Gregory Anderson has an article in The Space Review, 19 April 2004 about utilizing asteroid wealth to improve the quality of life on Earth.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/133/1

According to the story, resources from space may relieve the pressure from an increasing human population on Earth and the growing conflict between the "Haves" and the "Have-Nots".

For example, near-Earth asteroids of nickel-iron may contain vast amounts of precious metals: gold, silver, platinum, etc.

What do you think about this story - - -

A realistic solution to our Earthly problems?

Or pie in the sky? :blink:

Neither. Precious metals, except to the extent they foster energy processing and other technology development, don't really help mankind. If global warming proves to be other than a shortlived transient, we need to manage it to our benefit to produce and distribute adequate amounts of fresh water and pollutant disposal. Except for the regrettable loss of personal liberty and privacy commensurate with the enormous increase in population density and the attendant proliferation of spreading diseases, the earth, carefully supervised, can support 100 or so billions of humans and we can accodomate the gradual change to such environments since each successive generation won't have experienced "the good old days". My guess is that asteroids in conjunction with the water from comets are best used to build solar orbiting habitats and interstellar vehicles. These are the better ways to relieve population density problems.

Using the estimated wealth, without addressing its accessibility in opposition to the knowledge of its likely remaining inaccessible, to leverage the financing of earthbound enterprise seems farfetched. It reduces to confidence in our ability to define fairness and justice and to deal with one another within the constraints of the definitions agreed upon. Some of the better approaches beginning to address these issues have evolved through the minds of Moses and Jesus of Nazareth viewed in a secular sense as the basis of social contracts. Confidence in virtue and mutual traveling of the high moral road are necessary conditions and much more valuable than confidence in the precious materials contained in asteroids and planets with hard to access surfaces. For real collateral remember the "diamond star" reported some weeks back. What's the confidence level in its accessibility?

If inaccessible physical wealth, or its representation in a commodity such as money is your bag, assume (have confidence in the assertion that ) I have however many teradollars or its equivalent wealth in precious material and that I will loan or give it to such a development program; for if I did, I certainly would. Confidence, not a single alif (from the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam), is the clue.

However, as can be seen in my other posts, I remain a hyperzealot for developing interstellar transportation and the primary motivation is humanity's comfortable survival.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?