See, this is why you guys are stuck in those R&D positions. My crew has already landed, we’re draining the oceans right now, we’ve located and consumed your entire supply of our favorite condiment we call Mama’s Super Sweet, you call it plutonium I think. We’ll be sitting down to a dinner of hoppity-hops, what we call those two-legged things that are running all over this planet.
I also can’t help but wonder how much good marketing—to sufficiently alien markets—might make Earth resource harvesting profitable.
“Water? Big deal, Gorblatt, I can get all I want of that from a planetesimal cloud…”
“Ah! But this is biosphere water…every single molecule of this water is guaranteed to have passed through an organism at some point!”
“Oh WOW! Take my money!”
Bruce Sterlings Shaper/Mechanist universe stories are entirely about two societies that have colonised the solar system in orbitals, have no trade with earth and disdain to live on planets.
