Mines are ugly and destructive because they fuck up habitable crust and life. There's none of that on an asteroid.

Because, real wealth creation (not fake skimming or wealth transfer) =

1. extract raw materials

2. apply labor + capital + innovation + time

3. sell final product for more than cost of inputs

4. Profit!!!

This announcement takes #1 literally out of this world. Still dirty perhaps, but beautiful.

Because if it's cheaper to get iron from an asteroid than Minnesota, we can stop tearing up Minnesota for iron.

Is it because asteroids are already ugly?

I'm not sure that's it. I don't hear of wrecking crews smashing up a derelict corporate wasteland (arguably far uglier than any natural shape) and feel some peaceful, "all is right" sensation.

Maybe something to do with the serenity of the void.

But probably more related to this being a step forward? A sense of progression? Could come from growing up reading and imagining anything to do with space exploration.

How many people on HN want to grab their colleagues right now, shake them, and yell "Why aren't you currently amazed? We're going to be mining IN FRICKIN' SPACE within our lifetimes?"

I'm supposed to be teaching a class on introductory Python (students are doing their exercises now) and I want to scrap the rest of the day to talk about how phenomenally awesome this news is.

I'll settle for a strange, quiet sense of elation.

"strange, quiet sense of elation" - good way of describing it. Pretty similar to how I felt after reading the article.