The positive potential of near Earth asteroids (and Phobos and Deimos) can be summarized as follows. 1. Platinum Group Metals have a large market for key industrial processes. The value of PGM per ounce is so high that space mining these metals for an Earth market at a profit is a conceptually promising policy goal. Cold fusion may greatly expand the demand for these already scarce and expensive metals. Cl and C2 asteroids are theoretically the best sources of Platinum Group Metals, along with being sources of water, 3He, other volatiles, carbon compounds, other metals and bulk materials for life support and industrial activity in space. 2. Astrodynamic research shows that it is more economic to put payloads on many asteroids than the Moon. It is very much easier to send cargos back to LEO from these locations. It is particularly telling that the Delta Vee to Phobos is lower than that of Earth's Geosynchronous Orbit, currently the location of billions of dollars worth of profitable private investment. The estimate that 99% of the Earth crossing asteroids are still undiscovered after three decades of planetary exploration suggests major misdirection of space policy. 3. The R&D and experience developed to use Cl or C2 Earth passing asteroid or Phobos would be applicable on thousands of bodies in near Earth space, the main asteroid belt, and the Jupiter-Sun Trojan points. One successful asteroid mine could be the prototype for an entire industry. Closing The large scale involvement of federal funding in energy and space science during the cold war years has politicized both areas of research and created long term R&D organizations modeled after the Manhattan project and Apollo program. The institutional pressure to sell these programs to Congress, despite decades of non-performance, has lowered levels of discourse on science policy into the abyss. At Case for Mars III, the Moon was characterized as "a gas station in the sky," by the head of NASA, while Carl Sagan felt America should land on Mars because it is "more romantic." This "scientific" debate about spending other people's money is a prime example of the political phenomenon science policy wags have labeled "Occam's Chain Saw Massacre." Technologies like cold fusion and ideas like asteroid mining are expressions of an entrepreneurial outlook grounded in microeconomics with appeal to a rational, if visionary investor. Central planning of science policy for civilian technological progress works just as poorly in America as it did in what used to be the Soviet Union. Conservative gloating over the devolution of the Soviet Nomenklatura is absurd when one ignores the fact that several of the political and policy failings of command economies are conspicuously present in American space and energy R&D. What Eisenhower called the "Military Industrial Complex" was labelled the "Metal Eaters Alliance" by Russian reformers. Reinventing a true market economy driven
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