Part one of term paper
On December 10, 1986 the Greater New York Section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the engineering section of the New York Academy of Sciences jointly presented a program on mining the planets. Speakers were Greg Maryniak of the Space Studies Institute (SSI) and Dr. Carl Peterson of the Mining and Excavatio ...

Part two of term paper
... them into orbit aboard large rockets. The difficulty with this approach is the huge cost-per-pound of boosting anything out of this planet's gravity well. Furthermore, Maryniak noted, since (at least in the near to medium term) the space program must depend upon the government for most of its funding, for this economic drawback necessarily translates into a political problem. Maryniak continued by noting that the early settlers in North America did not attempt to transport across the Atlantic e ...