Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

[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.