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Comment by jpcx01 | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Every country has loads of dirt and rock. Just no one wants to dig it up for slave wages. Once the price is right, we'll be happy to do the work.

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"slave wages" is not exactly correct. If a chinese worker from the south of china goes to north china to work for a couple years making shower curtains, they return home and pay cash for a house.

What you consider slave wages is a lot of money to them. If you went there and did the work, you'd consider it slave wages, but they consider it very good money.

Their cost of living is significantly less in most of China than the Western costs of living. However Beijing is getting fairly pricey rents now, approximately $400 per month and it isn't uncommon to see them in the 1000's. I'd hardly say the chinese workers are paid slave wages when apartments near me are listed at $600.

This is all true. But here's a fun hypothetical. At what costs does mining in space become profitable? How expensive would a metal have to be per ounce?

This is the first thing that lept to my mind, too. There's a lot of that sort of thing in space. Private industry is currently stuck trying to emulate NASA, but when it will really take off is when it finds something it can do better. Space mining is a very viable candidate on the decade time scale.

Need to do the nanotube thang first, though. We need materials with enough tensile strength to withstand the stress of a space elevator. Then you'll see space mining and solar collection.

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