Tags: Corporate, Environment, Mining, Research, Science, Technology, Energy

From the abstract of the report: As the availability of important mineral deposits on Earth declines, including nuclear minerals, or as they are consumed at increasing cost, price-competitive resources from off-world will be required sooner or later as technology and large-scale project management systems are developed to handle such projects. Both exploration and mining programs will be powered by electricity generated by solar and nuclear energy in a variety of plant sizes located in deep space and on the Moon, Mars, or other bodies. Realistic economic studies comparing the price of resources available on Earth with offworld resources will be required to justify the large funds required to mine off-world resources by multinational corporations. With the primary objective of exploration in the solar system being the development of mineral and nuclear resources, sampling in remote regions in new environments will be challenging to Earth-bound planners both in terms of economic justification and technical feasibility.

ndx_campbell.pdf