There's a wonderfully fun hard sci-fi novel by Daniel Suarez called "Delta-V", chronicling a group trying to mine the first asteroid (in secret). The premise o

There's a wonderfully fun hard sci-fi novel by Daniel Suarez called "Delta-V", chronicling a group trying to mine the first asteroid (in secret). The premise of the book, however, is that doing this is not just going to make them wildly rich, but that doing so is the only way to maintain Earth's need for constant economic growth. There aren't the resources needed on the planet to bring everyone to the level of development we'd like, but there is an ethical need to not leave people behind. It's a fun book, but the premise really sticks with me. We need more resources. Asteroid mining could play a big role. Sure, on a long enough time scale we could use up the entire solar system, but at least we'll have more time to figure out a solution.