Apparently.
How do you feel about this? I like the idea of travelling into the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.
That means, if we use the same technology used for the Curiosity rover to reach Mars, journeys would take a whole year and probably a bit more. It took Curiosity 8.3 months to get to Mars, and the mining spacecraft will have to go there, mine - which could take weeks or months, and then travel back.
Considering Curiosity's journey, that's 16.6 months and a relatively large additional amount of time to do the mining. A whole year and 4 months, plus the mining time. Uh... This will have to be incredibly sophisticated.
What on Earth are they going to get the minerals with? They can't blow the asteroids up can they?
Are they going to grab the asteroids, drill into them or melt them with lasers?
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I would think we will be dragging them back to earth before we start mining them.