Re: starship-design: Private Asteroid Mining

[wharton@physics.ucla.edu (Ken Wharton)]

Okay - sounds like turning an asteroid into useful material might not be so
tough.  Next question: how expensive is it to send it to Earth orbit?
I suppose there might be a few asteroids that come so close that it would
only take the slightest nudge to put them in orbit around the Earth (or
around the moon... maybe that would be safer if you miscaclulated?)
But still, the average earth-orbit-crossing asteroid would probably take
an awful lot of energy to do this.  I'm sure not as much as it would take
to launch it into orbit, but is the price at all comparable?  Does anyone
have a dollars/kilogram estimate for A) putting Earth materials into orbit
twenty years from now and B) pulling asteroid materials into orbit twenty
years from now.  Enquiring minds want to know...

Ken