Platinum Moon

I am reading this book right now.  I'm about half finished with it.  Interesting ideas here.  If I may offer a thought, even though this may have been written or said somewhere else before, I'll say that art begins where science leaves off.  This book is a novel, it is not nonfiction.  But a lot of this book has high technological plausibility and is often consistent with current developments, yet not entirely consistent with reality as it stands today.  As it is a novel, not a report of actual developments, it is a work of art.  But the art involved consists of the storytelling, for the most part.  The technologies presented provide the setting for the story.

Is there a purpose to the story?  If there is a purpose, one may demonstrate the plausibility of something like this happening for real.  It wouldn't take all that much to try what is being tried in the book.  That's my opinion, and for the most part, what I have been writing about a lot in this blog.  It is also why I bought the book and why I am writing about it here.

It appears that there exists a widely held belief that manned spaceflight has to be expensive.  Anything like space mining would therefore seem too far fetched to be taken seriously.  If this book could serve as an educational tool to inform people of this as a real possibility in our future, and that we may be much closer to doing this than anyone thinks, then perhaps the story here could serve that purpose.

I plan on finishing the book today.  When I do, I'll have more to say.  Until then.