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Scientists claim that vast expanses of the solar system must be preserved as official "wilderness areas" to protect planets, moons and other celestial bodies from mines and other forms of rampant industrial exploitation.
The proposal calls for more than 85% of the solar system to be banned from human development, leaving space companies a mere eighth to exploit precious metals, minerals and other materials precious.
While the limit would protect the virgin worlds from the worst excesses of human activity, its primary goal is to ensure that humanity avoids a catastrophic future in which all resources within its reach are permanently exhausted.
"If we do not think about it now, we will go forward, as usual, and in a few hundred years we will face an extreme crisis, much worse than that that we currently know on Earth, "said Martin Elvis, a confirmed astrophysicist. at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Once you have operated the solar system, there is no where to go."
The new space mining companies expect trillions of pounds of iron and precious metals trapped in asteroids, as well as precious minerals and trillions of tons of water on the moon. In Britain, Asteroid Mining Corporation hopes to send a satellite into orbit in the coming years to search for nearby asteroids.
Precious metals such as platinum and gold could be brought back to Earth, but much of the extracted material would be used in space to create habitats on the moon and make fuel for rockets. The European Space Agency plans to create a lunar village with buildings and equipment installed on the lunar surface. Meanwhile, water ice, such as that under the lunar poles, can be split into hydrogen and oxygen and used to make fuel for probes that launch from space instead of Earth.
Working with Tony Milligan, a philosopher from King's College London, Elvis analyzed when humans could use the most accessible resources in the solar system if the mining sector took off. They found that an annual growth rate of 3.5% would use one-eighth of the realistic resources of the solar system in 400 years. At this point, humanity would only have 60 years to apply the brakes and avoid exhaustion of reserves.
Because humans have trouble exploiting the sun or extracting useful materials from Jupiter, a gas giant whose mass is greater than that of other planets in the solar system, researchers consider asteroids, the moon, Mars, and others. 39, other rocky planets as the most realistic targets. for minors in space. Elvis points out that one-eighth of the iron contained in the asteroid belt is more than a million times greater than the estimated reserves of iron ore on Earth, which may be enough for centuries.
But scientists must write in the next issue of Acta Astronautica the areas to be protected from mining. The Mars Valles Marineris, the largest canyon of the solar system, deserve to be protected as much as the Grand Canyon is protected on Earth. But there are also other sites, Elvis said. "Do we want cities near the moon that light up at night? Would it be inspiring or horrifying? And what about the rings of Saturn? They are beautiful, almost pure water ice. Is it ok to exploit them to disappear in 100 years? "
"If all goes well, we could send our first mining missions in space 10 years from now," he added. "Once this starts and someone else makes a huge profit, there will be the equivalent of a gold rush." We must take it seriously. "
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