And whomever said that ESA doesn't spend like no tomorrow compared to NASA ... they both should spend more. Our future lies in space, not in our deeper oceans (of which we know enough to know that we'll never build bases down there, nor gain massive amounts of raw elements and/or harness fusion energy beyond our wildest imaginations ...)
Even a couple of medium-sized asteroids, depending on their content, would either kill the iron markets, or provide some really great material for molecular biologists/chemists... not to mention the possibility of building bigger and better machines in null-gee (or, even better, in low-gee, enough to keep the machines holding together but low enough to reduce tension wear).
Comment