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of the financing for Christopher Columbus voyage came
from private investors, while the other part came from an
almost broke Spanish government.
Columbus had to convince his financiers he would
bring back treasure from India to get the ships needed to
travel west. SpaceX, however, will not try to bring back
treasure from Mars. It will always be far cheaper to mine
on Earth compared with first mining on Mars and then
transport the commodities to Earth. “There are a couple of
things I think are pretty bogus,” Elon said. “One is space
mining, another is space solar power. If you calculate how
much it cost to bring either the photons from space solar
power back to Earth, or the raw material back to Earth,
the economics don’t make sense.”^364 He added that mining
asteroids could make sense, but a mission to Mars will not
be dependent on the ability to mine asteroids.^356
A company believing in the idea to mine asteroids is
Planetary Resources. The company argued that 1 500 as-
teroids are as “easy” to reach as the Moon. These asteroids
are filled with precious resources, everything from water to
platinum. “We expect to mine water out of C-type asteroids
for the first product,” an engineer from Planetary Resources
said. “Water gets used for everything in space – drinking,
breathing, rocket fuel, radiation shielding... and is very
expensive in space given launch costs. Structural materials
would likely be second – bulk material is expensive in
space. After that, we would look into mining materials that
are scarce on Earth. Those have industrial uses that are
likely to grow as world’s economy grows.”^377