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Early human migrants over the face of the Earth were limited by their ability to cross barriers, particularly water, and to learn how to use the resources of their new lands.

Later industrialized migration patterns depended on trade routes and access, and on the economical exploitation of recognized resources.

The migration through the solar system and beyond will be similar. Early encampments will depend on solar energy and limited fission power capabilities. Only the most promising locations, such as Mars and the moon, will be attractive.

As fusion power becomes available, fewer limits will be seen. The asteroids in all orbits, the moons of the outer planets, and even some rather intimidating planets themselves, such as Mercury and Uranus, will be settled.

The Oort cloud could well be swimming with decent real estate, requiring only cheap energy to wake it up.

The distances will be vast. Isolation will be reminiscent of the old west. But available energy from fusion will push the speed envelope faster and faster, until the nearest stars don't seem so far away after all.

From the beginning the various resources of outer space will be scattered, one kind here, another kind there. It will not be as if a family could settle in one place and find or grow everything they will need to maintain a household, but it will be trade. Water will be in one place, iron in another. The situation will be large scale shipments of single resources, which only large corporations can undertake. Money in some form will be the intermediate for all transactions since simple trade of household surplus for immediate survival will be impossible.

Distance will not be measured in miles but in time. Time management is essential to business. The inner solar system presents distances of two to eighteen months depending how things line up. Improved propulsion should cut the distance as space development proceeds and the bottom line should reflect that improvement.

Development of the distant resources of the solar system will become practical in a business sense when the distances are reduced to months rather than years and decades. During all this development, the presence of humans in interplanetary space will continue to be uncommon as that would cut into the bottom line substantially. The main presence of humans would be the bases on the moon. Secondary bases could be on Mars. All these bases would initially be of a scientific nature, there being no reason to use manned bases in either place for resource handling.