Posted on 06/13/2020 8:38:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
By harnessing the innovation unleashed by the free enterprise system, private space enterprise is ready to explore the next untapped horizon: asteroids.
We’re going to the moon. We’re going to Mars. And, before you know it, we’ll be going to the asteroid belt.
Space is back, baby. It’s back in the news, back in our thoughts, and back in the culture. America, and the world, are better for it.
Over the past few years, space exploration has returned to public consciousness in ways not since the first shuttle mission in 1981, or even since Americans landed men on the moon then brought them safely back to earth in the summer of 1969.
The launch of the joint SpaceX–NASA rocket on May 30 is only the latest proof of our renewed interest, and it revealed much about the future of humans in space. Te key is private industry: What used to cost the government $54,500 per kilogram of payload lifted to orbit now costs SpaceX $2,720, saving 95 percent.
Reducing cost, of course, is one of the things private industry is supposed to be good at. The most recent launch of the SpaceX Dragon module atop a Falcon rocket cost an estimated $55 million, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk claims the future cost of his reusable rockets could fall to a shockingly low $2 million per launch.
As Jonah Gottschalk noted in his reporting for The Federalist, “it’s fair to question why the government should continue dedicating tens of billions” to space when the private industry can achieve so much at astoundingly low costs.
The other thing about private industry, however, is that it eventually has to make money. Prior to colonization—which we are still likely decades away from achieving—the options are limited. Satellite launching and repair might provide some income. Carrying out paid experiments for scientists? Perhaps. Tourism? Highly likely. But the most probable long-term source of income from space is asteroid mining.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits nations from claiming territory beyond Earth. “The moon and other celestial bodies,” it notes, are “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” But it’s easy for lawyers to argue about what these terms mean. “National appropriation” isn’t necessarily the same as private property rights.
Space law used to be entirely academic, but now it’s a rising field. NASA is funding asteroid-mining research. The Colorado School of Mines now has an asteroid-mining program of study. Sen. Ted Cruz has predicted that Earth’s first trillionaire will be made in space.
The growing commercial space-sector helped guide the 2015 SPACE Act through Congress, which included a “finders, keepers” rule that allows American companies to claim the bounty they extract from celestial bodies. As a result, private equity funding for space-related start-ups massively increased. The first quarter of 2019 alone saw $1.7 billion in equity capital for space companies.
People used to “see asteroid mining as a bit of a joke,” says Peter Ward, author of The Consequential Frontier, a new book about space privatization. But now, Ward believes “the commercial space industry is maturing to the point where it’s more serious.”
Private industry seeks two things in asteroid mining: water and metals. The water isn’t exactly a money-maker; it’s needed to make hydrogen fuel for return to Earth at a cost lower than lifting fuel into space. The metals, however, will prove to be the real sources of profit.
Asteroids are defined as rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of the solar system, and already 958,628 are identified and plotted. By far the largest collection is found in the asteroid belt, the ring of space rubble between Mars and Jupiter. The belt may contain as many as 1.9 million asteroids larger than a kilometer in diameter and many millions of smaller ones.
Still, although fewer in number, the near-Earth asteroids are the likeliest first targets for mining. More than 10,000 near-Earth asteroids are known, with 861 measuring more than a kilometer in diameter (and 1,409 classified as potentially hazardous, posing a threat to Earth).
The material potential is astounding. Asteroid 1986 DA, for example, is a metallic near-Earth asteroid of iron, nickel, gold, and platinum, and estimates of its value range from 6 to 7 trillion dollars—the gross national product of a nation. Of course, at three kilometers in diameter, Asteroid 1986 DA is too large to be retrieved anytime soon. But the potential figures give some idea of just how much wealth is out there in the black of space.
Such big asteroids as Ceres and Vesta are too big to move, and regardless, they would probably count as celestial bodies under the Outer Space Treaty. But a smaller asteroid can certainly be moved. “It’s not real estate; it’s just a rock,” law professor Glenn Reynolds observed in Popular Mechanics.
A 25-meter-wide metallic-type asteroid might hold 33,000 tons of extractable metal, including $50 million in platinum alone. A seven-meter carbonaceous-type asteroid can hold 24,000 gallons of water for generating fuel and oxygen.
John Shaw, a major general in the U.S. Space Command, insists that the United States “is not going to be sending humans into space for national security purposes anytime soon.” That leaves policing and trading in the hands of private industry.
No legal barriers currently stop anyone who wants to stake out and mine an asteroid with magnetic rakes, low-gravity sifters, asteroid anchors, and all the other fantastic technologies suddenly becoming feasible. Yes, it’s going to be the Wild West out there, a modern gold rush, just as science fiction has often imagined. But that’s a good thing.
Private industry will have to operate more cheaply than the government. It will be forced, by the need for profits, to push faster out into the solar system. By harnessing the inherent positive competition of the free enterprise system with the kind of dangerous trial and error experiments that governments loathe, further private space exploration is poised to create incredible new technologies beyond our imagination.
Younger generations will be filled with purpose and inspired to join an innovative and exciting new field. In other words: Buckle up, everybody. Space is back.
Never say never.
I could see a robotic spaceship going to the asteroid belt, finding a suitable metallic asteroid, and towing it to earth orbit using ion thrusters.
Nope! After the current crop of Communist Luddites take over, you’ll be lucky to find a library - let alone a book. And space will be listed as endangered and saved for the children. “Idiocracy” did not have a space program and neither will the US
When has the military voluntarily ceded strategic high ground?
```
It just cede the entire US to Communists so no biggy on space.
“Can’t even sit on the toilet sometimes.”
Government mostly contracts out acquisition of goods and services. Space should not be any different.
That old hackneyed meme only applies to dragging a small amount of stuff down a gravity well - stuff mined in space will be used to build stuff in space and be very cost effective.
Space will be both militarized and colonized. National sovereignties will be
asserted regardless of any puny agreements from 50-60 years ago.
There will be blood on the moon.
We were there first and we planted our flag. We own it.
Inner city minority groups and inferior nations are all upset about our going back to the moon and the expanse of our solar system as explorers and conquerors because it means that we are leaving them and their self generated social decay and their screwed up culture behind to rot.
My wife calls it the “Van Halen belt”.
Notice that none of these modern space missions seem to go past it....
Uh.....NO!
Even Gold/platinum are not worth the cost to get there, mine it, and return to earth.
Okay everyone go home, self proclaimed expert G Larry has said never and Um no.
Feel free to show us your cost/benefit analysis to support your claims.
Then u have no idea what you are saying. Don’t u understand that to mine stuff in space the people would have to live there? They are certainly not going to go to the expensive trouble of dragging stuff they need up the well.
Its the “return to Earth” part that is expensive - What if they don’t return it to Earth but build in space? And you are basing your argument on today’s tech. What about tomorrow’s?
Ask Elon Musk what the price per pound was to get the Dragon and crew to the ISS.
Let's imagine that 20 years from now we've reduced that cost by 90%.
Then pick a number of pounds necessary to achieve the capability you suggest.
Remember, you're talking about mining to manufacturing, assuming all the raw materials will accessible in space.
Have to agree. The expense would make deep water oil and mineral extraction (the sea bottom is a largely unexplored treasure trove) seem like plugging a $1.00 tap into the ground and having oil and platinum gush out. And until we start building cities in Antarctica I have the same doubts about Mars ever becoming a real backup plan. That does NOT mean we shouldn’t explore for the sake of pure science and the expansion of human knowledge. But no one should expect to make a direct profit in the effort.
UR still imagining all of this comes up from Earth in the first place - you start with robot mining to build the basics n build the habitat - people come, more mining more people - vacation on Earth, live in space. Go to the stars one day, or finish Project Orion and go tomorrow.
There was no good cost benefit analysis for Magellan or Columbus so they, by ur logic, should have stayed home and become navel gazers or lawyers.
#18 The insectoids will then evolve and take over and start mining the asteroids and then be wiped out then repeat with whatever evolves after that.
I plan to become rich by selling picks and shovels to the astroid miners...
also space whiskey and flapjack powder.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.