Right now, one of the biggest problems with the idea of a moon colony is the question of building supplies . There is no Home Depot on the moon, so the building supplies have to come from somewhere. The only place to get the supplies right now is the Earth, with the space shuttle acting as a truck. Asteroids may be a much better place to get the supplies. Early evidence suggests that there are trillions of dollars' worth of minerals and metals buried in asteroids that come close to the Earth.
Asteroids are so close that many scientists think an asteroid mining mission is easily feasible.
Several international organizations are developing plans for going up to get these natural space resources. Strip-mining equipment extracts iron and other raw materials from an asteroid. In the foreground, a mining cart transports the materials to a processing plant. Inc. All rights reserved.