[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality

[Adrian Tymes]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 4:15 AM, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> Don't land them or not most of them!  Much of the volatiles and other materials are needed in space or on the moon.  There eventual money making potential is much larger there.  Send rare earths, precious metals and so on down to the surface to raise more money faster but keep much of the rest for building out near earth infrastructure.

Yeah, see, this is the main problem I have to overcome a lot when pitching
this idea.

1) Whatever the eventual money earning potential is, there is none today.

2) The initial stages are likely to be extremely cash-strapped.

3) We can always go get more asteroids.  (At least, for as long out as it
makes sense to plan in much detail.)

Therefore:

Land all or most of the initial rock.  Anything you can sell for much profit
Earth-side, plan on doing so.  Only the least valuable stuff - which may still
be quite a lot - remains up there.  But do land less of it later on,
once cash is
no longer in such extremely short supply.

> Except you don't have enough trained humans to do space walk work.

Training more humans is a trivial expense, relative to the expense of
the rest of
this.  As has been suggested by others, oil rig workers might perform well.