Posted by tourdemars to Interplanetary Internet at July 16, 2001 12:00 PM

The mining of asteroids, space-based hotels, zero-gravity manufacturing and medicine - they're all part of the future commercialization of space, according to a joint government and industry group that's developing the InterPlaNetary (IPN) Internet. Starting this year, with NASA funding, the IPN will roll out in pieces over the next several decades to support communications among spaceships, robots and manned and unmanned outposts in the solar system.