Okay, let me get this off my chest before we get serious...
I'M FWEE! FWEE I TELLZ YA! ^.^ ^.^ ^.^

Er... Ahem... Sorry, just had to let off some steam there... aheh. How is the little trip working out?

Thanks for the warning. Glad to see the meds have kicked in.

No meds, I'm high on life right now. ^.^ Glad to see your sense of humor is intact. ~.^

Teulisch,

You are seriously a guy after my own heart, feel free to drop me a private message anytime. I find pencil sketches are best in space

You make a number of good points about an asteriod colony, incidently novas are much less prone to the long term detrimental effects of lack of gravity. An interseting safety device on any such a colony would be a cryogenic suspension device able to be fired from the asteriod coupled with a personal re-entry kit.

The Apollo-Amor asteroids lie closer than the main belt and are within easy reach of the Earth. For various reasons they require less Delta V to reach than the moon and so are a much better prospect for mining for commercial reasons than the main belt.

Impossible?

It's like those wooden chinese puzzles where you have to move the pieces a certain way before you can take it all apart - only in reverse. The trick is figuring out how it all fits together. After you got that nuked out you can do it however you want whenever you want. Just takes raw material.

Not saying its easy but looking at it that way there ain't a lot of difference between a fan and a hyper-combustion engine.

Other than that... Lots of real good thoughts here. You really need to get together with Walker and share some of this.

Hey, if you guys need some production materials, I do have the means and the method for terrestrial built, nova warped, space assembled plans and designs. I have neen working out some details in my head about how to do this cheaply and with the lowest risk. So far Risk and Cost are too far apart for me to reconcile. Perhaps if I figure Quality in, I should find an agreeable stasis. Unfortuantely, I made a promise to myself I wouldn't work the node untill I got home. Got a long flight ahead of me and don't necessarily have the recreational time to figure stuff out like this. Wouldn't mind going back to Europa again, I have a score to settle and a BFG to test... ~.^ Just Kidding.

As I've said, give me a few days on it and I'll see what I can bring to the table. Out.

not familar with the apollo-amur. im afraid my knowledge of space is somewhat basic.

we should probably set up a model of the solar system, to help keep track of plenetray orbits and such. without a visual im going to get confused about where stuff is.

if we do get an asteroid-base set up properly, we could rent research space for a premium. low or zero-g lab space would be wonderfull for lots of fields. not to mention the dificulty of utopian technology oversight getting up there.

cody- making some stuff from raw materials, out in space, is dificult enough to be imposible to all but a few novas. so unless someone with the right powers volunteers to help, we should count on needing to get whatever we need from earth.

now, lets consider what we would need, as a minumum.
1) earthside facility to store our purchases as well as our mined ore, ect.
2) baseline employees to operate the earthside facility.
3) a business (posibly incorperated) that will employ people we need, and allow us to have various percentages of ownership/investment in. where will depend on earthside shipping as well as laws and taxes. preferably near a port.
4) hired specialists. we will, at some point, need to hire somebody with skills or powers that we lack.
5) a security force. if we have a warehouse holding several metric tons of gold ore, or similar material, we can expect some yahoo to try and steal it.

am i forgetting anything obvious? after the earthside bit, all we need is a way to travel to and from space, and locate the right kinds of ore. anything more is a bonus.

You got to have some faith, man. Lots of novas out there can do lots of things.

I guess it kind of depends on what you're trying to do. If you just want to use the opportunity to get something this is good. And there ain't nothing wrong with just using an opportunity by the way. If you're thinking of making space your own it seems strange to be depending on Mother Earth.

Not that I know all that much about space...

For a person who's knowledge of space is somewhat basic you seem to have figured out pretty much everything. There are plenty of computer programs available for free download on the opnet that model the solar system. I'll send you a copy of my favourite one if you can't find one yourself.

If you're forgetting one thing it's that such business plans could be considered commercially sensitive and are probably best discussed in private

That is if no blue helmets get involved. Jerks... >.<