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With platinum at $1000 per ounce and with growing needs for using PGM as a unique catalyst, I remain unconvinced it is impossible to make money in space.

Yeah, and you're one technology innovation away from complete and utter ruin.

But otherwise, planting the seeds for new human civilizations "out there" is the only why that is truly sustainable, long term. Commercial enterprise is the how not the why.

Listen!!!

I agree, however, commercial enterprise is not interested in some scifi-fantasy. Commercial enterprise cannot generate the self-sustaining means to give you what you want.

Men did not build cathedrals to get rich. The Pyramids were not built to enrich the people.

What you and I both want is something that is beyond profit, and has no real value other than what we place on it. But exploitation, commercial enterprise, it does not evaluate space in the same manner, and thus, will not give us what we want.

It is ill suited for the end goal, and we sell ourselves short by trying to fit a square block into a round hole.

Heh! Since the entire Terran platinum market is $7 billion per year (the US blue jean market is $15 billion) maybe folks can make money bringing back PGM and giving it away for free and making up the difference selling branded consumer goods.

Or…

An investor can take that same billion, buy himself 1,000 Usher’s, and market the hell out of the 100 that become pop sensations. When that “latest and greatest” is a has-been, pull the label off the jeans, and slap on the current celeb-du-jour.

Space, you only have one act to work with.

This is why I continually point out that space exploitation has no legs to stand on. It will not provide the means for the true ambitions of the pro-space community. You’ve all gotten very good at fooling yourselves, but the Emperor has no clothes. (haha, see what I did there in a conversation about clothing… oh never mind, it is all wasted on you).

Precedent is against you. By the same token, we could mine Antarctica. The treaty governing Antarctica is in large part the reason we have the space treaties we do have. It is fundamentally the same thing.

I really don’t know why we can’t.

No government can assert sovereign power over celestial objects. No government can claim soverignty over the oceans either, but catching and selling fish is perfectly legal.

Prudence would dictate that any lunar mining operation find a way to include many nations, India and China to be sure, and others to diffuse arguments such as these.

No individual can claim ownership of property without the recognition of a sovereign nation. A sovereign nation recognizing such a claim makes the claim subject to the national laws of that state, imbued with the rights and restrictions inherent in the property laws of that nation.

At the basis of all property law, in all sovereign nations, is the presupposition that the State has the right to take control of the property from the individual. This right supersedes all other claims and rights related to the property.

In effect, an individual claiming ownership of a piece of the heavens, which is then recognized by a State, would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Treaty.

Which is precisely why no State can recognize any commercial or private claim on space based resources.

The private utilization, development, or manipulation of extraterrestrial resources is an abrogation of the currently held agreement that space resources exist within the common trust, and cannot be claimed by any single entity for private gain.

The value of extracted resources will reduce or depress the comodity markets, thereby reducing the value of labor, according to your own analysis.

Labor is largely automated and specialized for space exploitation. Very few will benefit for the investment costs needed.

If there are no trillion dollar asteroids, what's the draw for investment to begin with? Space exploitation is looking at the bottom line. It has the wrong motivations and hasn't the legs to invest in something that requires a longer view.

Okay, let me simplify.

Exploitation of space for private gain is unacceptable.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; * * * then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

* * *

There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick - grow quarrelsome - don't sleep of nights - do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing; - no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. * * * No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.

True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. * * * But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about - however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way - either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, - what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.

"I firmly believe that if a few officers and enlisted men can launch a Trident D-5 [tactical missile] out of a submarine that stands off-shore from the Cape here, that we ought to be able to find a way to have a comparable number of people to launch our space vehicles ... and that will only happen if we design it in on the front end ... and that will only happen if we (appropriately) use a high tech approach is what we need to accomplish that."

November 16, 2005

I do remember the gas station in space reference and quite some discusion about it in another thread. If the fuel still comes from Earth we will still need to get delivery costs down and the fuel type per boil off system makes the station more difficult at first to build as well as more costly.

NASA's architecture does not feature a fuel depot. Even if it could be afforded within the budget constraints which we will likely face – and it cannot – it is philosophically the wrong thing for the government to be doing. It is not "necessary"; it is not on the critical path of things we "must do" to return astronauts to the Moon. It is a highly valuable enhancement, but the mission is not hostage to its availability. It is exactly the type of enterprise which should be left to industry and to the marketplace.

So let us look forward ten or more years, to a time when we are closer to resuming human exploration of the Moon. The value of such a commercially operated fuel depot in low Earth orbit at that time is easy to estimate. Such a depot would support at least two planned missions to the Moon each year. The architecture which we have advanced places about 150 metric tons in LEO, 25 MT on the Crew Launch Vehicle and 125 MT on the heavy-lifter. Of the total, about half will be propellant in the form of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, required for the translunar injection to the Moon. If the Earth departure stage could be refueled on-orbit, the crew and all high-value hardware could be launched using a single SDHLV, and all of this could be sent to the Moon.

So, Robert, any ideas as to how we can raise $1 billion? 

*I could hold a bake sale.    Usually my cakes and cookies get rave reviews.

A suicide mission?  That's depressing.  There's got to be a better alternative.  Although if someone wanted to do that, it'd be their right.

--Cindy