On 08/15/20 7:47 PM, David Summers wrote:
That always seemed to me to be a strange way to look at it. There
is a certain amount of up mass to set up any factory/equipment, and perhaps feed / care for any humans you send along. But if I owned an asteroid in LEO I would build a smelter on it that converts it to rough parachutes made from nickel/platinum foil, and launch them to intercept Earth's atmosphere.
Fireproof paper survives re-entry without prep. Turn your asteroid into that! Why are you paying anything for down-mass?
