Space Mining, the Hows and Whys

For The Coop

The Coop interest in space mining is primarily for our own use. The space habitat need about 15million cubic meters (117million metric tonnes) of Iron to build. That is about 2% of a cubic kilometer or a block of iron about 2.5 football fields wide, long and high.
Lifting this amount of raw material from Earth to space is not only expensive but unnecessary. All the mineral requirements for virtually anything in outer space can be 'mined' from asteroids, the moon and other space sources.
Within 5 years of the launch of our first complete asteroid mine, we will have 15 such facilities capable of producing about 125m3 of iron each hour.