[JRandomFreeper]

Based on what we know now there is nothing on the asteroids that isn’t also on Earth in pretty good quantities.

That is true, on the face of it, but the concentrations are very different. There are asteroids that are solid nickle-iron with a few % of other stuff.

You don't find that kind of ore on earth. Earth mixes stuff up pretty well.

And there has been economic return from space. Billions of dollars worth. Already. Without tapping any minerals.

/johnny

[DManA]

I am skeptical of that.

And there has been economic return from space. Billions of dollars worth. Already.

[DManA]

What do you consider a "return"? American tax payers have invested half a trillion in NASA alone? God knows what the military has spent.

Seen in the year-by-year breakdown listed below, the total amounts (in nominal dollars) that NASA has been budgeted from 1958 to 2011 amounts to $526.18 billion dollars—an average of $9.7 billion per year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA