[Space] What’s the minimum resources required for Asteroid or Comet habitats?

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Brett

Ah!

I figure that chalcophile elements are going to be scarce in space. Siderophiles ought to be found in the nickel-iron material, lithophiles in the stony asteroids, and atmophiles in the ices. But I don't know of any material in space that is enriched with chalcophiles to anything like the richness of a commercial ore. The material imply isn't differentiated enough.

Sulphur itself probably isn't terribly scarce, but silver, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, copper, gallium, germanium, mercury, indium, lead, polonium, antimony, selenium, tin, tellurium, tantalum, and zinc probably only exist in ores about as rich as concrete.

Also, don't be too blasé about, for instance, the platinums. Iron-type asteroids are platinum-rich compared with the Earth's crust average, but not as rich as a good commercial ore.

This is one of those subjects about which enormous amounts of speculation get done, on a very thin basis of hard data, in both directions. Are the processes that enrich ore on Earth operating on the Moon, the asteroids, etc? Of course not. Can we say with confidence that this means that no good ore exists? That doesn't necessarily follow.

But either way, much depends on the technology of recovery, and the cost of energy.