Is it legal? I have some thoughts over at PJMedia.
Category Archives: Space
The Water Rush
Over at Popular Mechanics, I write about the competition for extraterrestrial water, and the relative merits of the moon versus asteroids.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s a related piece at the HuffPo. But this always drives me nuts:
The world’s fossil fuels are in limited reserves and are also in quick depletion.
We have enough fossil fuels to last many decades, and in the case of coal, for centuries.
Space And Cyber Law
When Commodities Analysts Should Stick To Commodities
In which I take some folks at Barclays to school on asteroid mining.
That California Meteorite
It turns out that it was a fairly rare type, containing amino acids.
Is Asteroid Mining Legal?
Jim Dunstan and Berin Szoka discuss the issue over at Wired.
NASA’s Ambition
This may be a bridge too far, given the state of the agency and Congressional proclivities.
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.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
I don’t envy Jim Maser his job, especially if XCOR starts to manufacture an RL-10 replacement.
As California Collapses
Obama follows its lead. If California is bailed out, it’s the end of federalism. Unfortunately, it already started, with the “stimulus.”
[Update a few minutes later]
“California can either have all the regulation, or all the business, but it can’t have both.”