| A kilogram of iron currently costs ~40 cents. That's because iron makes up 6% of the earth's crust. A kilogram of nickel costs ~13$. And nickel makes up a mere 0.0009% of the earth's crust. It's completely pointless to mine them, with the hope of returning them to Earth. It's also completely pointless to mine them, with the hope of using them in space, for many, many reasons. 1. A spacecraft factory employs thousands of people, and requires hundreds of millions of cubic feet of space. 2. The supply chains that feed a spacecraft factory employ hundreds of thousands of people, and require billions of cubic feet of space. 3. They also require a long tail end of chemical inputs that are not iron and nickel. The difference between 'We have a space factory that is fed by an asteroid miner and builds more spacecraft/space factories' and 'We have a proof of concept where we spent a billion dollars to mine and refine 20 grams of iron, which we fed to a 3d-metal printer (Never mind all the other consumable inputs into it), to print a little figurine of a rocket' is rather large... And only the latter is achievable in my lifetime. |
I'm not saying it won't still be big. You basically need community in Low earth orbit, low lunar orbit, or on the moon. But it could well be worth it; depending on the demand for hardware in earth orbit to begin with.
If you get moon launch costs low enough (and they'd be low!) you might start competing with some traditional industries on earth.