Mining on Earth leads to conflicts on Earth, so what's the difference?
Additionally, the '67 Outer Space Treaty was specifically written with open-ended provisions to allow for the commercial exploitation of space - at the time, they quite honestly thought that Hilton and Pan Am (yes, 2001 did it) would be operating in space within decades. They even thought so as far back as '58, before man had even been to space. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120712-where-is-hiltons-lu...
>Mining on Earth leads to conflicts on Earth, so what's the difference?
The difference is that conspiracy theorists and others will fear that an asteroid would be used to destroy a major city.
But we've got to learn how to deflect asteroids anyhow, in order to save the Earth. So some international body formed out of NASA should start crashing them into the Moon, or into parking orbit around the Moon.
We can then offer mining rights to any company which is simply able to get up there. Presto. There'll be a lunar base within decades!
Interesting idea, but I'm not sure lunar orbits would be stable, and we're all sitting at the bottom of the next closest (and much bigger) gravity well.
Also See: Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", which features space colonists seeking to break away from Earth dropping rocks on us to persuade us to let them go.
What I find interesting about it is new questions of sovereignty versus co-operation among the nations on earth.
None of the space treaties were written with the anticipation of actual profits in mind.
You could make the same argument about Antarctica, but [actually I don't have a good argument why we haven't exploited the resources there and would be interested to hear one. Just political suicide? Too expensive?]
When it's feasible to make money space mining absolutely all of these things will be rewritten, probably with a heavy dose of realpolitik.
Antarctia is protected because it's the one area of earth that hasn't been irrevocably fucked up by human activity - yet. It's quite likely that when the Antarctic treaty completely expires in '48 we'll see a free-for-all - just as we are right now with UNCLOS (which the US never signed) and deep sea mining - although that's all being kept so quiet and out of the public eye it's not funny.
Antarctica isn't exactly "protected" the treaty is the outcome of countries that didn't want to give up their claims to Antarctica but also weren't in a position or had the slightest will to actually develop their claims.
The treaty doesn't really protect Antarctica from anything other than nuclear tests, in the future if countries want to actually develop claims it can and will be revisited. That said there isn't much interest in this atm mostly because we do not have the technology and we aren't that desperate heck even if the largest oil field in the would would've been found there no one atm would try to develop it as it would most likely be financially non-viable but nothing would really stop anyone from doing so.
Outerspace on the other hand defines the universe as the heritage of all mankind where no one can claim any stake, which will shortly be changed probably to something along the side of what was used to be used in the US during expansion, where claims would be made by private individuals and corporations rather than countries.
Whether or not Antarctica gets exploited (at the very least by some non-democratic countries) depends probably on commodity prices. And most of them are pretty low right now.
Maybe it's just too hard to navigate public opinion and regulation for things involving multiple governments? That would not bode well for space mining...
>quite honestly thought that Hilton and Pan Am (yes, 2001 did it) would be operating in space within decades.
It was a rational assumption. There was good data suggesting we could expect a significant drop in launch cost. Then the two nations who could do this decided instead to spend all their money on nuclear weapons and conventional military forces as well as proxy conflicts which starved whatever civilian rocket innovations could have or should have happened in the 70s and 80s. They both had classic designs by then that worked well enough and competing on cost per lbs didn't matter to them as it wasn't incentivized by anyone.
As a side note, Syfy channel's Expanse show takes place in that kind of an environment. There are "belters" whole generations who have worked mining asteroids. There is the "Mars" faction, descendants of Mars colonizers, and of course Earth. They end up conflict + some added human interpersonal drama mixed in etc, etc.
As a show not top notch, but not bad either. It was interesting that it was exploring the Solar system as opposed the traditional space sci fi plot with aliens invading or having to go through wormholes to outer rims of the universe.
Mobile Suit Gundam covers this ground as well. I think that when we settle beyond this planet, there will be "13 colonies -> United States" transitions - probably with conflict. “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes" ~ Unknown
It starts slowly, I got half way through only. I didn't finish watching it. Apparently there are some interesting twists at the end, as I found out now I am intrigued. Might have to get back into it.
Unless there is a profit to be made in space, I don't think we'll see significant development of space technology. NASA and the other space agencies are chronically underfunded. It's true that science probably will have a low priority if we allow private ventures to do in space whatever they like. But right now, science isn't doing too well either, so it's not obvious to me that commercial space development will be a net negative for science. At least in the early phase of space mining, it seems to me as a layperson that the challenges are very similar to what NASA is researching.
Given our poor track record at establishing transnational bodies with actual powers, I wouldn't want to wait until the UN Space Mining Commission has worked out rules and can actually enforce them.
100% agree. It always comes down to money. I respect Elon Musk for wanting to get people to live on mars. I too feel we need to become a multi-planet species.
However, what is the financial incentive for this? Are the new investors of SpaceX, really going to want to waste billions upon billions of dollars, for something that will not make money? Hell no.
When Europeans set sail for the "New World" hundreds of years ago, there was a huge financial incentive. Gold and other raw materials.
As much as I respect the idea of getting people living on Mars. It's ass backwards. We have to start with mining or something very profitable. Then we can get people living in space or other planets / astroids.
> When Europeans set sail for the "New World" hundreds of years ago, there was a huge financial incentive.
Religion was actually a big reason too. Perhaps in the modern era after the caliphate fails to establish their Islamic kingdom on earth, they will attempt to do it in space.
Money is a good reason to temporarily get equipment and people into space, but those people ultimately want to come back home. To get colonists to leave earth forever, raise families while risking life and limb (and their children's life and limb) in a hostile, dangerous environment forever, you'll need more than a paycheck. You have to be fanatically devoted to it. Religion will do it.
Imagine we go to space and get access to infinite energy and infinite natural resources.
Does it solve world hunger ? Don't we already have more than enough food ?
Does it solve cancer ? ..
Does it solve the economical crisis we are in ? Its mostly due to lack of political organization and lack of education.
I think the argument that Neil Degrasse Tyson makes - about inspiring the young - it can be done by trying to solve world hunger, cancer, etc. We do not need to burn more fossil fuels to try to figure out how to mine the moon.
The biggest argument would be that we already have infinite resources here on earth. Space mining doesn't make much sense when you can much more cheaply extract resources from earth.
I think the biggest issues in society is education and healthcare. And the free market seems to direct us towards that anyway.
Healthy and educated people are inspiring - space mining seems to be trying to solve the wrong problem for the right reasons.
> The biggest argument would be that we already have infinite resources here on earth.
Earth's resources are very much finite and that's a fact. It's only a matter of a couple of decades before fossil fuels become extinct, our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified due to overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, potable water sources are vanishing, those solar panels that people keep talking about and the iPhone in your pocket need rare metals to be mined, etc, etc.
Also have you seen how open pit mining looks like, have you seen what it leaves behind? Earth mining is cheap only because the costs are subsidized by the environment. But of course, our children will pay the real bills.
> our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified due to overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, potable water sources are vanishing
So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ??
We can solve those problems withing sending more rockets to space - which ends up burning more fossil fuel. Remember, every day that you are alive ( assuming you are living a developed country ) you are emitting huge amount of carbon.
Just keeping you alive is making the earth more inhospitable - dont talk about sending rockets to space ( with other people's money ) as a method to combat climate change and solving the resource constraint on planet earth.
I can't parse this opinion. You're disagreeing, but I don't understand how. You also went on a tangent, avoiding my main point.
Are you aware that advancements made for space exploration have helped the medical field? Things like NASA's digital image processing of the moon helping with MRIs and CAT scans. Or LVAD leading to artificial heart pumps. NASA is basically able to claim at least partial credit for things like ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators, improvements in digital mammography technology, programmable pacemakers, LEDs, etc.
The discussion is about mining and I see no reason for why space mining colonies couldn't be self-sustainable. If they cannot be, then space mining isn't feasible or too costly. And if they are self sustainable, then the fossil fuel mined and burned on earth would be worth it. If this was meant for me to feel shame of being alive and consuming carbon, take note that this is reductionist thinking, the same reason for why we find ourselves in the current predicament. Carbon emissions are only important as long as we have an impending global warming phenomenon potentially pushing us over a dangerous threshold. And while that's certainly a potential catastrophe, it's reductionist thinking in the sense that carbon emission isn't the real problem, just a reaction in a long chain of reactions and focusing just on carbon emissions will spell our doom.
But going back to your first question, we'd have plenty of water if we wouldn't pollute it, I don't see the need for mining decreasing, quite the contrary, so instead of dynamiting mountains and filling the area with cyanide for extracting gold or whatever, I'd rather have all of this happen in space, instead of our backyard. Mining on earth is only cheap because the costs are subsidized, being implicit in the damage to the environment, a cost that we'll pay sooner or later. If we'd factor in the real cost, if space mining is possible, I don't think it will look that expensive.
We can find lots of resources and turn them into useful energy and things.
But that only exacerbates the pollution issue, regardless of where we obtain the resources. Especially noxious is the non biodegradable pollution and the millions of years worth of carbon released from the ground.
> But that only exacerbates the pollution issue, regardless of where we obtain the resources.
Factually untrue!
Obtaining resources on Earth generates pollution that stays on Earth. If we move mining off-world, the byproducts of mining don't go into streams, soil, etc.
Furthermore, generating energy in space and beaming it down to the planet means not having to burn coal, reducing the risk of nuclear accidents, and eliminating the need for dams that disrupt ecological systems.
Yes, we'll need to burn more fuel to get there, but that's the nature of progress. The other alternative is to fall back to a pre-industrial lifestyle limited to only those parts of the globe where the temperature is mild year-round - unless you want to keep burning wood for heat in the winter.
I am proposing we slowly phase out mass producing products out of NON BIODEGRADABLE materials yes.
As for the Carbon - it doesnt matter how slowly we do it, we will still remove it all from the ground. It is a non renewable resource. Look at what we've done to slowly renewable resources like species - how many have gone extinct in the last 100 years? So yeah I think with carbon it's a foregone conclusion that we will floodthe atmosphere with it. But non biodegradable plastics etc. at least we can phase out.
I understand, but I disagree, because you can have carbon emissions, or you can have carbon emissions along with whole areas left uninhabitable due to mining and the need for mining resources will still be there, whether we want it or not. I stand by my opinion. I'd rather have mining happen in space.
And I understand the concern, but if reducing CO2 emissions is the goal, the first targets should be the production of electricity, heat, transport and agriculture. Food gets transported nowadays by airplane and maybe we shouldn't shut down nuclear power plants to replace them with coal plants. Plenty of low hanging fruits if you ask me.
for first time, I see some one that think like me about nuclear plants. Nuclear should be only closed to be replaced by modermand and more secure nuclear, or by solar/wind/sea powered centrals.
> So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ??
The point was that they (in the "all around us" / Earth sense) do not, so it is therefore more difficult to pollute them via space industry.
There's something to be said for an environment where you can run an unshielded nuclear reactor without causing any particular damage around your craft...
> We can solve those problems withing sending more rockets to space - which ends up burning more fossil fuel. Remember, every day that you are alive ( assuming you are living a developed country ) you are emitting huge amount of carbon.
Even if you launched 10 rockets a day, it's a tiny percentage of combustion compared to hundreds of millions of cars, trucks, buses, planes, coal and oil and gas boilers, etc.
I don't understand your second point.
But regarding "clean water on[sic] space", there are in fact ice comets containing tons of water that could be harvested by a future space colony. It makes sense that we'd want to exploit that source rather than try to move H2O into orbit from the Earth's surface. The Jupiter moon Europa is thought to possibly have a vast water ocean beneath its icy shell. The Moon may also harbor vast amounts of water locked in minerals or in subsurface ice.
With water, we can have colonies. Colonies can grow trees, entire forests in fact. The sky's the limit, so to speak. Really, there's a lot of exciting possibilities for spreading civilization into orbit and onto other planets and moons.
The spin-offs and economic expansion that space colonization will undoubtedly bring more than justify the costs of exploration. A few space colonies and mining operations will solve poverty on Earth. It's worth it.
There's a wide variety of ways that easy access to space could help the ecology. Battery technology at the moment needs a lot of rare earths, which could be obtained in space. Mining activities in space are mining activities not occuring on Earth's surface. Solar power may be augmentable using space technologies. Any high-pollution industry that can be moved to space is either polluting something already clinically sterile (remember pollution is not "intrinsically bad", that's a cognitive shortcut that works on a planet with life in every cubic centimeter, pollution is bad because of what it does to life; really, if there's no "life", there's no "pollution"), or "polluting" into something that will just be blown away on the solar wind, which makes it irrelevant. Easy access to space also enables some ways of controlling climate change; I've always preferred the space mirror approach to manipulating the climate because it's so fantastically controllable, unlike almost all other proposals to try to fix it here on Earth. (If you get it wrong, you can stop.)
Also, before you trot out the tired old "oh, we never thought we'd finish polluting the ocean"... first, run the math, it's very different, and second, the universe is already terminally polluted, in the sense that nothing much can live there until we go out and clean some space out. There's no life out there, not within anywhere we can get in your lifetime. It can't get any more uninhabitable than it already is.
Something that gnaws at the back of my mind is that the survival of our species is contingent on absolutely nothing catastrophic happening to the single planet we inhabit. All of our eggs are in one basket, so to speak.
Until we have a viable network of colonies offworld, we will continue to have this problem.
Absolutely. Ultimately we must leave this place. Not now—and certainly not in the near future—but eventually "we" (or whatever we become) will have to leave this place in order to ensure the survival of our descendants.
Think about the explosion in scientific understanding, world commerce and enlightenment values that came with the expansion of the British empire. Then think about the explosion of world commerce and related technological advances that came from colonising North America. We're still feeling those benefits wash over us as a species. Then think about what happens when we reach a tipping point where exploiting and colonising near Earth space becomes commercially viable. Like war, rapid expansion into virgin territories can be at once chaotic, uncontrollable and radically socially, technologically and economically invigorating.
The problem is even if we discover and obtain 100x more resources, that wouldn't solve the pollution problem. Life continues forward but creates entropy around it. Non biodegradable byproducts and all that carbon being released from the ground are the greatest threat to life on Earth!
If we get access to infinite energy and resources, then the answer to all your questions is YES.
But space.time is not infinite, far from it. We can easily imagine, eg. computational problems (ie. computer programs that can easily be written) that would require more memory than the number of particule in the universe would allow, or more time than the life expectancy of the universe would allow. So unless we are able within this space.time left to invent a way to create new universe or survive a big crunch/big bang event, or a cold death, no, there's no infinite energy and no infinite resources to be taped, and therefore:
- world hunger is not a problem of resources, but a political problem. The question is whether we're ready to gather in a concentration camp the psychopaths of the world, and exterminate them once for all.
- yes, we have already more than enough food.
- all hints are that cancer is a man-made illness. Once you've removed the psychopaths who build poluting processes to earn more $money or more power, we should revert to a more natural and canceless world.
- nope. It is not an economical crisis, it is an economical system set up by those psychopaths to keep accumulating money and power. They already own 99% of the money and of the power, but they still need to acrrue it at a significant percentage each year.
I should also mention, that assuming a population growth such as we double the population every 20 years, going to space would not solve any "overpopulation" problem if it was any more real than human-made climate change, since that would just mean that you would have to colonize new planets every 20 years. Very soon, the whole galaxy would be "overpopulated", and then soon enough the whole universe.
So going to space, offers no solution to "we".
However, having a space ship, and being able to leave this planet of psychopaths, crazy people, and savages, would solve "MY" problem! I would at least escape from this asylum-prison!
And there's hope the galaxy is big enough that if you escape, the US government and the banksters won't be able to catch you up to make you pay taxes and interests on the debt.
Healthy and educated people are looking for a way out, space mining serves only to build bigger, faster and better space ships to go farther, until we can get out of the reach of the psychopaths. And THIS would be the BEST solution, if you don't like the concentration camp/final solution.
The author's thesis is that we shouldn't allow uncontrolled development of asteroid minerals, because it would lead to conflicts on Earth. He proposes an international body to regulate space development.
I would disagree with the author's thesis for one simple reason: space is dangerous. Those nations and groups of nations that establish footholds in space are sacrificing much blood and treasure to get there. The U.S. alone has lost 24 people to accidents in space and space-related test flights and catastrophes like Apollo 1 and the USSR lost several cosmonauts as well. The grim likelihood is that there will be more deaths, an inherent risk of such dangerous exploration.
In addition, the US, USSR, EU, Japan, China, and India have collectively invested trillions of dollars in space exploration and development since the 1950s. It's hardly likely that these great nations will submit to the authority of an international regulatory body and curtail their exploration; there's simply too much at stake. At most, they'll agree to some standards and shared values, based on the Law of the Sea, e.g. agreed-upon mayday signals, standardized airlock connectors, etc.
I believe that those nations and groups of nations that establish footholds in space and exploit the vast potential mineral wealth in the Belt, on the Moon and on Mars, will be the superpowers of the late 21st Century and the 22nd Century. Far from a cause of conflict, this vast new wealth will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity and technology far advanced beyond even what we can imagine.
Everyone assumes (from the comments I've read so far) that mined materials would be used on Earth. My challenge is to imagine how the material could be used in space; o'neil colonies, moon cities, etc. Did you know that nuclear pulse propulsion can theoretically reach .1c and that's fast enough to reach the nearest star in a human lifetime? Think big people!
I'm not sure everyone believes that. I seem to remember one of the biggest things they talked about when Planetary Resources was first announced was the mining of water for use in space.
I think the threat to coal supplies from Poland was a significant factor (but not main motive) in Britain declaring war with Germany in 1939, but I can't find a reference to back this up.
I've never heard that mentioned as a factor in the events leading up to WW2 and this graph suggests that the UK didn't even start importing coal in any quantities until the 1970s:
Unless one group of people has an abundance of everything, I'd guess they would want to trade the stuff they have abundantly for something that they don't have. Generally, both parties in a trade gain something from it, no goodness of heart needed.
Small comfort to the victims of WWI, where enlightened individual would have told you just months before the war started that war between great powers just wasn't going to happen because they were too economically intertwined, the outcomes too unimaginably deadly, etc.
The deadliest conflicts, in fact, do seem to be those that involve the two wealthiest great powers in a region who have far more to lose in war than they have to gain. Wealth may make wars rarer, but they make them far more deadly.
Statistically wars have got less and less deadly. The most intense parts of WWI had something like 25% casualty rates, compared with 60% is typical for tribal warfare.
Loads of rubbish. It should be free far all to spur innovation and get companies involved. This is what will get the dormant space industry going. There has to be great profit prospects to drive it.
The sheer amount of resources in the asteroid belt makes an obsession about possible conflicts an overreaction.
We fight for resources on the earth because we are billions of people with limited resources. That is not the situation in space. It is the opposite. Vast amounts of resources but with nobody to argue over it.
"Space as humanities common heritage", that just makes me wince, what arrogance. We are a tiny insignificant spec in the universe. Space is not our heritage. That is a nonsensical statement. I wonder what the aliens on Alpha Centuri thinks about being labeled the heritage of some bipedals down on Telus.
> Loads of rubbish. It should be free far all to spur innovation and get companies involved.
You need some sort of legal framework, still, because there will be conflicting claims and other problems.
Plus, when it comes to planets, it's still worth trying to keep them as isolated from Earth life as possible - otherwise, you may ruin the chance to discover new types of life and advance science.
What fair solution could be reached? I think it is extremely important to let the private sector mine as long as it fullfills certain safety and environmental standards. We have seen that the private sector is capable of so much more (just look at spaceX).
But I also see the need for regulations so that one company can't claim all plantes to mine while still having an advantage because they were the first to start mining. How could territories be distributed fairly so that innovation is possible (and encourage by financial gains) and that there are no monopolies (so that only one country or only one space agency from one country, which would be pretty counterproductive).
"one company can't claim all plantes to mine while still having an advantage because they were the first to start mining"
That is physically impossible.
While the international laws and conventions have lapsed, they can easily be brought back, and one of the principles of settling is that you can't claim something you can't defend. The principles will need to be tweaked a bit since the way in which "defense" is used here isn't 100% applicable, but you could easily say that you have to be occupying it, for instance. There is no way to squat on the million best asteroids.
By the time that's not true, our great-grandchildren will have worked out the principles of solving that problem. It may be fun to speculate on their answers, but it's nothing more.
What qualifies as "occupying"? Does a person need to live there (not viable for small asteroids) or is it enough if I attach I iPhone sized tagging device to it?
"I'll know it when I see it" really will get you through at least a decade or two. It's not like the doors are going to open and twenty million people are going to emigrate to the asteroid belt overnight.
The scale of the capital enterprise required to pull this off in the next 50 years practically guarantees it will be a political issue if it happens in our lifetime.
You can't sweep space mining under the rug.
We're a long way off freebooters with fusion drives. And when we have those, AI will see you from 5 AUs out
What country writes those regulations? Whose claim is valid?
I think that's where things get interesting and earth politics get involved. Who should have a say? Spacefaring nations or all of earth? [I think this is your point, just being explicit I guess].
This sounds reasonable to me. Can anyone point out some shortcomings of an auction-approach? The only thing that stands out to me is if a party has the means they can buy every auction out.
NASA estimates that Cometary Resources could support a population if 10 quadrillion people and a single 2km Near Earth Object would be the equivalent of 30,000 total Earth GDPs to launch*
It is a new frontier, vast on a scale that dwarfs everything we are now.
What is the population density required for a cometary level civilisation to develop interstellar technology ?
War in space is already happening; weapon systems, attacks, etc.
Raw materials are a national security to all countries.
China in many respects is the leader in raw matters and they are leveraging this anywhere possible; China stopped providing raw materials to Japan, US complained to the national community, and were told they breaking trade laws by the community.
It's an issue, but complex, and hard to predict what will happen. Also, given it is a national security issue, it's possible, if not likely that you'll never get a full picture of the issue.
I've got a weird question: if it became feasible to do lots of mining on other planets and bring it back to Earth, at what point will it be a problem where the mass of material on Earth starts to become a problem?
Odd question I know, but I've often wondered this.
Earth is massive. Pretty much nothing we can do on a human scale is going to impact that. To put it in perspective taking the entire raw iron ore mining output is only 5.3916492×10^-13 of the Earth's mass. (used a 2014 estimate)
Honestly I'd worry about heating up the atmosphere too much from the resources being delivered before mass even vaguely comes into the picture unless we figure out space elevators.
I don't think it's a big problem, as earth mass is already increasing my quite a few tons per day, from comets burning up in the atmosphere. If the asteroids are refined and processed in space, which makes more sense than trying to land them, it should be a non-problem.
The Earth's core (and mantle, which is the only inner part of the Earth that is even remotely reachable) does not contain the rare metals that are the primary focus of asteroid mining. Even if it was easier it would be orthogonal to this discussion.
Additionally, the '67 Outer Space Treaty was specifically written with open-ended provisions to allow for the commercial exploitation of space - at the time, they quite honestly thought that Hilton and Pan Am (yes, 2001 did it) would be operating in space within decades. They even thought so as far back as '58, before man had even been to space. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120712-where-is-hiltons-lu...