Accelerando, by Charles Stross (a HN'er actually!)

Features asteroid mining, expansion through the solar system in the quest to find more matter to turn into computronium, and some people becoming obscenely rich in the process.

I wouldn't describe space travel itself as the books primary focus, but it's a solid theme. Look into it before you dive into it after just reading my comment, otherwise you'll likely be confused.

And it's available free, under a CC license: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

Also a brilliant, in my humble opinion, imagining of how we would function with accessible and 'intelligent' autonomous software agents at our beck and call. I've read tonnes of science fiction, and this book really stuck out in my head.

Not quite exactly what you asked for, but Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars (and sequels) are absolutely fantastic hard sci-fi books. By far the best books on the colonization of Mars that I've ever read.

Ugh, those books are excruciating. The protagonists are unbelievable superheroes (curing cancer and inventing a fair economic system that everyone agrees on in an afternoon, oh while colonizing another planet, and partying lots). It's not hard sci-fi because it has no basis in any reality.

The books present the development of the Martian economic system as a long struggle culminating in a year-long constitutional convention and followed by all-but-civil-war and subsequent political hostility between opposing parties, with lots of trade-offs, compromises, betrayals, deal-breaking, backstabbing, etc.

And the nice thing is that the trilogy gives you a view into the lives of multiple successive generations of space colonists. Those books were beautiful.

Yeah, the description of "Martian natives" was interesting.

There's some economic activity here: "Space family stone" (a.k.a. Rolling Stones) is chronologically a little after "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones_%28novel%29

Some John Wyndham: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outward_Urge, but that's more geopolitical than economic.

Both very old, so the sci fi has a different flavour (future as projected from the 1950s, rather than from now).

There is Planetes anime where people are collecting debris in earth's orbit, and there is a fusion ship going to jupiter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

C.J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union novels don't quite do first generation (Though Heavy Time and Hellburner come close), but they have a brilliant portrayal of "East India Company, in space" called the Earth Company.

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein, explores some of the potential labor and social issues.

It's not about first-gens though, loonies have been there for a few generations (the protagonists's line marriage is a century old)

Actually some of the early Robert A. Heinlein stories such as "The Man who sold the Moon" have themes very similar to what is actually going on with this asteroid mining company.

It's been a while since I read them, but basically some rich guys with ideas for space think of various marketing schemes(smuggling in some stamps for collectors for the first trip out and so on) to finance their dream of mankind colonizing the space. As they say, baby steps, baby steps.

Very entertaining read, with some plausible science behind it for the time.

Rendezvous with Rama has a lot of back story involving early solar system exploration/settling, and the main plot is exploration of an unknown object. One of my all time favorite books, but the sequels are mediocre at best.

http://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-Charles-Clarke/...

I'd suggest the excellent Heart of the Comet by Gregory Benford (an astrophysicist), a story about mankind's first attempt to live on a comet, including all the hardships that come along with it and the changes which occur there and on Earth over time.

Both by Peter F Hamilton, the novel "The Nano Flower" and the last story in the "Second Chance at Eden" anthology deal with first-gen space colonization (and the latter is in the Night's Dawn universe if you enjoyed that series).

Allen Steele has the Coyote series, which covers some colonists settling on a planet. They're (at least one of them is, I forget if the others are) chapbooks, but that's okay.

There's some nice stuff about failure of important systems and the consequences of that for outbound travellers; food and shelter; exploration; law and order; and eco disaster. I enjoyed reading them. I wasn't a fan of the audiobooks.

(http://allensteele.com/)

A lot of ben bova books are about the earlier space exploration of asteriods, the moon, planets, etc.

For example the asteroid wars v1 - v4 are more first persony.

"Space Inc" is a collection of short stories about work in space. It's a loose fit for your description.

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/075640147X/ref=oh_details...)

Asimov: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_Way.

Not exactly what you asked for, but pretty close. Deals with bringing water to Earth.

Edit: Added very brief description

this is not about first generation space exploration, but this series may explain its conclusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gap_Cycle

this book series is without a doubt my favourite.

"Live Free or Die" by John Ringo, and the rest of the "Troy Rising" series.

Science fiction doesn't seem to touch on "first generation" all that often. From the video games perspective, in Mass Effect you're at least three generations out from first contact, which was initiated by the military, although corporations quickly started exploiting planet systems for resources and became very wealthy, improving humanity's standing in the galactic community by the time of Mass Effect. You also have Dead Space, where corporations crack planets to get at their resources. It seems to be a general theme in space science fiction that big companies mine resources to become very wealthy, but you don't get stories of big companies financing space expansion a la East India Company.