The Next Frontier: Space Miners Are the Universe’s Future Tycoons
byDYLAN LOVE
The next gold rush will be intergalactic.
In 2009, a collection of astronauts, academics, and aerospace industrialists convened to review NASA’s present and future plans for manned space flight. Informally dubbed the “Augustine Commission,” the more-stuffily named Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee determined that our ultimate goal ought to be nothing less than “to chart a path for human expansion into the solar system.”
Considering that Earth’s resources are finite and that the well of human desire knows no bottom, a continued future for our species will likely require robust manned spaceflight to leave the planet. But it remains incredibly expensive and logistically complex to see humans break the planet’s escape velocity, let alone with any regularity. The ostensibly modern spacecraft of today carry all their fuel with them from the start — a lot of that fuel is required simply to transport other fuel. It’s comically inconvenient.
Contemporary spaceflight is impractical by virtue of being unsustainable; it’s a pursuit for governmental agencies and rich visionaries. Now an industry with its roots in prehistory is changing that tune, summoning up a modern set of incentives for people to get more intimate with outer space. “Space mining” presents itself as a killer technology for interstellar travel and exploration — the miners are due to inherit the stars as we set their sights beyond our planet to harvest geological resources from the universe itself.
Related: Are Humans the Real Ancient Aliens?