$100 Billion for Every Person on Earth
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
Comment Thread (2 Responses)
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What are some reasons to believe that 0.3-mile diameter asteroid has more valuable stuff than 0.3-mile chunk of regular earth crust?
Posted by: johnfrink April 07, 2008
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The links provided at the foot of the article will give you a start, John. The Wikipedia article on Space Mining also provides more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_mining
Posted by: AlFin April 07, 2008
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