not an unrealistic goal to launch prospector spacecraft. Coondoggie's article summary mangles what they intend to do, and you misread it further. Their actual website lists three stages: Prospecting craft to find the asteroids, assay missions to bring back ~20 kg samples, and only then trying to actually mine. This is a sensible plan.
In the mean time, I hope to start building prototype "seed factory" hardware this year. A seed factory is the minimal starter set of machines to start building *other* machines, which in turn becomes your industrial base. Think of it like a bootstrap compiler for hardware. Feed it plans for other machines, it starts making parts. I'm aiming for making 85% of the 2nd generation machines, because 100% is too hard a goal. The other 15% you just buy.
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/XWi1DVF6MGU/story01.htm
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