In the comments to my previous post, I told the following story:

Many years ago, I applied for a position with a mining company. There was a painting of a strip mine on the moon hanging on the wall and when I commented on it, the man interviewing me (he was pretty far up the chain in the company) explained that he had commissioned the painting, because it was his dream to someday mine the moon. I've always had mixed feelings about that. It's the sort of activity that probably has to occur, but I hate to think of the moon being chewed up, that way. At the same time, moving that kind of activity away from Earth might help to improve (or at least prevent future damage to) our Earth environment.

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