AsterAnts

At 30 cents per pound on Earth's surface, you would have a whopping $ 24,000 worth of Iron. At $ 10,000 per pound for launching to low Earth orbit, if the robot sent after this AsterAnt weighs more that a pound, you will lose money. The cost of the metal retrieved to HEO should not be compared to the cost of metal here on the surface of the Earth. It should be compared to the Earth cost plus the cost of lifting equivalent material from Earth up to HEO. Even gold is only worth about $ 5,000 per pound (depending on the current market, thoughthere are other metals worthmore per gram), so there seems little hope of bringing back small quantities of minerals and making a profit. For large quantities, a 1 kilometer sphere ofiron would have a mass of about 4 billion tons, it would be different, but it is harder to move and land such objects. It may be an error to try and think of this in terms of returning space materials for use here on the surface of the Earth. Space materials may remain economical for space construction purposes only for a very long time.