Comment by myrmidon

Agree 100%. Another point that people love to neglect is that for earthbased hardware, you keep all the material, and can recycle/reuse all the copper and trace metals somewhat easily.

Even if space was cost competitive (which it really isn't), you basically throw away all the stuff up there (because retrieval is too expensive). Copper prices are already up by 300-800% since the nineties even without dumping the stuff in space.