Asteroid mining...the final frontier?

It’s all gone a bit ‘inner-space’ in our January issue. A growing body of evidence suggests the human microbiome is more influential on our biology than we could have possibly imagined.

And in this issue we look at this and ask if the emergence of yet another antibiotic resistance mechanism will be the end of medicine as we know it. Yet, it won’t have escaped your attention I’m sure, that here in the UK – thanks to Major Tim Peake – it is outer-space that is dominating.

But actually (and I’m sorry about this Tim!) I don’t think Major Peake’s incredible achievement will be the most historic space based event of last year. That honour must go to the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, signed into law by President Obama back in November 2015. Sound dull? Certainly, but in essence it means that the commercial ambitions of our species are no longer Earth bound.

The Act will allow space mining companies – those that are aiming to travel to planetary bodies and asteroids in order to hunt for and utilise resources – to own what they extract. Whilst it stops short of allowing companies to actually claim ownership of the celestial body itself, it none-the-less is ground breaking legislation.

Two companies in particular – Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources – will be popping more champagne than most at this announcement. Both hope to create a ‘trillion-dollar industry’ based on the extraction of chemical components of fuel and minerals such as platinum and gold. And boy, is there plenty on offer. Star gazers amongst you might recall Asteroid 2011 UW-158 which passed a mere 1.5 million miles from Earth back in July last year – it was packing a platinum core worth a staggering £3.5 trillion. So the financial imperative is clear, but what of the ethical one?

I must confess everything about this feels wrong to me, but actually, I think my gut betrays me (could this be down to my microbiome as well?). While I wince at the notion that space should be thought of as a ‘resource’, I can’t help but be swayed by the argument that our own resources – that is to say those on the planet upon which we evolved – are running out. It is tempting to think that we should seek to prevent the plundering of celestial bodies in a way that we have failed to do on Earth, but really this is just pure sentimentality.

Logic dictates that it would actually be more rational to stop mining our own life sustaining, delicately balanced planet in favour of resources further afield. There are, for example, no habitats to ruin on the Moon, and an asteroid has no atmosphere to riddle with pollutants.

Now, this clearly doesn’t mean we should go on the rampage. Lessons have to be learned from the mistakes we have made on our own planet, but if the choice came down to putting local communities, habitats and ecosystems at risk by mining on our own planet, or doing so on a lifeless asteroid – there seems to me a fairly clear ethical imperative to head into space. Now, in reality clearly this won’t be the choice that presents itself. The likelihood of all inherently risky resource mining on Earth stopping in favour of a space-bound equivalent is practically non-existent.

So, some have claimed this as hallmark legislation that history will remember as a turning point; the moment when space was truly opened to the people. Others will see this as the beginning of a calamity; the breaching of a flood gate which will export our free-market values (and our corporate bad habits) into space and allow the exploitation of our solar system. Time, as they say, will tell. But what is certain, is its inevitability.

Like so many things in human history, money is the biggest lubrication of all – even when it comes to space exploration. It is now clear that very soon we won’t live in a global economy; we will live in a galactic one.

Phil Prime Editor