There's a few problems with the premise you outline. 1) This imagines only that there is no reason to extract minerals that far into the solar system. 2) It i

There's a few problems with the premise you outline. 1) This imagines only that there is no reason to extract minerals that far into the solar system. 2) It ignores that some technologies are much improved by proximity to the Sun, e.g.: Solar Sails are roughly twice as effective, which could change the calculus. 3) Mineral deposits may or may not be uniformly distributed throughout the solar system. 4) Mineral deposits may be more readily accessible than in other places. > Why do that if you have billions of flying bodies in much more convenient places flying around the Sun waiting to be docked to to extract resources? A space mining operation would need to offset a variety of costs. If you can land on Mercury and scrape up platinum powder with a shovel versus needing to completely process a 1-km long asteroid to get the same amount of platinum, it's not exactly de facto in favor of the asteroid. Mineral surveying of nearby asteroids is certainly in its infancy and is likely to be where we get the bulk of our resources but I don't think it's quite so simple a case as you're presenting that closer to the sun = waste of time/money.