Asteroid mining and the commercialization of space.

Earlier this year a company called Deep Space Industries unveiled their plans to launch a fleet of asteroid prospecting robots by 2015. The plan is to send out satellites to a few likely looking asteroids and see what they're made of. Down the road they plan to return samples to earth and from there the space gold rush will begin. The prospect of prospecting (heh!) the bounty of outer space raises a couple of interesting thoughts on the nature of the space industry as it stands now and the future it's trying to create.
     The current crop of companies that have set their eyes on possibilities in space are still making their tentative early steps. Space X founded by Elon Musk of PayPal and Tesla Motors fame is ahead of the curve simply by being able to get into space although orbital science's recent successful test launch shouldn't be ignored. Many others whether they're working on sub-orbital tourism, lunar exploration or asteroid mining still have a long way to go before they are established businesses making a profit. However the high start up cost, risk and technical challenges which previously made space ventures the preserve of wealthy governments are no longer scaring people away. The rewards to be had are immense as Peter Diamandis of the X Prize foundation put it "The first trillionaires will make their fortunes in space". This isn't to say the start-ups aren't without their problems. The technology needed is  expensive and the science of space travel is in some ways a jealously guarded secret. Also launching rockets is a risky business. When something goes wrong with a launch it often goes spectacularly wrong and several million dollars of hardware blowing up is a very public warning to investors. The core of all space pioneer woes is money. With the cost of launching a kilogram of hardware in the region of $20,000 it goes without saying that mistakes aren't welcome. The enormous cost of orbital flight brings me back to asteroid mining. At face value a space miner would have to bring back an awful lot of very valuable material to make the trip worth while but the interesting thing about space mining is the vast majority of material mined in space will never make it back to earth.
     The idea of putting refineries and such in space sounds ludicrous when one compares the cost of a tonne of space iron and a tonne of iron mined here on earth but the great thing about space iron is that its already in space. The material will have a ready and waiting market in the form of companies and governments that want to build things in space without the cost of launching them from earth. The obvious ones are space stations for both science and tourism not to mention (shudder) military applications. Another interesting use for tonnes of raw materials in space will be the construction of orbital refueling stations. Currently satellites reach the end of their usable life not because they break or they become out-dated but because they run out of fuel and die. The idea of an industry built around refueling satellites brings me to my final point on space commerce. Critics will be quick to disparage the  thought of going to space to make money because the cost of getting there removes the chance for ordinary folk to engage and thus benefit from the new frontier but I would argue that the space industry isn't a closed system and for every hi-tech giant building moonbases where will be a hundred small companies piggybacking on their success. While not everyone can own a space station there's no reason there won't be a small corner shop or launderette on board the virgin galactic station.