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Originally Posted by photon
Maybe not with today's technology, but the sheer amount of natural resources out there should make it profitable at some point.
The asteroids to start with are more because you can be self sustaining there.. pick the right asteroids and have the technology to process them and you can go without having to bring everything you need with you, mine the water and hydrocarbons you need.
There's nothing on the moon, and even on Mars you'll have to bring everything with you (not to mention that we actually have no way to land a man on Mars at this point, the technology just hasn't been made yet with no good way to go about it).
So go to the asteroids with the goal of a self-sustaining colony. Then they can send back resources that are far easier to mine there than on earth to pay for themselves.
Short term I would forgo sending humans at all, just do it all with robots, develop robots to mine and transport and lay the groundwork.. eventually we need a self sustaining colony off-planet, just for insurance purposes.
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I don't disagree in principle, but I think the idea that we would be 'self-sustaining' mining asteroids is a little out there. There's lots of hard radiation, inadequate shielding, and no way to produce food.
If landers were sent down to Mars, habitats could be built, food could be grown, and you've got an atmosphere to provide shielding from hard radiation. Commercially, there may not be much point, until we get that terraforming project underway...
At least a few sources I've seen suggest that creating rocket fuel from the chenicals found in Martian soild would be fairly straightforward and could be automated so a refueling station could be set up before humans ever land.