The prospect of mining asteroids for their materials is seen by some as having the same potential in the future as the oil industry had in the previous century. According to a 2016 BBC article, this potential is not envisioned as the return of mined materials to Earth. Rather, space mining would instead make use of asteroid metals to construct tools and parts for spacecraft — at least according to private space investment and exploration companies. It has even been suggested that material harvested wouldn’t be limited to metal and would include water as well.

Rocket fuel typically consists of hydrogen and oxygen, an explosive mixture that has proven to be the best option for leaving Earth’s atmosphere. But since so much is expended in leaving, larger spacecraft intending to land on and leave other planets would benefit greatly from the extraction of any water hidden within asteroids. Essentially this all could be a stepping stone to Von Neumann probes — hypothetical self-replicating spacecraft which, in theory, could colonize a whole galaxy in as little as a million years (via Futurism).