Comment Re:Minerals / mining (in short: money) (Score 1) 283
There is nothing to mine in LEO. We are talking about an operation on the Moon, not LEO. The costs aren't nearly going to be the same. We are talking about facilities, mining, food, water, shelter, transportation, fuel. It cost $250 billion to get the moon with the Saturn rockets. It is going to cost at least that to get back to the Moon, and then you have to prospect it since all we know about on there is dust, rocks, and maybe some water. If there is nothing there, you are out easily hundreds of billions, then you have to build all that stuff. It'll cost easily a trillion or more just for that. There is no way the American public is going to support a prospecting mission/mining operation to the moon for that amount of money. Not in our liftetimes at least.