Why not lasso an asteroid and then tunnel into it and make it into a space ship. Aerodynamics in outer-space is not necessary but super thick shielding is. Mount propulsion devices on the periphery so that it can be controlled and then go to wherever you want.

Agreed. You would then be mining materials as well as building a permanent habitat for later development as a tourist attraction.

It would be good to harvest an asteroid and use it, but where would we find one big enough, to harvest materials, use as a tourist attraction you would need to find a giant asteroid, these would be; one hard to find; and two hard to slow down and it would be dangerous. I think that that goal @Buellrider and @Mark Keller. would be a long term one; this one on the other hand would be good for as soon as it can, which is what this company is aiming for.

Thick material shielding is necessary only on a small ark the rest can be shielded by a strong magnetic field.

How about an inflatable bubble around the asteroid then harvest it.

Years ago I remember hearing that vacuum welding was a problem with spacecraft. Turning lemons into lemonade, you could use vacuum welding to create robotic welders in earth orbit for building more space ships from materials recovered from asteroids!

Mining companies continue to rape the planet, the potential and amount of available materials in space is unlimited

I'm sorry, but until the cost of getting us into orbit drops drastically I do not see this being profitable. We do not even mine underwater and we have a long history of innovation in the submersible UAV area. And there is no launching cost to that.... While I love what Space X and a few others are doing, but they are just improving on technical and social systems that are already known (they are pushing NASA and the other bloated government space agencies to the periphery) to improve existing markets. Until they have a major breakthrough that makes it cheap to get off this planet I feel the cost and complexity will be too much to overcome. Just for example a space elevator or electromagnetic launch system would be good examples of technology that is almost in reach that could do it. Or to get a little more out there, a way to dampen gravity.

The only significant difference between this article, the company DSI, and doodling on bar napkins is that in a bar one can at least get something to eat & drink while doodling on the bar napkins. It still takes lots of energy to do this, it still takes people on, or at least very the place to make repairs, etc, and none of these requirements are cheap or easy to accomplish. NASA and the Canadian Space Agency are in the midst of a month long experiment with a Canadian designed Robotic Refueling Module to remove a cap, open a valve, and eventually pump some ethanol. All of this just to study the concept of in situ satellite refueling. Hunting for big rocks to mine is a lot farther off.

a rail slingshot or trebuchet might be the cheapest if it was self digging...
I didn't see any mention of the nickel molybdenum or other exotics they'd need to make it profitable. maybe some surveys are available somewhere.
If a bigger one were put into orbit here or the moon would it make a lake on the planet somewhere have a high tide?