Techno-optimism: asteroid mining

Earlier in this series, I already discussed that we’re likely to go interplanetary during this century. Humans getting off this rock and spreading through the solar system is probably the best insurance we have against extinction due to a threat that wipes out Earth, such as an asteroid or all-out nuclear war.

Of course, even if we’re successful with this, any group of humans living outside of Earth will be dependent on us down in the gravity well for a long time to come. However, like everything in life, we have to start somewhere. In the end, it’s about having access to energy sources and once we have those, we can create most, if not all, other things required for human life.

Except for the existential risk of humanity being confined to one planet, there’s a second very good reason for humans to get out there: resources. Many are concerned that Earth is running out of the resources we need. The good news is that there’s a lot more than Earth out there and the first exploratory attempts at asteroid mining are in the design phase.

Of course, currently, we’re barely able to make it out to an asteroid and image it or run a satellite into it to determine the effect of an impact on its course and rotation. Yet, with cheaper capabilities to lift things into orbit, it will become feasible to send out more exploratory “robots” into space to start to identify the most valuable asteroids to exploit.

Initially, our approach will be to bring valuable resources back to Earth, but over time, I hope that we’ll use more and more of these to build in space. Think of space stations or stations out on the moon or Mars. This would remove the need to lift resources from Earth out into space.

All this may read like science fiction and, of course, many of the capabilities we need are currently in that realm. However, the building blocks are starting to fall into place and we have more and more abilities to start exploring space. Between cheap lift, increasing capabilities in robotics, advanced sensor technology and autonomous behavior, it’s far from unrealistic to start sending out small robots to some of the most promising and easily accessible destinations around us.

In 2022, Astroforge was incorporated to do exactly this. Their idea is to get a small refinery into space, process the ore on-site and then bring only the valuable materials back to Earth. Initially, the company is focusing on the materials in the platinum group, which makes sense as these metals are rare, expensive and increasingly required for clean-energy solutions. In that sense, it’s the perfect example of what we’re discussing here: mining asteroids for materials that are scarce on Earth but maybe not as scarce in the rest of our solar system.

The main reason why I raise topics that may seem completely outside of our daily reality is that I feel we, as a Western culture, have stopped dreaming. Many feel that life is pretty good as it is. Any novel technology, opportunity or capability is viewed with significant hesitation and negativity. As if these things will make life worse, instead of better. Which is ridiculous based on the experience of the last centuries. Every major new technology has, of course, disrupted society but, in the end, left people in a much better place. Even worse, there’s a fundamental disconnect in our society in that those most critical of technology are also the least willing to give up their current comforts such as their mobile phone, internet access, insulated housing with a constant temperature around the year, easy access to mobility through cars, public transport or planes as well as healthcare for virtually everything that put our predecessors in an early grave.

It’s as if everyone believes we’ve reached the pinnacle of humanity and that things can only get worse. As if our offspring one or two generations from now won’t look back at us with a sense of wonder how we could live in such primitive circumstances – like we do today with our grandparents.

There’s a lot of suffering in the world, both physical and mental, not being addressed either because we’re unable to or because we haven’t developed the mechanisms to deliver solutions to everyone on this planet. It’s technology that will be at the heart of solving virtually all of that. Of course, not only technology, we need to adopt technology and integrate it into our culture and make it part of our society. But if we don’t have the technology, all we can do is hold the hands of those suffering.

So, we need to want new technology, we need to strive to create new technology, we need to strive to solve problems that were unsolvable earlier with that technology. A society that rejects new technology, innovation and any form of novelty that truly changes us degenerates as trying to hold on to the present will only cause us to slide back, have other groups bypass us, conquer our culture and replace it with a superior, pro-technology one.

We need to dare to dream about new technologies and solving problems that were unsolvable earlier and dare to believe that just because something hasn’t been done yet is a perfectly good reason to pursue it. To dare to believe that simply creating an innovation will create a market and sustainable economy around it. Asteroid mining is one of the technologies that’s exactly in that space. Imagine that all kinds of resources that are scarce on Earth are simply collected in the rest of our solar system and made available to everyone. To make scarce resources abundant! Just the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter has numerous asteroids that contain all kinds of useful resources that we could use on Earth as well as throughout the solar system to build what we want and need. All this, ready for the picking! To end with a quote from Peter Diamandis: “Asteroid mining will ultimately benefit humanity on and off Earth in a multitude of ways.”