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July 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 65

NASA

RISKS AND REWARDS

although plans are afoot to grab lunar real estate,

extracting resources such as rare elements and ship­

ping them back to Earth is a long­term goal. Some

would even say it is a fantasy. Given the incredible cost

and technological hurdles involved in simply getting

to space, let alone landing on the lunar sur face, it is

hard to imagine that transporting ma terials back to

Earth would be profitable any time soon. Deep Space

Industries and Planetary Resources, two private busi­

nesses that were set up in the early part of the 21st

century to pursue asteroid mining, both failed to

attract enough investment to attempt any deep­space

resource extraction; they were eventually acquired by

a satellite manufacturer and a cryptocurrency compa­

ny, respectively. “It’s different than the gold rush days,

when anybody with a mule or a pickax could go and

try to find gold,” says George Sowers, a space resourc­

es expert at the Colorado School of Mines.

Still, if economic activities in space take off, min­

ing could follow, experts say. Elvis points to private

rocket companies, such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, that

are driving down the cost of launching vehicles into

orbit. The cheaper and easier it is to get to space, the

more common missions will become. Demand for fuel

and other resources could follow, and launching mate­

rials from the relatively low gravity of the moon would

be more cost­effective than from the deep gravitation­

al well of our own planet.

Richards is eager to play his part in bringing the

moon within Earth’s economic sphere. Yet so far even

he has struggled to get above the atmosphere. When

Richards co­founded Moon Express in 2010, the com­

pany was one of 16 teams competing for the Google

Lunar XPRIZE, which challenged a privately funded

robotic spacecraft to land on the moon, drive around,

and send back pictures and data. The original 2012

deadline was extended several times, ultimately to

March 2018, but in January of that year the XPRIZE

Foundation admitted that no one would be able to

claim the $30­million purse.

Moon Express now plans to send its first vehicle

into lunar orbit in 2020. It remains to be seen, however,

whether its business model—offering space agencies

and private companies payload rides to the moon—will

be viable in the long run. When asked if he sees any

conflict between his desire to stake a claim and the

need for an equitable solution for everyone, Richards

turns philosophical. The tensions in the Outer Space

Treaty reflect the tensions between the belief systems of

the two countries that wrote it, he says. The Commu­

nist Soviets saw the world from a collective perspective

in which goods should be equally distributed, whereas

the capitalist Americans believed in greater personal

freedom and an unfettered private sector. “That’s why

the treaty is open to interpretation,” he says. “I think

we have a chance as a species to conquer these new

frontiers without having to conquer each other.”

DATA FROM NASA’S Lunar Prospector mission shows the concentration of thorium on the lunar surface.

This metal has been suggested as a possible fuel for use in nuclear reactors, making it a potential target for mining.