>>12636150There's a paper out there modelling the economic viability and I believe the conclusion was that it could only be profitable if a large number of very small, quick ships could come and go picking up the material. Rather than having a few big ones. I suppose it makes sense: if you can deliver a higher rate of material to Earth, then you can offset the fuel costs. This is probably only true for asteroids close to Earth.
It makes one think that this will need to have quite sophisticated automation to handle the day to day routine, to minimise harm to humans, with possibly a supervisory station/ship to board one of the small collection ships on the way to the asteroid if there was a need for maintenance on the mining machines.
