6 thoughts on “The Middle East”

  1. I’ve long felt that the Middle East could be a strong partner in the creation of a Solar Power Satellite infrastructure, for a number of reasons:
    1) They’re not in the oil business, they’re in the energy delivery business. If you believe that oil is finite, then you create the kind of nihilism that comes from knowing the party can only go on for so long. If you believe that you’re in the business of energy delivery, then SPS is merely another form with a different delivery mechanism;
    2) It’s an avenue to funnel some of that oil loot into building out the infrastructure necessary for SPS;
    3) It could be a means to get some of that loot flowing into the hands of U.S. companies and workers providing the goods and services necessary for the creation of that infrastructure;

    Then again, I’ve never bought into the sledgehammer use of the military when the scalpel work of good detectiving and policing (and good community relations) are what is needed to carve out the rot that foments the disaffected youth that become the pawns of psychopaths. I don’t have any good answers for the Middle East ‘problem’ (I vacillate between walling off the region and then getting back in touch in a couple decades to see if they’ve sorted their crap out, to holding entire families personally and financially liable for the destructive actions of their children), and wonder often if they are so deeply embedded as to be intractable.

    My current work exposes me to a lot of transplanted Middle Eastern Muslims, and I’ve always found that if you treat them with respect and dignity they will respond in kind. I’ve also found that, in general, they do hew more closely to their religious tenets and practices than do Christians, making them much more predictable to deal with. They make fine trading partners, and that’s the approach I think we should emphasize.

  2. At least the video and the article *did* mention water. They still focused on the imperial economic idea of dragging PGMs, including Platinum, back to Earth, to “crash the market” here. They mentioned nothing at all about asteroid materials being used as the basis for settling the Solar System.

    Still, its slightly higher quality is an encouragement.

    1. Flooding the market with PGMs would crash the price for PGMs, which could be a problem if your plan centered on selling those metals to cover costs. But the economy as a whole would tend to benefit.

  3. Ken Murphy,

    “the Middle East could be a strong partner in the creation of a Solar Power Satellite infrastructure”

    Could be, indeed. It would take a great deal of long term thinking about space, something I haven’t seen yet, at least in large oil, mining or energy companies. On the other hand, if anyone is in a position to ponder the long term future of oil and what to do next, they are. I think your Reason 1 is good.

    Reason 2 seems valid from the point of view of making the investors money, but also nicely coincides with the goals of many space advocates. I mean, selling the water or just using it for their own operations, either way, necessarily means developing and/or proving prospecting and mining techniques, routine use of electric propulsion on industrial scales, fuel production in space, specialized kinds of craft: freighters, tugs, etc.; fuel depots and possibly repair “dry dock” stations for satellites. There’s a lot of opportunity for both providers and customers in building up this market, assuming significant up front investment really is moving in this direction. If so, it may very well lead up to the support needed for large scale construction in space, i.e. space based solar power for Earth.

  4. It’s curious. The article and accompanying video clip only talk about asteroids, not the Moon. Perhaps it’s because the focus of the article is on the Middle East and interest in Deep Space Industries, specifically.

    I’d always thought it will make more sense to develop this infrastructure for the Moon first. (Substitute reusable lander for deep space freighter). However, I admit to a little anthropomorphic bias — I’d assumed this development would require a fair amount of human presence just to make it work.

    On the other hand, robotics is fast advancing on many fronts, so maybe completely autonomous operations are closer than I thought. If this is true, then maybe the “lower delta-v” arguments make sense, and we (our robots) will build solar power satellites out of asteroid stuff.

  5. “…the Middle East could be a strong partner in the creation of a Solar Power Satellite infrastructure.”

    Am I the only one who is terrified by the idea of Muslims with this? I’ve seen references here to Larry Niven’s Ringworld and Known Space series before. Nobody remembers The Kzinti Lesson?

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