Futurology

I think I'm saying that mining on asteroids will probably never be profitable or realistic (with a possible exception of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen CHON once people are living on orbit). Mining on other planets might require understanding different geology and maybe different refining technology. Anything mined on a planet will likely stay there. But there just won't be any ores on asteroids because they never had a chance to differentiate into higher and lower concentrations of various useful metals.