Why extract mineral resources from a planet that is so deep within Sun gravitational field that you have to expend more energy to get stuff from there than you would to get stuff from Earth surface?
Why do that if you have billions of flying bodies in much more convenient places flying around the Sun waiting to be docked to to extract resources?
There's a few problems with the premise you outline.
1) This imagines only that there is no reason to extract minerals that far into the solar system.
2) It ignores that some technologies are much improved by proximity to the Sun, e.g.: Solar Sails are roughly twice as effective, which could change the calculus.
3) Mineral deposits may or may not be uniformly distributed throughout the solar system.
4) Mineral deposits may be more readily accessible than in other places.
> Why do that if you have billions of flying bodies in much more convenient places flying around the Sun waiting to be docked to to extract resources?
A space mining operation would need to offset a variety of costs. If you can land on Mercury and scrape up platinum powder with a shovel versus needing to completely process a 1-km long asteroid to get the same amount of platinum, it's not exactly de facto in favor of the asteroid.
Mineral surveying of nearby asteroids is certainly in its infancy and is likely to be where we get the bulk of our resources but I don't think it's quite so simple a case as you're presenting that closer to the sun = waste of time/money.
> Why extract mineral resources from a planet that is so deep within Sun gravitational field that you have to expend more energy to get stuff from there than you would to get stuff from Earth surface?
Mercury itself is light enough to cancel that out.
> Mercury itself is light enough to cancel that out.
No, it does not cancel it out.
You need about 12km/s delta V to get to Mercury from Earth and then the same to get back. Remember, if you need to lift anything from Mercury, you need to actually transport fuel TO Mercury, before you can use it to lift anything out of Mercury.
And you don't just need twice more fuel for twice more delta-V. The fuel requirements grow exponentially.
Now imagine, how poor idea it is to transport mountains of fuel to Mercury just to get a tiny bit of what exactly? Raw materials? What kind of raw materials are present on Mercury that would warrant it?
It depends on your destination. It doesn't make sense to get things on Mercury and bring them to Earth, but if you need them in space, it may make sense. Don't forget that you pay about 12-13 km/s of delta V to get anything from Earth either.
You still don't seem to understand. You need 12-13km/s to get to anywhere useful from Mercury. Closer to Sun than Earth there is only Mercury and Venus and nothing else.
For example, if you wanted to build a base on Mars using resources that you obtained somewhere else, it would actually require many times more fuel to get anything from Mercury than it would be to get it from Earth surface.
Why do that if you have billions of flying bodies in much more convenient places flying around the Sun waiting to be docked to to extract resources?