Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Y

Given the level of technology I assumed (original thread was about a TL10 setting), mining of either flavor is likely more-or-less fully automated. My thoughts on the human element was more "Nobody wants a mine in their backyard" - and certainly, environmental regulations are one of the things likely to be in favor of asteroid mining.

Unless you've got environmental regulation on an interplanetary scale, that's mostly going to start being a thing as the population gets denser. It's not something people are going to worry when about the planetary population is numbered in the millions or less. And it's in the earlier periods of development when people are more liable to use more human labour because they don't have a local industrial complex churning out automated machinery.

And if the Federation is imposing environmental regulations created for planets with populations in the billions on start-up colonies, I suspect the colonists are going to be pretty damn disgruntled.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

And if the Federation is imposing environmental regulations created for planets with populations in the billions on start-up colonies, I suspect the colonists are going going to be pretty damn disgruntled.

I suppose this was indeed what I was assuming, and you do make a good argument against it.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

And if the Federation is imposing environmental regulations created for planets with populations in the billions on start-up colonies, I suspect the colonists are going going to be pretty damn disgruntled.

Unless alien life proves to be super common, I suspect viable alien ecosystems will be protected (other than maybe vacation homes for the wealthy) and colonization will be limited to dead or terraformed worlds. Dead worlds probably don't much have to worry about pollution, terraformed (or in the process of being terraformed) will restrict anything that would interfere with the process, which might well be rather fragile.