I wish I knew enough rocket science to understand if space mining is likely to happen or pure hype.

I wish we at least had a rocket scientist with enough economic knowledge who could explain it well enough in a blog or something.

To my rocket science ignorant brain, it seems like fully automated space mining, with as affordable as Space X (10 times cheaper than NASA) has made launches. Space mining may well work given how much gold, platinum, iridium and other expensive metals are supposed to be in asteroids.

The key being it seems like, I have no actually idea if it can be done profitably.

From the article:

>“In today’s economics and in the economics of the near future, the next few years, it makes no sense to go after precious metals in asteroids. And the reason is the cost of getting to and from the asteroids is so high that it vastly outstrips the value of anything that you’d harness from the asteroids,” Sercel says.

That seems like a hard No.