Hi bois.

When it comes to space and asteroid mining, will there be any human involvement at all, or will it all be robots?

Will it ever be cheap enough for self-employed amateurs to buy a ship, latch it onto an asteroid and mine it? If they were ever using robots, would they base themselves on a larger roid like Cruithne and send the bots out?

...How would government financial support, like, for the self-employed, work in that situation? They can hardly pop into the local labour exchange.

This last one particularly intrigues me. I think there'll be cyclers to act as support centres for NEO miners. Partly call centre, partly transport for staff.

Can I have your input, /sci/?