There is a certain brilliance to the idea, though. We could have off-world national wealth. Countries could uncover critical assets, and store them in space, even trading/exchanging them for others. Sort of like a futures contract, etc. Wouldn't have to bring them back here. Of course, you need assaying/verification services. We could have an entire useless business in space, sort of like some of what our governments do here But seriously, it would be cheaper to stock a small quantity of stuff for space exploration or commercial enterprises, rather than bringing it up from the Earth. gold, silver, iron/steel, rocket fuel components, solar panel materials, for building labs, launchers. If they are going to beam back solar energy from orbiting platforms via microwaves, it would be cheaper to build this stuff from the moon or nearby asteroids and position it around the earth. Heavy parts of satellites, etc. could be fabricated in space. Some day, in the distant future, as man starts to colonize the Moon, Mars, inner planets, moons of Jupiter/Saturn (some have huge quantities of water and may harbour life: Europa, Enceladys, Ganymede/Callisto (I forget which). mining stuff in space is a lot cheaper from very-low-gravity than bringing it up from Earth...
I think this kind of thing is fantastic though, we are likely to see a massive increase of interest by corporations and governments alike to send more people into space with discoveries like this. I remember before people bitching about how it was worthless to spend that much money to get one person to go that far and back. Look at them now the fools! lol