2024-03-03 20:03:01
A new era of space exploration can be brought about by the fact that startups have also joined in the conquest of the cosmos. This also means that the appearance of a new extraterrestrial economy becomes essential. We came one step closer to that vision last week. For the first time, a spacecraft developed by a non-governmental space agency landed on the surface of the Moon.
Ever since the race for outer space began, participating in it has been the exclusive privilege of national space agencies. No wonder: due to the literally astronomical costs and the lack of profitability, not many people – with the exception of a few satellite operators – thought of founding a space company.
Although from the 1980s, various companies focusing mainly on orbit and space travel appeared one after another, none of them really managed to break through the stimulus threshold. Perhaps the appearance of SpaceX was the biggest milestone in this regard, and since then even NASA has realized that everyone can benefit from cooperation.
The extraterrestrial economy can appear with the private sector
It’s no wonder: what a public office implements with billions of dollars, a commercial company can do with a fraction of that amount. That is why the American space agency would like to support commercial space exploration to help reduce the costs of future missions.
The new program has only just begun to really take off. As part of a NASA-funded mission by startup Intuitive Machines, a spacecraft developed by a private company recently landed on the surface of the Moon for the first time. The Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, made physical contact with our celestial companion on February 22.
“We’ve fundamentally changed the economics of landing on the moon,” co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus said at a news conference after the landing. “And we’ve opened the door to a robust, thriving cislunar economy in the future.”
Despite the significant result, the landing was not as smooth as it was initially hoped. Odysseus approached the surface faster than expected and missed the chosen landing point. As a result, the spacecraft flipped onto its side. Some of the unit’s antennas thus pointed in the wrong direction, limiting the vehicle’s communication capabilities.
It was later revealed that this may have happened because the engineers did not activate a safety function, which ultimately disabled the spacecraft’s ranging lasers. Therefore, the landing system based on optical cameras had to be tested live, while the mission could no longer be stopped. The company a He admitted to Reutersthat the problem could have been avoided by checking the lasers before launch, but this process would have been too time-consuming and expensive.
They are much cheaper than NASA
It is precisely for this reason that NASA tries to support private companies for cost-effectiveness. The mission was allocated 118 million dollars within the framework of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Several private space companies will receive grants from the support scheme to deliver cargo to the moon for the upcoming Artemis mission.
The Intuitive Machines mission cost roughly $200 million, significantly less than what NASA would have done. But it’s not just about the money. The aim of the office is for companies to be able to send goods into space even faster and to have more options available to them.
Among the supported companies is Astrobotic, which would have even preempted the landing of Intuitive Machines on the moon if unexpected problems did not arise in its January mission. The list also includes Firefly Aerospace, which can successfully complete its cargo transport mission this year.
“The goal is to explore the Moon in preparation for Artemis and to do NASA’s business differently,” CLPS project scientist Sue Lederer said at a recent press conference. “One of our main goals is to ensure the development of the lunar economy.”
What this extraterrestrial economy would look like remains unclear. In addition to NASA equipment, Odysseus carried six other economic cargoes, including sculptures by artist Jeff Koons, a “secure lunar repository” of human knowledge, and an insulation material called Omni-Heat Infinity manufactured by Columbia Sportswear.
Governments may continue to be the main customers
David Flannery, a planetary scientist at the Queensland University of Technology, says once the novelty wears off, more publicity-focused payloads will become an unreliable source of revenue. The lion’s share of the revenues of such companies will certainly come from contracts with governments, but this will not be enough to speak of a real lunar economy.
Another option that is often mentioned is the mining of local resources. Among the candidates are water ice, which can be used to supply astronauts, hydrogen, which can be used as rocket propellant, and helium-3, which can be a potential fuel for future fusion reactors.
Whether all of these will really be of practical use will be revealed in time. In any case, Altemus sees the events optimistically. According to him, rapid progress has been made since the United States declared its strategic interest in the Moon in 2018.
“There are dozens of companies building landers today,” he told the BBC. “As a result, the payloads are getting bigger, and more and more scientific instruments and engineering systems can be installed on the Moon. The economy is starting to catch up, since the possibility of landing on the moon has been given.”
Outer space is not only interesting because of the moon
The conquest of the Moon and its strategic exploitation have been of interest to the great powers of the world for decades. By building a lunar base, they could gain a huge strategic advantage, be it weaponry or mining economic assets.
Interest in space mining gained momentum when President Obama signed the world’s first law regulating the exploitation of space resources in 2015.
The Moon’s stock of precious metals it is still not fully known, we only know that it is found in certain quantities under the surface. However, mining it would be so expensive at the moment that probably not many would think of dealing with the topic.
Asteroids can be considered a more interesting topic. According to scientists, the 241 Germanias in our solar system alone contain as much precious metal as the entire GDP of the Earth. That’s almost $100 trillion.
Asteroid mining is overshadowed by the fact that a total of less than 7 grams of them have been “stolen” from space by 2023. This number can increase to 60 grams when the ongoing missions are completed.
In light of the costs of the current missions, we cannot really talk about profitability. The three most popular asteroid missions, Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, and OSIRIS-Rex, cost $300 million, $800 million, and $1.16 billion, respectively. Compared to this, a small amount of matter, on the order of milligrams, was transported to Earth. OSIRIS-Rex is scheduled to return with 60 grams, which is considered the largest mining performance to date.
Of course, it still raises some economic questions about what effect it would have on the price of these precious metals if they suddenly became readily available. Since they are not energy carriers, it is easy for them to lose value over time.
These dilemmas remain and represent only some of the challenges of a future extraterrestrial economy. As we can see in Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic “Dune”, the exploration and colonization of space raises many ethical, economic and political questions, without the solution of which we will face continuous obstacles in the development of interplanetary life.
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