Category Archives: Business

More Asteroid-Mining Thoughts

From David Brin. I disagree with this, though:

It also correlates well with President Obama’s wise decision to abandon a fruitless return to the sterile Moon, in favor of studying objects that might make us all rich.

The moon is no more “sterile” (as far as we know) than the asteroids, and there is plenty there to make us rich as well. It’s going to be a trade off between time and velocity, and there’s probably room for ventures in both places. There’s enough water on the moon to make it very accessible even with high-thrust systems, and likely a lot of asteroidal wealth buried under the regolith. And it’s only three days away.

Asteroid Mining

Does it violate the law?

No, but Tanja Masson-Zwaan has been tweeting that it’s now time to start setting up the “regime” under the Moon Treaty to redistribute the wealth:

Possibly parties to Moon agrmt 79 must start talks about regime governing exploitation, as it seems ‘about to become feasible’ 2/2 #spacelaw

Personally, I think it means that it’s now time to have the Senate actively repudiate it by vote, to indicate that we will have no part of that nonsense.