April 05 2008 / by AlFin
Category: Space Year: 2020 Rating: 10 Hot
Earth is not alone in its perpetual voyage around the
sun. Besides the moon and the planets, our planet is closely
accompanied by large numbers of smaller fellow space-dancers,
called asteroids. Some asteroids actually cross Earth’s orbit,
occasionally passing quite close to Earth itself. That can be both
bad and good. Bad, if the asteroid actually strikes the Earth. But
good, if we can get to it first, and mine it for its mineral value.
How much is an asteroid worth? Some are worth trillions of dollars.
Some even more. In fact, all the asteroids in the main asteroid
belt contain enough wealth to provide every Earthling with $100
Billion-more wealth than is possessed by the current richest person
on Earth.
We are involved in-an Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) gold
rush-although not many people are aware of it yet. We do
occasionally hear that we are in “The Next Space Race”, being
driven by hungry young billionaires and entrepreneurs. But few
people really understand what is involved.
(cont.)
Alaska serves as an excellent analogy. Once thought of as
worthless territory (in 1867 William Seward, America’s secretary of
state, was criticised for paying $7.2m to the Russians for Alaska,
known then as “Seward’s folly”), Alaska has since become a
trillion-dollar economy. The transport infrastructure has made
Alaska’s gold, oil, timber and fishing industries super-profitable.
The same will hold true for space. A
0.5km (0.3-mile) diameter asteroid is worth more than $20
trillion in nickel, iron and platinum-group metals.
Aside from the economic incentives, technology is reaching a
critical point, making space exploration an inevitable component of
human progress. Moore’s Law has given us exponential growth in
computing technology, which in turn has led to exponential growth
in nearly every other technological industry. Breakthroughs in
rocket propulsion will allow us to go farther, faster and more
safely into space.
...Recently, the X Prize Foundation joined with Google to
announce a $30m Google Lunar X Prize, to be paid out to the first
teams able to land on the lunar surface, rove for 500 metres and
send back two video/photographic moon-casts. Amazingly, within the
first two weeks following the announcement, we received over 190
requests from 25 countries from prospective teams looking for
registration materials. This is the new generation of entrepreneurs
who will reinvent space exploration the same way that Apple and
Dell reinvented the computer industry.
Economist
Most people think the goal of these hungry young entrepreneurs
is space tourism, space hotels, and other local space fun and
games. But with the stakes as high as $20 Trillion (!) for one
asteroid, something tells me that a lot of these young guns may be
secretly gunning for a bigger long-shot gamble than shooting a few
overweight tourists into suborbital space.
Getting into space is expensive. Moving mining equipment into a
matching orbit with an NEA, landing,
setting up, and staying for years to mine and perhaps process the
materials on site, will cost many billions of dollars—assuming you
can acquire the necessary technical expertise to accomplish the
task. That means dealing with financing organisations, insurance
companies, and space lawyers to maneuver the mine fields of space
law.
Almost every step of the way from Earth to the main asteroid
belt would be a long shot gamble. But once in possession of that
type of wealth and resources, the Earth would be in no position to
dictate terms.
Think of it as a The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress scenario, except in the main asteroid
belt instead of on the moon. There’s still a place in the world for
a gambler.
Excerpted from Al Fin’s
Heaven is a Long-Shot Gamble
More on the
Next Space Race
The Technical and Economic Feasibility of Mining the Near Earth
Asteroids
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