Yes, each haul would be of a greater rate of return - for the first phase and with present technology. New technology will change the playing field of resource availability. I know that there are a few technologies out there that can and will be used for these endeavours, varying in development stages.

I like the ant analogy, Asteroid Nom-ing Technology if you will, where the ant colony has many little workers with a nest (or mother ship), and can breakdown the larger bodies to manageable pieces. The worker ants could eventually be cloned or replicated (philosophical and Sci-Fi implications not withstanding) on site, depending upon the size of the "Nest." From there, products can be transported to LEO, maybe to a space elevator, for ground delivery.

As for the ANTs/Tugs, many entities (universities, companies, garage-itechs) have shown advancements in autonomic coordination of robotics. See Ardiuno videos on YouTube to see beginners and professions perform things not capable by major corporations 10 years ago. Financial institutions and professionals would have to account for resource fluxes to the planet but as stated earlier, resource abundance, if managed ethically, can be steps to a much more level and stable economy. With the tinker/open source movements, the materials in LEO are sufficient. With rocket upper stages and processing abilities of things like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, harvesting LEO and NEO items is a challenge but very realistic. If we were to standardized the Tugs size and configuration(s), they could be deployed as a collaborative fleet(s), as mentioned earlier.

For the present, the Close-to-home, build-up approach is my preferred approach. Once new technology for human travel is developed then I'll be more inclined for dating the concept of resources beyond the Asteroid field. I believe on-site involvement would be much more practical at that point.

"Ant" was used specifically for the aptness of the parody. Especially as the algorythms powering it will feature much inspirations of ant colonies (ACO) in order to be operably effective. With regards to technologies, it's all good - maybe not for "space elevator" though, physics doesn't like that one much.

These "abilities" demonstrated that was absent just 10 years ago are also available in the home level today - although few leverage. Honestly, things like the Pi and the arduino are minor - the Pi significantly more advanced than the Arduino, but the Arduino isn't far from the power of the LLM guidance computer. Both should be attainable to the "common man" - The pi being quite cheap, addressing the lack of things like native RS232 interfaces on most "modern" hardware, and going one step further to expose other GPIO of the package. The zero comming in at the cheapest at about £4 - which isn't bad for it's delivery of processing power - about £6 if you'd want the SoC sporting BT and wifi. If you just want a cheap media renderer/smartTV upgrade it's great, but IMHO this is a prolific waste of what makes this "special", the access to GPIO. making the computer control things is trivial. The Ardiuno is a similar - but entirely different tool. The develboard welded to the ATmega made it "easy" to interface so it naturally gained popularity - the cheap nano clones can be found for about $2 and are very beadboard friendly so I don't see why more people don't own at least one. The complexity to operations drop massively, the code space is incredibly limited - the pi can access USB HD's, SD cards, etc - and the 8-bit processor isn't up to much. I've seen people automate entire houses with a handful, however. They are incredibly useful. Combined, along with a few other things, there is little they cannot achieve.

I'd not suggest havesting debris to be much of a challenge, I'm able to visually plot intercept courses and manually capture so some simple AI will have no issues getting itself slightly in front then allowing the target to slowly catch up and place itself in the containment. Algorythmical systems displaying these charactoristics have alread been tested in collaborative response, containment, and controlled redirection of inbound projectile(caught a ball, controlled directional return). Collaborative fleets is just sensible - but uniform design is not. A modular design can allow for greater operational flexibility - all tasks do not require the same tool, and at least in the early stages it will be the most efficient response - over time more complex devices that combine this can be applied, and if modular is done right much can be recycled.

If we can automate harvesting of the belt, automated harvesting of further - like the Oort - is theoretically just more of the same. Being automated it can get sent off the second there's a clear path and the propulsion technology being poor and the time it takes to get there/resources back is covered by the remaining matter in the belt. By the time that's getting short the first Oort loads should be arriving - and by then the initative should of expanded thousands strong in the Oort. IMHO we can have industrial supply chains suitable to feed Oort mining about 150yrs before we can have realistic supply chains for sensible human occupation. I'd not imagine people going out there to mine with such propulsion technologies - it's a life long trip - instead I'd predict colonisation and explorers - the early ones who really want to get there first might not be comming back. That said there has been some slow advancements in cryogenics.

Data is infinite and very valuable resource. Before we can build a ship that is economical enough to mine space objects we need a lot of research. And research is quite costy. There was a very wise phrase in one russuan cartoon: " To sell something that we do not need, we should buy something that we do not need but we do not have money". The most valuable data - gives the best ROI now is of IT type. So I would start to aim at educating IT specialists and thus providing services could bring money and also would have instrument for automation of everything. And then I would invest everything in science and thus making building space ships more real.

The world must evolve to serve the majority,
and to do that we need to switch to a ressource based economy
instead of a money based economy.

If we want to coexist on our Spaceship the Earth planet and in Space,
we also need to share the best practices and leverage the power of automatisation
to free up time for our citizens to improve the system and not be slaves of it.

Please take some time to check the venus project from Jacques Fresco and
you will understand what kind of ambassador I will be.
[removed unsanctioned link]
And if you are French, please vote for me...
[removed campaign link]

I agree completely.

A Resource Based Economy is going to be needed.

I just wrote up this huge set of posts about Asgardia and a Resource Based Economy.

https://asgardia.space/en/blog/21801-the-case-for-an-asgardian-economic-system-part-1-the-problem/

Jerome Floerke can you send me a link to your profile so I can friend you?