You're probably looking at a price curve that declines linearly. Any industry that's been heavily influenced by information technology will see a Moore's Law-li

You're probably looking at a price curve that declines linearly. Any industry that's been heavily influenced by information technology will see a Moore's Law-like increase in productivity. Ever since the 1760's or so (little Industrial Rev.), we've been underoing a great acceleration of technological change. Sequencing a human genome in 2003 cost $3 billion. In what is likely the greatest price drop in history, you can get a genome sequenced today for $1000. You're also thinking we're just going to ship up excavators, cranes and other heavy industrial construction equipment. Smart money says that we'd just launch a series of automonous drones that can either self-replicate or simply construct what it needs from the materials on the asteroid and some stock materials. Think of launching an SCV from Starcraft instead of the crew and equipment from Armageddon. If Elon Musk is going to get his planetary transit system off the ground, he's going to need space mining to bring down the cost curve....or a space elevator that magically appears. I believe that SpaceX is seriously looking into asteroid mining as well