Rare-earth metals are far too plentiful and cheap on Earth to make it profitable to mine them in space and then ship them back to Earth. Gold and platinum grou

Rare-earth metals are far too plentiful and cheap on Earth to make it profitable to mine them in space and then ship them back to Earth. Gold and platinum group metals are the only natural resources that could potentially be mined in space and then shipped back to Earth for sale at a profit. Maybe what we could see is such metals seeing their price come down as the supply increases from extraterrestrial sources, and and as a consequence of the resultant increase in abundance of these metals, new applications being found for them, which in turn would increase the productivity of the global economy. Gold and platinum group metals have a lot of industrial uses that cannot currently be exploited due to their extreme scarcity and expense.