I agree with the thrust of this article, but I think it will still look a lot like an economics driven expansion.
One of the things they teach in mining engineering is the notion of the “social license to operate”. Essentially, everyone, from your local government, to the UN, to the nearby residents need to sign off on whatever it is that you’re doing. For often quite legitimatereasons, mining has acquired a reputation as potentially environmentally disastrous. As a result, you need to effectively bribe the local residents. This is easy to do when the locals are poor third worlders who make a few dollars a day. However, the world will develop and more people will be lifted out of poverty and become more environmentally conscious, as a result the price of these licences will shoot up dramatically.
One of the greatest advantages of space are that there are no environmentalists or natives in space and the ones on earth can’t muster the political will to stop you because environmental costs are much smaller and externalized. Once it becomes cheaper to blast off and mine in space than to wade through years of paperwork, you’ll see immediate economic expansion into space.
I agree with the thrust of this article, but I think it will still look a lot like an economics driven expansion.
One of the things they teach in mining engineering is the notion of the “social license to operate”. Essentially, everyone, from your local government, to the UN, to the nearby residents need to sign off on whatever it is that you’re doing. For often quite legitimate reasons, mining has acquired a reputation as potentially environmentally disastrous. As a result, you need to effectively bribe the local residents. This is easy to do when the locals are poor third worlders who make a few dollars a day. However, the world will develop and more people will be lifted out of poverty and become more environmentally conscious, as a result the price of these licences will shoot up dramatically.
One of the greatest advantages of space are that there are no environmentalists or natives in space and the ones on earth can’t muster the political will to stop you because environmental costs are much smaller and externalized. Once it becomes cheaper to blast off and mine in space than to wade through years of paperwork, you’ll see immediate economic expansion into space.