Scientific American 201907

(Rick Simeone) #1
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.
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