This i going to be another long post, so if you're not interested, skip on by. Just want to make my points crystal clear here to Kev as I can't be bothered going round in circles with him...
My comment...
"There are a number of companies planning to get the ball rolling in the asteroid mining research with the next couple of years."
The facts...
"Planetary Resources’ mission is clear: apply commercial, innovative techniques to explore space. We will develop low-cost robotic spacecraft to explore the thousands of resource-rich asteroids within our reach. We will learn everything we can about them, then develop the most efficient capabilities to deliver these resources directly to both space-based and terrestrial customers. Asteroid mining may sound like fiction, but it’s just science."
My comment...
"Obviously an actual haul is still a while off, but it will probably happen in our lifetimes."
The facts...
"Four billionaires are backing a newly unveiled asteroid-mining venture, adding to an impressive list of ultra-rich people trying to reshape spaceflight and exploration in the 21st century.
Planetary Resources, Inc. — which on Tuesday (April 24) officially revealed its plans to extract water and metals from near-Earth asteroids — counts Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot Jr. and Charles Simonyi among its investors.
Each man is worth $1 billion or more, according to recent estimates by Forbes magazine, with Google execs Page and Schmidt having about $16.7 billion and $6.2 billion to their names, respectively. Filmmaker James Cameron, worth $700 million or so, is advising the project, which seeks to both turn a profit and spur the further exploration and exploitation of space."
My view - these guys aren't going to live forever, and they'll want to keep things moving forwards at a rate which might let them see as much of the fruits of their work within THEIR lifetimes, which is probably not far off ours.
and
"Asteroid mining (or something similar) is already likely to become a necessity at some point in the future, as human technology continues to use up Earth’s resources. Meanwhile, asteroids are plentiful and full of usable metals and other resources, meaning that any successful asteroid mining venture could stand to become very wealthy."
and
"In a departure from the science fiction film's crusade to save Earth from a wayward asteroid, NASA's ambitious plan is to develop the first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate a 500-ton asteroid by 2025."
Therefore, my reasoning behind that comment is as follows. Based on the amount of missions planned, the huge commercial interest in them, the finite lifespans of the billionaires involved, the fact that probes have ALREADY been to asteroids AND touched down on them so it is completely possible to get to them already, the fact that a hell of a lot can happen in 40-50 years (especially considering the speed of advances in technology, new materials, computing) this leads me to believe that there will PROBABLY be some sort of mining of an asteroid within our lifetime. Now, by mining, I don't mean sucking an entire asteroid dry, I mean that a probe or ship will land on an asteroid and successfully mine some material from it.
If this isn't clear enough for, or you still choose to point blank refuse to see the facts, then I worry for your sanity and think you should probably lay off on the negative and self defeating outlook you have for humanity and maybe start having some faith in what we can achieve. If you spoke to anyone during the 2nd World War and told them about everything that we have now, they'd have thought you were bonkers... yet here we are.