/sci/ - Science & Math

>>14493368
>>14493331
>12 September 2060
>Abundant Harvest Asteroid Corporation had just planted the flag on Asteroid 5982, a giant hunk of nickel and chromium and several other precious metals orbiting the sun in the asteroid belt just past Mars. It was the farthest yet that any corporation had laid claim to an asteroid.
>They remained emboldened by the burgeoning commerce of Mars, which despite many NASA missions never showed definitive signs of life, that is until it was colonized. It was colonized primarily in the southern hemisphere, near enough to the southern polar ice cap, where each colony had an outpost to gather water, and still at a low enough latitude that the daily temperature ranges were closer to conditions on Earth. Without the wind chill of course, which could be blistering in the desert mares where the U.S. began their first colony.
>China and their economic partners had a colony two mares over, both in the southwest hemisphere of Mars, both in the northern reaches of the Planum Australe. Abundant Harvest Asteroid Corporation was the english name for the Chinese state-sponsored mining corporation, as registered with the U.N. “Committee on the Commercialization of Space.”
>While colonization of the moon remained very
limited, primarily to support space tourism, there was wealth to be gathered in the asteroids, rich resources of metals that in turn drove the skyrocketing space mining industry. Like the line made famous by the Looney Tune’s wild west prospector Yosemite Sam, “There’s gold in them thar hills.” The hills in this case are asteroids and it’s not just gold but billions of tons of other valuable metals too. Metals such as iron, cobalt, and nickel in addition to precious metals, such as gold and platinum. The U.S.-European Union and their trading partners, and China and their partners, known as the Allied Asians, strip mined the asteroids, and were cultivating bustling mining towns on Mars.