[IXxXI]

Aspiring asteroid miners should start with space junk in orbit.

[jwagenet]

We talk about all this junk polluting orbit, but I can’t imagine it is dense enough to to efficiently fish for and return to earth.

[toss1]

Yup.

If it were sufficiently dense to fish, it'd be worth more to collect and keep it in orbit — that junk has a lot of high-grade materials and a lot of already-imparted momentum. Just[] move it all into a few large objects that can be managed as large craft, and the debris problem is solved, and there's a mineable resource already in orbit.

[] "Just" is doing some escape-velocity-class lifting there — all that junk is in such massively different orbital planes and altitudes that silly amounts of ΔV are needed to fetch each one and then to pull it back to dock with the new orbital junkheap.

[IXxXI]

Space junk in orbit is much more accessible than the nearest asteroid.

Its also far easier to recycle and salvage than refining raw ore.

[toss1]

Both true - that's what makes it seem feasible.

I suppose the real comparison is [cost of refining material in orbit] - [cost of collecting on orbit (which must be done anyway)] vs [cost of refining it on the surface + launching it into orbit].