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I think its important as its a proof of concept. It will get you medai attention and lets you work out the bugs before deploying full scale.

Personally I think this is to expensive. I would rather go for a controlled crash in remote areas (like I mentioned in a previous post). This way nothing goes up from Earth except some light weight supplies and parts. As the materials are not fragile in anyway you don't need to make soft landings and have to maintain and build some expansive hardware on Earth.

I was thinking on how you would get your mined resources on Earth. Lets say you are going for the asteroids and refine there and ship directly to Earth scenario.

You could have for instance a cargo ship that works on nuclear or an ion drive or be catapulted and so wouldn't need much or no earth fuels. But how will you get your goods through the atmosphere and land safely where it’s needed and be affordable? (BTW: On its way back the cargo ship will carry supplies and spare parts with it)

I was thinking of some kind of throwaway entry pod that contains the ore and is unleashed from the cargo ship at Earth orbit. But still it would be expensive and you will have to manufacture those in space and that is again very expensive to setup (a factory).

Unless if you can make the cargo (the refined ore) it self act an entry pod. By shaping it some way (like a lifting body) with a coating of an ablative material, and make controlled crashes on Earth.

I think you are still high  :band:

This leaves:

1. How will you get them their
2. Who are your customers?

With TightVNC if you want more then one (remote) person seeing your desktop, you will need to enable Request Shared Session option.

If you can accept a crude but working now solution to this, then I can help you with this problem.

You should use a desktop sharing application such as Windows XP Remote Sharing or VNC. VNC is somewhat slower but you can have clients from what ever OS, as long as they have a webbrowser and JAVA. You also have non free applications for these tasks which also allow you to share files like an FTP server. Here is https://www.gotomypc.com/tr/affil/cpnpc … desktop]an example. However sofar as I know only VNC (which is opensource and free) allows multiple people to connect to your computer.

Now if you are working on Windows (I don't know other solutions) and use Yahoo Messenger you can have conferences, meaning allowing multiple people to connect and talk at the same time.

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This all gives you a crude but working enverioment to do what you want and its 100% free.

For example If got this from the above mentioned NASA study:

Six important robotics and machine intelligence technology categories were identified as most critical by Workshop participants:

   1. Machine vision capabilities, especially in the areas of depth perception, multispectral analysis, modeling, texture and feature, and human interface
   2. Multisensor integration, including all nonvision sensing such as force, touch, proximity, ranging, acoustics, electromagnetic wave, chemical, etc.
   3. Locomotion technology to be used in exploration, extraction processes and beneficiation, with wheeled, tracked, or legged devices under teleoperated or autonomous control
   4. Manipulators, useful in handling materials both internal and external to the machine, general purpose and special purpose, teleoperated or fully automatic
   5. Reasoning or intelligence, including logical deductions, plausible inference, planning and plan execution, real world modeling, and diagnosis and repair in case of malfunction
   6. Man-machine interface, including teleoperator control, kinesthetic feedback during manipulation or locomotion, computer-enhanced sensor data processing, and supervision of autonomous systems.

Question what kind of hardware is needed for such an autopilot? Would a processor in the same league as an 486 or early Pentium do? Just want to know if logic hardware is cheap and if you can use of the shelf parts (ok needs radiation hardening and redundant logic).

Or shouldn't it be better in a mining operation to have no AI on the miner it self but all the AI (autopilot) actions are tele-controlled by a central computer in proximity that will be able to control 100's of miners. Should be easier to upgrade and maintain. As the miner digging, engines and other hardware should not change often or need upgrades if they do their jobs. So dumb all the decision-making logic and install a high bandwidth tele-control unit. But keep all the sensors. On UAV's you can't do that due to possible enemy jamming but I don't see a problem with doing it in space this way.

However I think there is even a market on Earth for this kind of operation. Some Australian mines are already using automated miners.  And I think if you can get your plan to work on Earth mines you will have a fantastic money making proof of concept, that will finance the possibility of new mining operations who happen to be in space.

Not saying you must only think of the money but money makes dreams become possible so you should accept its power. You will reach your goal eventually however with some money making detours, that are needed to proof your concept and finance your end goal.

An example were you could make money would be the tar-oil fields in Canada. If you take your asteroid mining operation and use it to mine the tar-oil fields. I’m sure you will not have problems getting financers; well no they will begging you to invest in your operation.

Well you can let the government do anything but then you are just longing for communism. But I don't think that it was your plan to do so. And you know how effective and human rights friendly communists are.
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I do think you must make a separation between small to mid size businesses and multinationals. In general multinationals don't really do much for their workers. However small and mid size businesses do in general care about their workers. And the bosses know most of their employees by name and their family situations.

If you are calling a mom and pops coffee shop, which makes a profit and wants to make more (expand), a corporation just seeking profits for profits sake, then we don't agree*. As there is nothing wrong with making profits for a mom and pops shop as this nothing wrong for multinationals making profits. As most of American aerospace industries wouldn't exist with foreign customers. Without these evil profits the American economy wouldn't even exist.

*Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream model
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I think that NASA should only do exploration and design academic plans (R&D). All the other things should be done by private enterprises.
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Also in my idea a person in space would be like soldier in a foreign country. He will follow the laws of the country that send him and that’s it. Well until a more then 100.000 people colony has been setup and you have a (international) trusted local government.

Basically put Earth laws will follow into space (well, there were humans go their ways will follow). So if you like American laws then you will like working in Space for an American company. If you don’t like the way American companies treat their workers then you should either immigrate or vote differently.
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Anyway don’t expect Space to fuel your little revolution as many of the modern cultures follow a certain logic that evolved over many years and makes most of their peoples satisfied on the way how things work and get done. If it wouldn’t then you would see a lot more civil wars.
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I can accept something like a moderate FCC that controls things in space like it does now with the airwaves. But nothing more. Working on a space station should be like working on an international ship, you follow the laws who’s flag you carry. The fcc will decide which flags are accepted.

You are not disagreeing with me at all. I just wanted to point out that a high tech industry orbiting Earth is viable now.

I just mentioned the space shuttle to point out that you can use such an inefficient craft and still be profitable in my situation. In practice you would use (after the station is build and equipped) capsules like the Soyuz for supplies to and from Earth. The heavy lifters are only to get the space station up there and running. And they will not be space shuttles.

And if you want to build really big things in space (such as colonies) then yes you will need new technologies and new ways of working. The high tech factory will be from the out side not be fancier then the ISS only slightly bigger.

Only differences I think between your ideas and mine is that you are looking for the long term and I’m thinking about what could be done in the next 15 years and directly make a profit.

Either way, if I use the heavy lifters from now and build my high tech space factory I will be profitable but if your plan works and is rolling I will be even more profitable.

But in the mean time I’m earning money and developing practical* new space technologies with the money I have earned so far and you are still lobbying the government and NASA to accept your ideas.

(edited)
*These will be just to enhance my profits and could in the long-term mean things as mines on the Moon that will ship all the non-rare elements from the moon for production. In the short term they will be cheaper ways (pounds/$) to send materials to space. And these new technologies will have a lot of interesting spin off's that can fuel your plans.

Disclaimer:
As you could also see from other posts in other threads, my way of thinking is dominated by social - economics. I'm not interested in building pyramids where only the special people can lay/live and live out their dreams. In my way of thinking everything must have a purpose. Spiritual purposes (pyramids) are not wanted. Building a colony for the heck of it or some unproven doom is spiritual to me and is fine if your church/cult pays for it. But don't expect me to agree with you if you think that your deams should be paid for by tax payers. However I do think that national space agencies have a useful purpose and that is to explore.

You know there is a difference between NASA and commercial space flight!?

NASA is more like: "To boldly go where no man has gone before" and commercial spaceflight is more like to exploit space where man has been before, technologies needed are sure and tested (by NASA) and do I get a "short" term profit?

So there is a big difference between NASA and others. They don't compete at all. NASA is for commercial spaceflight a free R&D agency and that’s good as long as they are American companies or pay for the knowledge gathered by NASA. If so with that NASA will have even more value then without commercial spaceflight.

I mean everyone knows that NASA and military agencies broke any record set by the X price decades ago. So technically what Burtan is doing is nothing special as a lot of knowledgeable people will tell you as most of his designs were from other (tested) crafts.

Disclaimer: I still think what he did is cool but nothing worth all the crap I see across the Internet.

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About raw materials vs high tech industry in space.

If you are going for raw materials I see no future for your enterprise as Earth has more then its needs (at this moment and the next 100 years). Only force driving might be that materials in space are cheaper in general but not to ship to general populations. But who will make the initial trillion dollar investments? NASA can't compete with private enterprises so forget them. And at this moment the market is quite happy with what it has. They market is more looking into cheap labor and automation then cheaper raw materials.

If the space debris orbiting earth is becoming a real problem, I'm sure there will be measures to make sure that satellites or rockets-parts will burn in the atmosphere instead of circling the earth when they are not needed anymore.

Your arguments against the possibility of a high tech industry in space will work with the same arguments against a mining industry in space. Both are impossible at this time and in my opinion only a high tech space industry is needed. With that I mean a high tech industry that is able to make "parts" in zero gravity. And those zero gravity “parts” are special and worth more then their weight. There is no other need for a space industry. You can do everything else on Earth.

I got this from slashdot but the information is of interest of this forum.

Read http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl? … tid=191]it here.