The entire economic ecosystem of mining, manufacturing, construction, and energy production built to operate in space or on other celestial bodies, using primarily in-situ resources. The goal is to break the "tyranny of the rocket equation" by not hauling everything from
Earth. This includes asteroid mining for metals and
water, lunar solar foundries, Martian cement production using
local regolith, and orbital shipyards. It'
s the industrial revolution, re-enacted in a vacuum.
Offworld Industries Example: A fully realized Offworld Industry chain might look
like: Robots on Ceres mine water ice and metals -> This is processed at a Lagrange point factory into fuel and structural components -> These components are used to build massive solar power satellites in orbit -> The energy is beamed to a growing Mars colony, which uses it to power its own
local industries. It's a self-fueling economic engine beyond
Earth.