Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2018

13 JULY-AUGUST 2018 Accordingly, the products of space mining must be used in the construction of orbital stations, lunar bases, spaceships, fuel depots and more − and be implemented directly in space. This implies the development of an industry that is still pure “technology fic- tion”: nothing that seems achievable within the next decade and probably not even the second decade to come. Very optimistically, Asteroid Mining Corporation proposes the solution of 3D printing metallic materials to build housing structures in space while man- aging to overcome the problem of the ab- sence of gravity in the process. Even with the technology developed to build the in- frastructure, it takes more than a metal structure to create a livable environment in space. If the mining phase were to be imple- mented too far in advance of the trans- formative infrastructure and colonization phases, the only reasonable destination for the raw materials is in storage in Earth orbit or at the Lagrangian point of the Earth- Moon system. This solution would not, however, repay the costs incurred to extract those raw materials. There are not only huge technological and economic obstacles to overcome to start the space mining industry. There are also legal and international law issues to be ad- dressed. To whom do the asteroids belong? Who has the right to exploit what? The legislative void that characterizes the exploration and exploitation of space risks turning the race to the asteroids into a sort of “far west” without rules. The only inter- national agreement on the subject is the Outer Space Treaty, a generic document on the principles governing the activities of na- tions in the exploration and use of cosmic space, including the Moon and other celes- tial bodies, signed more than half a century ago by the USA, USSR and UK, to which an- other hundred countries have subsequently joined. Obviously, that treaty is totally inad- equate to manage scenarios that were not even remotely imaginable in the 1960s. The mining industry will remain exclusively terrestrial for a long time yet to come until a great deal of science and legislation is ad- dressed, and this is not good news for those envisioning the near-term population of near-space and beyond. made to select the ideal targets, to send a fleet of robotic machines to them, and to find and collect raw materials of various kinds for analysis, it will also be necessary to carry or build in space the industrial facilities needed to transform those materials into usable products. Transporting these last raw or already refined materials back to Earth is unthinkable − it would be uneconomical even in the cases of gold and platinum. ! travel. A scene like the one shown above could become a reality within a few decades. Meanwhile, at least part of the future mining in- dustry will likely focus on NEAs.