Quote Originally Posted by Whacker View Post
Great idea in theory, really damn hard in practice. Electronics have to be extra hardened to survive space. Ironically most newer electronics probably wouldn't survive, the older stuff with larger pathways and circuitry are what lasts much longer. This is why the shuttles ran on old 486's.
Wrong, modern electronics are a lot less fragile and temperamental than ye olde rubbish. CMOS > TTL > Valves. Electronics aren't the problem, power & heat management is. At the end of the day it takes far more computing grunt to run a mediocre OS than it does to navigate space.

Not saying it can't be done at all. But getting to something that'd probably survive the trip and function fine is going to be a real exercise.
The real exercise is ever getting the economics to work. Getting stuff back to planet Earth is comparatively trivial. Getting stuff off planet Earth at affordable costs per tonne, now that's a challenge. Project Orion style rockets don't count, you know they won't be allowed.