I thought you were about to declare a new planet there for a second!!

One day we will mine asteroids.

Well you go right ahead, I am not good with a pickaxe

Give it 50 years and some nations and perhaps companies will be out there mining. Of course by that time there will be several bases on the Moon and Mars. I wish I was young enough to live to see it, but I can imagine it.

Elon recently said that politicians are trying to stop him from going to Mars with their proposed Billionaires tax.

https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-criticized-billionaires-tax-151215819.html

Perhaps Musk and the other billionaires should let it be known that they'll renounce their US citizenship and move their wealth and their research and development abroad.

It would be hard for Musk to do that but he may be considering it. The US government is one of his customers so I doubt if he would do that.

His factory in Germany hasn't opened yet. Environmentalists are delaying it.

It is going to be hard for democracies to settle Mars.

I think 'settling' will take much longer. I'd envisage research stations to start with and it'll probably start like that on the Moon. Science and technology will continue to advance and what seems impossible now will eventually happen.  I won't be around to see it but that's life.