When this robot uprising happens, I will make my new job - farming and defending my newly appropriated land. I guess they could make robots to solve that problem too.

I agree with you here, there is a delicate balance in capitalist societies.

If you automate all of the workers and there are none left, then you have no-one to sell products to and companies go under. Doesn't matter how many robots you have making your products, if you have no customers.

The issues I expect to see from Automation are similar to the sort of problems we're seeing through our current iteration of capitalism - inequality. Automation and robots may speed up the process, but at some point the people that have no money and no prospects will find a way to get by, it may even involve violence.

As you say, scheme is just another word for plan (like a schematic is a diagram).

Its most commonly used in conjunction with government, but at times you'll see it used in business - health care scheme, pension scheme, etc.

We also use it in the negative sense - scheming is getting together to plan something untoward or underhanded.

My brain is smaller than a computer, so jokes on you!

... Wait.. Hmm...

I suspect aliens looking on our world think the same 😅

>They could therefore end up in landfills, causing a longer-term environmental problem than if we simply recycled the material we already have in these large deposits of everything that humanity has created. 

All in all I am in favour of mining asteroids, I think the benefits outweigh the negitives, if done properly. The moon i find less preferable (similar to mining on the earth) because it has a direct link to our planets habitat.

The article answered my main concern with the prospect of mining in space, the recent drive in renewables and sustainability I think are really important, if it becomes cheaper to just consume and mine from space then it cod shift the general world mentality away from sustainability.

So something the article didn't answer for me is how will this theoretically be done?

I would assume we will not be firing people into space to mine and then back and forth, because the cost to sent people into space and back constantly will suck for the environment.

I would assume we'd developing a self maintaining robotic fleet that can mine, package and fire the goods back to earth. I don't think we are there yet, but it's an exciting (and a little scary) prospect.