Commerce

Making money from producing items and resources made off Earth

What will be the first products made commercially off the earth!

NASA: "With the rise of a range of private-sector entrepreneurial firms interested in pursuing space commerce, the process whereby their efforts might be incubated, fostered, and expanded comes to the fore as an important public policy concern in a way never before present in the Space Age."

What is going to be traded in space! The equation will be item produced cost effectively compared with the the cost of launching items or resources from the Earth. Most space manufacturing and resource mining will require significant upfront costs to get the enterprise going also it will depend very heavily on space transport systems being in place, but there will almost certainly be a cost benefit in the long run.

Even exporting items Manufactured on Mars could be economical if the cost of returning items back to Earth space was low using almost empty spacecraft returning from Mars to Earth Space.

The Cost of reusable rockets from Earth will be the main factor in any profitability.

SpaceX claims that the cost will only be $10 per pound, this is unlikely in the very near term, more likely will be around $70-$100 for the next 10+ years.

Will this intermediate cost give a window of opportunity for Space Start ups?

In the more longer term 2026-2056 may see a boost to Heavy Manufacturing in Space such as Solar Panels this is a goal of Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin

Brief History of space Commerce and about Jeff Bezos vision