Space profits

If you ignore the billions of dollars companies are already making in space, "nobody can make a profit and it's a complete waste of time" seems to be the reasoning of many when confronted by two space mining companies who's future is unknown.

For those companies to profit they need customers for their product willing to pay more than the cost of producing that product. They can, but not by bringing material to earth. Asteroids provide all the materials found on earth, but the market for that material is in space. They only need to mine one thing to be profitable, water, the rest is gravy.

What's the market for that water? It's not the water itself although that's worth thousands of dollars per pound in orbit; It's the oxygen in water that combines with rocket fuel to provide deltaV. Today that market is small (satellite refueling) but one thing alone would make that market huge... settlement.

Settlement will create a huge demand for mined materials but only if settlement itself is profitable.

It will never happen if colonists have to pay their own way. Even if the ticket were free they would still have to pay for a spacesuit which alone make it prohibitive. So we need a plan that makes transporting those colonists (provided with a spacesuit and supplies) profitable for the transportation company without charging the colonists at all. We do that by providing the space transportation company with a legal asset worth more than the cost of transportation. Legal claim to 1000 sq. km. of land per colonist transported will do that.

Assume it costs $50m per colonist (only by doing it in bulk) to transport them to mars (which has 144,000,000 sq. km. of unclaimed real estate.) That cost is 100 times greater than Elon's claims it will be in the near future. The settlement charter would provide 400,000 quarter hectare (more than half an acre each) unimproved plots for sale by the transportation companies (per colonist transported) to recover their costs. Could they sell a half acre plot in a growing mars community to people on earth for $125 each? I'd buy one or more, so I'm guessing a lot of other people would too.

The value of that land goes up as more people settle on mars. Mars can be settled by millions of people in the near future. All for profit.

The colonists don't arrive broke. They each have legal title on arrival to a 400 quarter hectare claim which over their lifetime can be developed into millions of dollars of improved property. They roll over the cost of development of each half acre plot sold to new colonists (each would otherwise have to develop their own homestead after arriving for about the same cost so it's a no brainer to buy instead) making just a few percent profit over cost of development to each become millionaires.

If that still doesn't sound doable remember we base these calculations on 100 times what Elon and Zubrin calculate to be the ultimate transportation costs. If Elon and Zubrin are right, break even for the transportation companies becomes $1.25 per quarter hectare. They could sell that in an afternoon.

We are not even scratching the surface of profits to be made by all involved. It is going to happen.