No space development will ever be self-sufficient. Anything that goes into space will always be a burden to taxpayers as long as it is operational. Manned space platforms are particularly bad that way. Therefore we will never be able to afford anything on the scale you are talking about. I mean seriously, relocate *all* industry offworld? Are you kidding? Where would people work? Would we all be sitting at a computer operating space-based robots by remote control? Ridiculous.

That's just what we need: more fat overpaid jerks sniping and harassing each other in offices. Where I work, it's physically tough, and the people are REALLY, REALLY NICE to each other. Why? Because their jobs are HARD, HARD, HARD. PHYSICALLY HARD. HARD. SO HARD that the first idiot that has enough time to cause upset to someone else gets moved to a different machine, where he'll spend the remainder of his 12-hour shift working his arms and legs, sweating, keeping up with the machine (not the other way around), and not having enough time to form a single unique thought in his confused little mind, until he punches the clock and goes home. Give a billion people an office job, you'll see more behaviour problems. Space isn't the way to go.