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They will be highly trained, skilled and tough individuals working far away from families for a long periods of time in extremly dangerous environment, locked together in confined space for most of the time. I don't think "space miners" are going to settle in space permanently, they will more likely be working on several months or years long contracts with some mining company and then return home to spend money they earned.

So esentially, they will be like present day oil rig workers.

Space mining for sure would need to be governed, but I think it would be by an Earth-based international treaty. A permanent colony in space would need its own government though I think.

It’s fiction, but watch / read the Expanse for one take on how Earth, asteroid “Belters”, and Mars colonists might diverge

Morality is based around the social contract for behavior-access relationships. It's based on the concept of scarcity though. If there's true abundance then morality would likely be reduced to "Dont physically harm others", if that

How should we know, and how could we possibly predict it accurately?

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There’s a great book series called “Red Rising” by Pierce Brown. His vision is future society where people are divided by caste. And the miners are on the lowest rung. The people at the top live extravagant lifestyles on mars surface while the minors toil for generations underground not knowing that the planet above is already terraformed.

Came here for this comment.

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I read a book a few years ago called Asteroid Mining 101 that was a pretty technical dive into the minerals in each type of asteroid and how to get them back to earth. It doesn’t talk about the societal impacts as such, but some near earth asteroids have so much value it would radically change the equation on the value of each kind of metal. Super technical book.

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein might be of interest.

My hot take: space mining will be conducted remotely and likely highly automated. No need for human miners to leave the earth to make it happen.

Life support is already significantly more expensive than a lot of the automated mining equipment we already have, working underground.

Maintenance is a concern, but lots of places are researching human-like robots, which would ideally be capable of performing most simple maintenance items (tightening a hydraulic hose, replacing a worn pin in a joint) - major maintenance would most probably not occur, machines would be a little over designed, run-to-distruction in a year or two and then just replaced....

There's also little sense in making the thing that brings back the goods, also bring back the mining machines, as this additional weight is definitely not the same value as the goods.

Hello u/Delta_Hammer, your submission "Space Society" has been removed from r/space because:

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> What kind of society would a space-mining industry produce? Would the space-miners keep Earth values and structures? Would they need a government at all? What functions would a government serve?

Slow down Gonzales! What are "Earth Values"? We don't have a single set of values on Earth - some people can't yet decide that beating women and noncing kids is a bad idea. And you want some space miners to adopt some "Earth Values"?

I was tempted to treat this question seriously and write about the legal and social structures that might develop but then I realized that this question seems more like someone phishing for homework or fanfic ideas rather than a genuine question. So my question to you, OP, is: what do you think society will become? Et cetera.

I will say just one thing though: whatever else happens, unless we discover instantaneous communication, the communication delay between colonies will play a major role in the new society. At the very least, expect a resurgence in the telegraph.

Might also consider “Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson

Actually it grew out of another question about orbital mining infrastructure. It got me thinking, most fiction portrays orbital minors operating in isolation like people panning for gold in the old west. But since successful mining in the old west usually attracted more miners, the establishment of boomtowns, and the eventual establishment of some kind of government to provide law and order and safe commerce, it got me wondering how that would play out in space.