[julius]

Mercury sounds interesting. Requires a certain scale though (gravity is a bitch).

Considering just the initial mining and construction, bodies with low gravity and proximity to the earth feel like an efficient starting point, right? I always thought the moon would be a good place to bootstrap the first few thousand space habitats.

Your point about energy will probably be the biggest deal. Wondering how complicated it would be to ship a bunch of nuclear reactors to the moon. There seems to be quite a few companies working on small, "mass produced" reactors currently.