Actually the other way around:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...

There's tons of Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen in the universe, but very little metals. Heavier elements are much rarer.

In the outer solar system organics and water are abundant (and in the inner there are plenty of carbonaceous chondrites, admittedly not the most generic inner-system bodies).

Agreed that metals should unlock wider opportunities in the inner system where solar energy is more abundant. I just don't think it matters much, you need a good place to plant your seed; once you've built up to scale you can then build wherever.

(False that life dies in minutes in space; plus the engineers can invest in even greater error correction than radiodurans.)