The Asteroid Belt Is a Waste of Time

People were not expensive. People were the one res se earth had that was overflowing beyond all possible use. But it turned out if you shoved a man in a pot about three times his own size and sent him on a one way trip to mine the asteroids, then that wasn't quite so expensive. If you fire enough thousand little pods with little people inside at an asteroid belt, you're going to get a return in a few centuries.