It's interesting to consider how an 'asteroid mining' company could be profitable without ever building a rocket: Suppose SpaceX announced they had (a) identified an asteroid with high percentage of gold; and (b) bought a large amount of gold put options with 10-year expiry. If SpaceX could convince the market that it had the technical capability of mining the asteroid, the price of gold would plummet and SpaceX would make a tidy profit. It would also cancel the mining operation because the low price of gold had made the operation uneconomical.