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For decades, bright-eyed prospectors have dreamed of the riches to be found by mining the moon and asteroids. Starship, SpaceX’s new rocket, failed to make it into space during its morning test flight. But it exited the launch tower and climbed for almost four minutes before exploding in mid-flight. After test flights, this is a success that will soon lead to new goals and opportunities. The massive rocket, designed for refueling in space, will help take off an industry dedicated to mining fuel from the moon. As costs come down, space expands for miners, scientists, and adventurers alike.
Dreams of off-world prospecting date back at least to 1898, when a short story featured an asteroid being mined for gold. Over the next century, storytellers and novelists reiterated and refined the storyline about space resources. However, it was not until the late 1970s that scientists and engineers seriously considered whether it would be feasible. Your conclusion half a century ago? Not soon.
That didn’t stop scientists – and later entrepreneurs – from taking a broad interest in the stuff that makes up the universe. Since the 1960s, robots and humans have collected and brought back hundreds of pounds of lunar rock and soil (primarily during the Apollo moon landings) at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. More recently, Japan has spent hundreds of millions of dollars collecting and returning less than an ounce of material from two asteroids.
None of these missions were intended as a business case. But together they showed that the existing infrastructure for extracting space resources was not particularly cost-effective.
SpaceX changed the math. The introduction of its reusable rockets in the 2010s reduced the cost of reaching space to just $1,200 per pound of payload, a 96% reduction from the Space Shuttle’s previous $30,000 per pound price. And that contributed to a surge in interest and funding for space mining. Although the model turned out to be very different than the one the novelists came up with.
“There just isn’t a business case for bringing precious metals back to earth,” George Sowers, a professor in the Space Resources program at the Colorado School of Mines, told me in a recent conversation. Instead, Sowers and a growing number of space agencies and companies believe that mining water from the moon and then processing it into hydrogen and oxygen that can power a rocket will make money.
Before entering science, Sower was Chief Scientist at United Launch Alliance LLC, the joint venture between Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., which develops and launches missiles for NASA, the Department of Defense, and others. There he and his team developed a concept for an orbital fuel depot that could be used to refuel rockets on their way to the moon and other destinations. According to him, the cost savings could be dramatic: refueling an Earth-launched lunar rocket will cut costs by a factor of three. “And if you can come back from the moon and refuel on the lunar surface with lunar fuel, the cost reduction is a factor of 70,” he said.
As it turns out, this lunar fuel can be mined and extracted from ancient water frozen all over the moon. Säwer and colleagues have published NASA-sponsored studies on how this could be done with existing technology adapted to lunar conditions. Equally important, Sowers has published studies showing that moonwater mining can be profitable given sufficient market demand.
Who is this market? Elon Musk and Starship, for starters. The rocket was designed and manufactured by SpaceX as a fully reusable space transportation system to travel beyond Earth orbit and fulfill Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars. NASA, in turn, is providing funding to develop a spacecraft-lander that will land humans on the moon for its Artemis lunar program.
So far, Starship has made it to low Earth orbit, but it will fly much, much further if it can refuel in orbit. This requires the production of more spacecraft configured as tankers (a project also supported by NASA). And these tankers are coming: NASA reckons Starship will land Americans on the moon before the end of the decade. The long-term plan is for these Americans to establish a base. And among the first tasks of each base will be a mining and processing plant that produces fuel to make it cheaper for humans to leave the moon.
Sowers estimates it could take a decade to build a mining operation similar to those he advocates. That may seem like an unrealistic timeframe for a market that hasn’t even materialized yet. But it is worth noting that the new space economy is developing rapidly. In 2010, SpaceX was just beginning to fly commercial payloads on its Falcon 9 rocket; In 2022, the company launched every six days on average and was responsible for a third of all launches worldwide. In the process, it lowered the cost of reaching space and spurred a new space economy.
It’s not just SpaceX that will be interested in lunar fuels, either. Other private space companies, including Blue Origin LLC, founded by Jeff Bezos, have expressed interest in mining moonwater. And China, which has made no secret of its lunar ambitions, is planning future missions to areas of the moon believed to be water-rich. Ultimately, these sites could help China build its own low-cost outpost on the moon.
At the moment, Starship is the first mover. Upcoming test flights will prove its still-mysterious in-space refueling system. If all goes well, the moon will be next – and then Mars and beyond. For space miners, providing these explorers with water may not be as compelling as digging up diamonds from asteroids. But unlike this more fanciful prospect, water has a business case. Once proven, the sky is the limit.
More from the Bloomberg Opinion:
• Our space junk problem just got a cheap solution: Adam Minter
• Outer Space Final Score: Earth 1, Asteroid 0: Stephen L. Carter
• How the US can avoid fighting China over the moon: Adam Minter
This column does not necessarily represent the opinion of the editors or of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia, technology and the environment. Most recently, he is the author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale.
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