But I still think that the primary initial market for orbital materials is using them for fuel and life support for space facilities (for this you’d look for ice asteroids) plus for basic materials (from plain old stone and iron asteroids) which could be grounded up and plugged into a 3-D printer to make things like hammers, wrenches and bulkheads. These items are useful in orbit, simple to fabricate with basic facilities, but also pretty expensive to acquire from Earth.

A “local” supply source would provide immediate cost advantages. I imagine there would also be a secondary market for scavenged parts from no-longer operational satellites which could then be re-used on other orbital facilities.

I’d even go so far as to suggest that this initial market would need to be developed as part of the infrastructure requirements necessary to build and support the more complex on-orbit facilities needed to effectively mine the resources likely to cover their transportation costs to Earth. It would also bring overall costs down for the larger facilities.

So, at the very least, this “orbit to orbit” market will develop first.

Thanks for the comments! Is it your feeling that extraterrestrial platinum-group metal mining will send the bulk of mined ore to orbital manufacturing facilities, rather than the earth itself?
From reading about Planetary Resources Inc and hearing Eric Anderson speak, my feeling was that their intention is to bring those metals back to earth and perhaps make them as common place as aluminum is now, rather than keeping those minerals scarce on the planet but more plentiful in orbit.
As to the effectiveness of a unilateral system, I believe a lot is dependent on how a system of incentives and punishments is implemented and the strength of demand for mined ores off planet. If, as you estimate, the initial market is off planet, the US has fewer levers to pull, compared to if the metals are primarily being sold on the planet.

While I agree with you that “commercial operations in space will be financially bound to the earth for the foreseeable future” and that the US is currently the largest supplier of goods and services to the commercial space and space launch market; it does not follow from those two statements that “when space is commercially exploited and settled, the United States will still be the largest, richest market for the goods and services produced.”

After all, suppliers are often far removed from the primary markets for their goods.

The key here is to remember the cost of transportation to and from Earth orbit, which currently hovers in the $1000 – $15,000 per pound range depending on the supplier and the expected end location/ final orbit (higher and more eccentric orbits are generally more expensive) and whether you’re entering or leaving orbit.

All of which means that the cost of a typical one pound hammer manufactured on Earth and sent into orbit is the manufacturing cost plus the transportation cost (which in this case is an order of magnitude higher than the manufacturing cost).

So it’s likely that the primary initial market for manufactured goods and mined materials from beyond Earth is likely going to be other orbital facilities (and not the continental US proper), at least until the transportation costs come down.

I’d also suggest that, the last time the US attempted to “unilaterally” create a legal framework governing commercial operations in space (the various ITAR regulations, which were developed to address US national security issues), a great many companies moved their primary service providers out of the US.

Check out “Cutting off its Nose to Spite the Face: Why ITAR is Bad for Business” at http://acuriousguy.blogspot.ca/2012/02/cutting-off-its-nose-to-spite-face.html to learn more.