Earth-Moon Network = Maturing Space Industries

> There are exceptions, but they are rare. Few business spring up in the
> middle of nowhere with no appreciable infrastructure already in place.

But they do, all the time. The first farmers to start farming in
the Ohio valley just went there and started farming, building
infrastructure as they went.
Come on, now. Back then infrastructure consisted of a railroad track if you were lucky. They farmed and built their infrastructure as they went because there was NO other option nor was there all that much to the infrastructure they "developed". These days 90% or more of all start-ups in the 1st world piggy-back on existing infrastructure. And this has been the case now for more than a generation.

Ditto oil exploration in Alaska, or
on the continental shelf. Ditto again for gold miners in the Yukon
or California. The infrastructure follows after the pioneers
have already started to make money.
That was then. That thinking is gone for the most part. They didn't have a choice. The financiers of today do and choose to finance companies that either (a) use existing infrastructure or (b) virtually guarantee high profitability (thus warranting the added expense of including infrastructure in their start-up). Space businesses can neither guarantee high profitability nor piggy-back on existing infrastructure. But of the two, which is most likely? I believe infrastructure can be provided separately and profitably and make doing in space more affordable to others.

The real problem holding up development of ET resources isn't
infrastructure, it's launch costs.
Yeah, I've heard this argument many times. But I have also been privy to other, equally compelling arguments. Like it's the lack of a market that keeps launch costs high.

If it was cheaper to launch
people into LEO, there would be a larger LEO tourist market, so
it would make sense to build orbital hotels, which could also
serve as construction depots for asteroid mining missions etc.
Every problem in ET resource exploitation comes down to launch
costs sooner or later. The good news is that there is no fundamental
reason that launch costs have to be high. The bad news is that
the people with the money haven't yet realized this, and there
are a large number of people who should know better pushing the
notion that some magic bullet is required. The technology exists
today to get launch costs well under $1000/lb to LEO, and with
high flight rates it should be possible to get to ~$200/lb, at
which point some fairly speculative asteroid missions begin to
look pretty attractive.

......Andrew
I agree that reducing launch costs would go a long way to resolving the problem, but I don't think it alone is the answer.

Jack