Strategy for mining an asteroid, part XXIII

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Frankly, I don't understand the fascination with Mars.  How can you make a buck there?  If you aren't making money there, you'll have to be supported.  How long would that arrangement last?  No, you have to make money.

The idea came to me today that you can support a Mars colony by mining that $20 trillion rock between Earth and Mars.  Not to be confused with the other $20 trillion rock that I've been writing about, which can be found between Earth and Venus.

The advantage to the Mars colony is that it takes less energy to get off the Martian surface, plus there's the moon Deimos, which can be mined for fuel.  And/or you could build a space sail out there that would transit between Earth and Deimos.  So, you can mine that rock and come back to Deimos to trade with the Mars colony.  The mining ship could trade with Earth as well.  That's how goods can get back and forth between Mars and Earth while making a buck.  The Mars colony could support the mining ship with food.  The Mars colony can exchange food for Earth goods.  The mining ship can exchange precious metals with Earth for its goods to trade with the Mars colony.

I was thinking that maybe you could do the same with Venus.  However, Venus has a deep gravity well like Earth's.  It would take a lot to get to orbit from a floating base in the Venusian sky.  Then I remembered the idea of mining gases from the edge of space.  There may be a problem with execution of this plan because you'd probably want a nuclear powered ship to gather the gases.  If that hurdle is not too high, perhaps the mine at 3554 Amun could supply the holding tanks for the gases.  The colony at Amun could probably use the water and the carbon dioxide for life support operations on their own.  Or a Venus colony could exist in orbit which could trade their gases for goods as the Mars colony above.  The Venus colony could grow food as well.  They would trade the colony at Amun for their tanks and Earth goods.

If there can't be an economic system set up, it is hard to see how a colony could begin.  An economic system that I've speculated upon above would take a considerable amount of ground work to set it up.

The question then is who would set this up?  The government?  Or would a private entity try to do it?


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