Gail Tverberg
recently discussed the difficulties, and realities, of living in a finite
world and just today an aspect of that was discussed on Radio National.
 |
| It seems that soon we will be heading into space to answer our consumptive wants. |
Well, it was not actually today, rather it was a replay of
an interview from April last year when Geraldine Dooge interviewed Dr Gordon Roesler
of the University of New South Wales’ Centre for Space Engineering Research,
about the idea of mining in space.
A three-day “Off Earth Mining” forum heard for a range of
speakers who explored the possibilities of retrieving useful resources from asteroids
or other planets.
Ms Doogue admitted on air that she was having some trouble “getting
her head around that idea” and Dr Roesler admitted to similar difficulties.
The idea, however, is not science-fiction and has attracted
significant interest from several major, and successful, international companies.
Dr Roesler openly admits that earth is the only place
suitable for humans and with our need of resources becoming rather urgent, we
need to be looking elsewhere, and so the idea is that we mine space.
The whole idea is rather sad as it reflects the “business as
usual” paradigm and that though mining space we can accumulate even more stuff
and therefore the economy grinds inevitably on.
Costs associated with such an endeavour almost escape our
understanding with a basic exploratory trip, estimated by NASA, likely to be
about $1.5 billion.
Beyond the costs, and $1.5b is just the beginning, such an
undertaking would absorb countless hours of work from teams of brilliantly
talented people, robbing humanity of innovation and effort that could go toward
building a utopia-like life an earth.
Already, hundreds of people pooled their skills and
knowledge to stage the forum and the focus was all “off-earth” and nothing was
said, it’s suspected, about how to resolve public housing problems, another
segment on today’s Radio National program.
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