Space now is like the wild west of the United States back then, and entrepreneurs are also grabbing territory to get rich quickly. Among them, no one can better reflect this than all kinds of "asteroid hunters".
Goldman Sachs is very optimistic about this concept. The largest investment bank in the United States estimates that asteroid mining can become a trillion-dollar industry. An asteroid with a diameter of 100 feet may contain precious metals worth US$50 billion. Every piece of space rock is a flying "gold mine" that may contain various valuable minerals from platinum to rhodium to iridium. If the parent body load is an asteroid with a width of 3,000 feet, then such a stone may contain trillions of dollars worth of platinum.
This is enough to make some entrepreneurs want to immediately grab a shovel and rush to space to search for wealth. Several startups have already formed teams ready to do so, and Deep Space Industries is one of them.
“It’s these crazy ideas that are driving our civilization forward.” said Rick Tumlinson, co-founder of Deep Space Industries. “There is no such thing as our own belief system. What’s saying it’s impossible.”
Planetary Resources is another startup company engaged in asteroid mining. This company has so far received US$50 million in financing, of which US$21 million has come from Some well-known investors include Google's Eric Schmidt (Eric Schmidt) and film producer James Cameron (James Cameron).
The greatest potential of asteroid mining does not necessarily lie in bringing precious metals back to Earth and then selling them to make money. In fact, if too much precious metals flood into the market, the price of these precious metals will plummet, and the profitability of the entire industry will drop significantly. The true long-term value of asteroid mining may lie in collecting the materials we need for construction in outer space.
Materials mined from outer space can play a vital role in establishing the economy of outer space because it can eliminate the cost of bringing asteroids back to Earth.
"The most fundamental point is that space development is not a simple matter." said Henry Hertzfeld, head of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "It has a lot of It requires a lot of investment and a lot of high upfront costs, and a lot of money needs to be raised.”
But the real problem is that for these startups, the current timing is obviously too early. Before asteroid mining becomes truly feasible, the entire ecosystem needs to be further developed.
"If you mine an asteroid, it is most likely to go to the moon for processing. Processing on the earth is totally impractical, because the cost of doing so will be extremely high." Anderson Tan, an early investor in Planetary Resources Development Corporation (Anderson Tan) put it this way, “So, it’s like the chicken or the egg first. Will we start mining and then build a lunar base, or invest in the development of the moon first, and then conduct asteroid mining? "It
seems that the "mining workers" of the asteroid still need to wait for Blue Origin, NASA and other institutions or companies to lay a solid foundation for the industry before it is possible to return to this industry and actually start mining.
Space gold rush requires regulation
Many opportunities that no one saw before are already within reach. Start Rocket, a Russian start-up company, said that they want to use the cube satellite array to display super-large advertisements similar to billboards in the night sky.
New Zealand startup Rocket Labs has launched a geodesic disco ball into orbit. The company said that this bright, flashing satellite "is to encourage each of us to take the initiative to look up and think about our human position in the universe."
If this is not enough to light the flame in your heart, Japanese startup ALE is considering how to create the world's first artificial meteor shower. Each of their satellites will carry 400 small balls, and after launching these small balls from the spacecraft, they will glow brightly as they travel through the atmosphere. The company’s business model is to sell this service to anyone willing to pay for it, including billionaires who host birthday parties.
This is likely to be the very ugly first step to transform the originally fresh and beautiful night sky into a commercial display area. HyperSciences, founded in 2014, hopes that they can make the cost of launching satellites into orbit low enough so that all kinds of small businesses have the opportunity to participate.
SpaceX is currently working on a project called Starlink, which requires the deployment of thousands of small satellites to form a huge constellation, but because of their approach, the company is currently under attack. Although the goal of this project is to provide high-speed, reliable Internet services to people around the world who do not have access to a wired network, and the goal itself is indeed worth pursuing, the company's approach has caused a lot of dissatisfaction. Many scientists claim that for astronomy based on ground-based observations, this is likely to be a threat to the survival of this subject, not to mention that it is a complete harassment for anyone who likes to look up at the stars.
"What surprises everyone, including the astronomy community and SpaceX, is that these satellites are so bright," said Patrick Seitzer, an astronomer at the University of Michigan.
SpaceX is currently experimenting with different coatings to reduce the visibility of these satellites. Another troublesome issue is that these satellites may create more floating space junk. This space junk can cause serious damage to any objects we send into space, such as tearing a small hole in the outer wall of the space station, or crashing into other satellites and rockets.
When two satellites collide, they shatter into thousands of pieces of varying sizes, creating more debris in orbit. In 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler pointed out that if too much space junk is left in orbit, the junk is likely to have a chain reaction, and the probability of collision between them will be exponential. Level growth. As more and more companies begin to pour into the space economy, we need to monitor what and behavior into Earth orbit to some degree.
As long as there is a certain degree of foresight and cooperation among governments, the above problems can be solved. The pioneers of the space industry obviously do not want governments to overreact and impose too much regulation on space exploration, because doing so may cause the industry to suffer excessive pressure when it is about to take off. Most experts agree that the cooperation between private companies and the government is the best bet that can be placed on the future.
