A lump of nickel and iron like Amalthea could be smelted into structural materials for the construction of orbiting space habitats. Doing so on anything more than a small pilot scale would require the development of new technology. Using human miners was out of the question, since sending them up to orbit and keeping them alive was expensive. Robots were the obvious solution. Dinah had been sent up to Izzy to lay groundwork for a robot laboratory that would eventually host a staff of six. The budget wars in Washington had reduced that number to one.