Part 1: Investing in Space; The Super Class
I hope this works out right and the post sounds as cool in writing as it did in my head. This will be a two or three part series on the prospects of the space industry if you guys like it, this one is fairly simply and watered down.
Dipping my toe in the water here, so don't bite it off:
With NASA dying as the core driver of physical space exploration , (though they thrive in research and the non-physical aspects of theorizing the dynamics of space) and the whole system being commercialized by the likes of SpaceX and exploration initiatives launched by the fairly wealthy of the world, what does this mean in terms of profitability for earth overall?
I think we can see a completely unheard of bracket of wealth from preying on space.
Why? Well let's see, most private space programs today are focusing on mining and colonizing space, specifically the Moon, Mars, and Asteroids.
Asteroids. Focus in on that for a second.
The average Asteroid has an estimated carry of ~$800 Billion in precious metals and gases (once we develop the tech to extract the carry). There is 9858 of these pocket rocks floating "just" 31 million miles away, which is equivalent to a 60 day trip, but that's with metrics set by manned-vehicle Apollo 10 in 1969 going at 30,000m/hr.
The net worth of the wealthiest person on the planet (Carlos Slim) stops short at $73 Billion. Apple, the most expensive company on the planet is at $568 Billion.
In theory, just one rock successfully mined around 2/3rds of the way would pull in more wealth than both those combined in the three month time period that again, is theorized, to accomplish the excavation.
Now getting into the basic, watered down financial standpoint of it all, and just to make this a shorter read without calculations, let's say the theoretical company "Space Z" had a fleet of 3 miners, thus pulling in $2.7 TRILLION in net "asteroid" profit -> assets. Cutting down likely heavy liabilities and costs, let's say net worth was at $1.7 Trillion when all is said and done for this companies first quarter of existence.
Takeaway Questions and Points to Continue:
- How Much Would The CEO Be Paid?
- How Much Would the Company Be Worth at it's 5 Year?
- What Would This Do To Currencies? (Space Z is a US Company)
- What Would This Do From a Political Standpoint, could this mass of wealth unnerve Government?
- Could We See "Space Colonies" Want To Separate From Their Home Nations? (US/Great Britian)
- How Do You Preserve Patents With Government, Against Your Only Competitor, The Government? (Conflict of Interest)
- What are the Exit Ops? (Just Kidding)
Just out of curiosity, do you have any experience with space beyond reading news articles? I can tell you what you are proposing may sound cool but the feasibility is a long ways off. Take the scale of a normal classroom globe, most people can recall roughly how big that is. On that scale the moon is about 40 feet away, Mars at it's closest point would be almost a mile away (~5,600 ft). The International Space Station, which is currently the "frontier" of commercial space travel and the extent of human spaceflight for decades, would be just the thickness of the lacquer on the globe,
People who have never worked in the space industry often underestimate the difficulty and true scale of space. There are over 2 Billion cubic MILES of space between earth and geostationary orbit. That is an incredible volume of space and that doesn't even get you 1/10th of the way to the moon. While your idea is cool and may be feasible in the future it is a distant future not just around the corner.
I'm not proposing that it's around the corner, I'm offering up the theoretical situation as a result of achieving the goal of mining and colonizing space. Nowhere did I ever say the words "soon", "coming", or any kind of time-based verbs.
People said the same about cell phones and computers. Look how that turned out.
Commendable that someone is at least thinking about space. I for one am very interested in reading the next few posts, assuming they're actually right around the corner..
Not sure on the mining side due to my own ignorance, but what other areas can companies look into aside from the obvious space travel that many smaller private companies are working towards? Neil deGrasse Tyson will hopefully be pleased with whatever level discussion comes from this and future discussions.
It's a fascinating exploration. I'd encourage you to post a second and third series. NASA already has plans to visit an asteroid by the end of this decade. Something to also consider is "grabbing or capturing" an asteroid that's coming relatively close to earth and having it get locked to our orbit. This way it's significantly easier to mine the asteroid. This kind of enterprise could be realized in our lifetime.
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