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I understand your skepticism. Here's how I would address that. 1) They may not necessarily think they're going to be able to deploy a cost effective business s

I understand your skepticism. Here's how I would address that. 1) They may not necessarily think they're going to be able to deploy a cost effective business service overnight. They may realize it's going to take a while, and more pieces have to be put in place. But there are things they can start working on now that push in that direction. 2) SpaceX. And to a lesser extent, the other space teams and competitions that have had successes in last few years. Surely one of them, or a combination of a few of them, are going to bring that cost/risk to orbit down significantly. Opening up new business possibilities as potentially profitable. 3) All the recent apparent advances in robotics capabilities, embedded computing and submersibles (where the mission demands are so extreme they are not too unlike spacecraft in many ways). Drones. Pack mules. Exo-wear. Quadcopters. Powerful computers that also happen to be small, lower power draining and super cheap -- cost of risk goes down, variety of potential applications goes up. 4) Increasing sense of impending resource wars on Earth, due to the rise of the BRIC countries, all the key minerals needed by modern electronics/computing/batteries/PV only present in China or Africa or country-that-is-not-the-US. The predicted water shortages. The increasing sense that the way that modern large-scale agriculture is done (high yields via chemicals that are toxic to humans in the long run) and so might need to switch back to lower-yield-per-acre methods. And so on. The strategic takeaway is that if population grows, Earth resources grow more scarce, and especially US-controlled resources grow more scarce, then there may be an increased demand for resources from somewhere off-Earth, or kept entirely out of control of some particular Earth-based nations or companies. Is this an immediate need requiring an overnight solution? No. But if you have billions, you can afford to think about the longer term, and you have the money to risk starting those investments today. Just in case. Also, to kick it up a notch, consider the alternative: do you really think that, say, the US Congress or Presidency is going to take any bold decisive action that's going to positively address these long term concerns? Do you think they're even allowed to, by the rules they have to follow, or by their political patrons? Or do you think they'll stick to addressing more ephemeral, near-term concerns, to quick wins, political point scoring, propaganda, etc.? I know how I'd bet. :)

pm90 15y ago
I think the 4th point may turn out to be the most important one, in the end. Electronics are now an essential part of modern life, and China is the only country that mines it (Interestingly, I believe that rare-earths exist in US as well, but are not being mined as it is curently uneconomical to do so)
tgflynn 15y ago
Also, to kick it up a notch, consider the alternative: do you really think that, say, the US Congress or Presidency is going to take any bold decisive action that's going to positively address these long term concerns? No, but I'd like to see some hard analysis showing that these concerns are actually valid and, even if they are, that less radical alternatives have been considered before huge amounts of resources are devoted to such radical and expensive ideas. The Earth's crust is very large, and this wouldn't be the first time that natural resource limitations have been blown out of proportion because people couldn't see relatively near term technological or organizational solutions to them. Consider these two cases : fossil fuels and Solyndra. In the first case the experts have been saying for decades (at least since the Arab oil embargo of 1973, but maybe before, since my memories don't go back farther) that the planet will soon run out of fossil fuels. Now this is true for some definition of soon but based on what I was hearing 30 years ago I never would have expected US oil production to be growing in 2010. The Solyndra case is an example of an unsuccessful business decision being based on the assumption that a resource (refined silicon) that is scarce at time t would remain scarce at time t + <a few years>. Now of course hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not saying I could have predicted the development of fracking 30 years ago or Chinese improvements in silicon processing technology 5 years ago but sometimes keeping in mind some really simple ideas can help to keep perspective. For instance when someone says natural resources are scarce so maybe we should mine asteroids I tend to think, "... but the Earth's crust is really big, hmm...". Or when someone says refined silicon is really expensive so we can make a lot of money using this new technology for making solar cells, I tend to think, "...refined silicon == sand + X, now why is X so expensive and can something be done about it, hmm, ...". I've actually often wondered why billionaires haven't invested their money in truly world changing ideas (being able to do that has always seemed to me to be the only meaningful motivation for becoming a billionaire) but there are so many technologies that could radically transform the world and human existence in the next 20-50 years that I think mining asteroids can and should wait.

pm90 15y ago

I think the 4th point may turn out to be the most important one, in the end. Electronics are now an essential part of modern life, and China is the only country that mines it (Interestingly, I believe that rare-earths exist in US as well, but are not being mined as it is curently uneconomical to do so)

tgflynn 15y ago

Also, to kick it up a notch, consider the alternative: do you really think that, say, the US Congress or Presidency is going to take any bold decisive action that's going to positively address these long term concerns? No, but I'd like to see some hard analysis showing that these concerns are actually valid and, even if they are, that less radical alternatives have been considered before huge amounts of resources are devoted to such radical and expensive ideas. The Earth's crust is very large, and this wouldn't be the first time that natural resource limitations have been blown out of proportion because people couldn't see relatively near term technological or organizational solutions to them. Consider these two cases : fossil fuels and Solyndra. In the first case the experts have been saying for decades (at least since the Arab oil embargo of 1973, but maybe before, since my memories don't go back farther) that the planet will soon run out of fossil fuels. Now this is true for some definition of soon but based on what I was hearing 30 years ago I never would have expected US oil production to be growing in 2010. The Solyndra case is an example of an unsuccessful business decision being based on the assumption that a resource (refined silicon) that is scarce at time t would remain scarce at time t + <a few years>. Now of course hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not saying I could have predicted the development of fracking 30 years ago or Chinese improvements in silicon processing technology 5 years ago but sometimes keeping in mind some really simple ideas can help to keep perspective. For instance when someone says natural resources are scarce so maybe we should mine asteroids I tend to think, "... but the Earth's crust is really big, hmm...". Or when someone says refined silicon is really expensive so we can make a lot of money using this new technology for making solar cells, I tend to think, "...refined silicon == sand + X, now why is X so expensive and can something be done about it, hmm, ...". I've actually often wondered why billionaires haven't invested their money in truly world changing ideas (being able to do that has always seemed to me to be the only meaningful motivation for becoming a billionaire) but there are so many technologies that could radically transform the world and human existence in the next 20-50 years that I think mining asteroids can and should wait.