Most of the cost & risk of space exploration goes into the short trip from earth's surface to orbit. Getting free from surface is such a major factor that it ac

Most of the cost & risk of space exploration goes into the short trip from earth's surface to orbit. Getting free from surface is such a major factor that it actually makes sense to move launch to a location near the equator. Once you have extraction and processing in space, volume and mass no longer play a role in what you can do up there. That's where asteroid mining has potential: provide an infrastructure that mines and processes resources in situ. I don't think one can justify the cost of mining it in orbit and then bring it back to earth.