No—we won't return whole asteroids

Tim and Chap from the Mining team join Jack to answer listener questions about AstroForge’s plans to mine and return platinum-group metals from asteroids. They break down why metals like platinum, rhodium, and silver are spiking, what a viable return mass looks like (hint: ~1,000kg of PGMs), and how lasers (not drills) make asteroid mining viable. Along the way, they dig into engineering constraints, why we’re not bringing asteroids to Earth, and the future of mining as a swarm of small spacecraft - not one big platform.