It is official, the Space X program has had its first major success and has docked with the International Space Station. It marks a monumental change in how we approach space and I think will ultimately send us to the stars finally.
This post is mostly inspired by Troubadour's excellent series and post today Getting to Know Your Solar System (13): Mars (Vol. 3) and his comments regarding space exploration and how Mars really will be our launching point. He also had a quick comment that I wanted to explore further. His post was scientific, I want to take a look at the pure economics that will make our destiny in space all but in inevitability.
In particular it was this portion that got me thinking about writing this up.
Once a suitable level of space operations technology is achieved, the Main Belt asteroids cease being a challenge and instead become a Garden of Bounty the likes of which has never been realized in human history - and very likely it would be Martians paving the way.
Nearly every sane scientist out there understood and realized that the way in which we live was and is unsustainable. They recognized immediately that you cannot have infinite growth with finite resources, and for the longest they have been drumming this mantra. However for decades and decades this truth has yet to take hold in the halls of businesses and capitalists. Sure we've had major pushes in private sectors regarding recycling and efficiency use, but for the longest no one has ever really stopped to realize that there is only so much of X commodity on the planet.
No more.
We live the electronic age. Computers, cell phones, you name it and its digital. Those little computers actually require a large of amount of resources to create. Things like the demand for your iphone are driving PGM or the platinum metal group through the roof. Costs are soaring and demand does not show any signs of slowing down. Other metals like silver, gold, and even iron ore are also increasing in demand and supply is becoming harder and harder to keep with demand. Recycling can only recover so much as often recycling will only consist of re-purpose and not reuse of the metal. Things have gotten so out of hand they are now even looking into the use of nuclear reactor made PGMs.
And to make matters worse, there really only a very tiny fraction that is obtainable on this planet through current industrial methods. This is forcing businesses in the business of raw materials to look at all angles of resource gathering. This includes such things, what even ten years ago would have been laughed as a crack pot idea, as asteroid mining.
It may sound far fetched, but very soon we will be seeing private companies building their own outposts for resource collection. Using a combination of human and robotic labor to mine in space. The romanticist in me wishes the first human stepping on Mars will be there for colonizing purposes, the realist in me understands it will most likely be there to setup a future industrial processing line.
Now don't get me wrong, this isn't going to happen overnight. But this will happen relatively soon in so far as how fast paced our species has become. Likely the first missions will consist of exploratory probes, followed by robotic sampling missions. All the while you will start to see private companies push towards establishing way points along the way, both in orbit around earth and on the moon. Eventually most likely a final goal of having processing plants on Mars. These plants would then process raw material brought in from the outer belts and near earth objects. The processed material, which would be smaller and less weighty, would then be sent to earth for use. Future goals might even see final processing on Mars as colonies begin to build up around said mining. Like the mining towns of west, we might yet see another 'gold rush.
Analogies are a plenty. We have here in the United States a landscape filled with all manner of transportation. These transportation methods were built up around the finding, processing, and use of raw materials. The rail roads of the west were built with the express purpose of linking commercial activity between east and west. Like a spiders web they covered the country transporting newly found materials here and there. We may yet see the same thing here on Earth as companies innovate and compete to invent and build cheaper better methods of getting heavy things off and onto Earth.
So we may in fact, with the docking of the Space X Dragon, seen the start of an era. Just as the Railroads tore through the west, we may see the same thing only through space. Of course we tend to look at the Rail Road Rush of the mid to late 1800's with some pretty big rose colored glasses. It wasn't pretty and chances are pretty likely that, as proof of the most recent economic disaster, we never learn our lessons when it comes to restraining businesses in exploitation of resources.
But despite those possibilities, today was a very important milestone and very likely a marker in space exploration.
The above scenario is going to bring up all manner of questions that will force us to reexamine ourselves as well. Who owns space for one? How can X Corporation claim title to mine some hunk of rock out there? And does it technically count as importing if they bring that material and sell it in say, China? If you've read plenty of Sci Fi, you will once again see that art many times will predict life.