OK, gotcha.., I initially understood you to be somehow tying the RE and reusability together, but understand what you were getting at now.With expendable chemical rockets, you may not explore the solar system. It's not a physical reality, but a practical one.
The lead-in was "It essentially says that you may not have". I was hoping that my phrasing would communicate the idea that we can't do much until we make it economical to loft propellant. The need for large amounts of propellant is the iron fist of the rocket equation, and until propellant becomes more easily available, we're not going anywhere. Propellant depots in various locations would make the solar system more accessible. But we always have to acknowledge the rocket equation.
Another big development is the ability to make propellant from the atmosphere on Mars - because it caters to the rocket equation. If successfully implemented, you don't have to take the fuel to return. The rocket equation is merciless on that score because return propellant is outgoing cargo, requiring that much more propellant to get to your destination.
@ecarfan mentioned fusion drives, which would be a real slap in the face to the rocket equation. Just don't point your fusion drive at anything that you want to keep.
To bring this back around to asteroid mining, if you want to mine asteroids, you're going to have to have propellant out in the asteroid belt. That means a low delta-v depot relative to the asteroid you're after. So perhaps Ceres, Vesta or Pallas would have enough ices in them to provide that propellant while being a low enough delta-v from a target like Psyche to make it accessible. Or perhaps there are other, smaller, icy bodies that would be usable.
There are various delta-v maps of the solar system, but I couldn't find one that included the asteroids so I don't know how practical it would be to fly to Ceres, refuel, fly to Psyche, mine, fly to Ceres, refuel, then fly the mined materials wherever they go.
Yeah, it is rather unforgiving... getting off planet is barely possible as it is. Much less packing up everything you need for an encampment and heading off to Mars...