The Hundred Gram Mission Read Free

Miami Dolphins.
    Damien Flores, MIT aerospace engineer, shook his head. "No Daryl. It’s not bullshit. But it’s poorly understood and being misrepresented. Everyone thinks of the Space Elevator, like some railroad into space. But when you talk about costs, it’s presented in terms of airline travel."
    "As cheap as flying on a plane," said the ratty-faced man across from Damien.  Elijah Newman wore a Tom Baker-era, Doctor Who scarf. "Let’s say you want to build a skyscraper. You want to airfreight all the cement? All the rebar? The sand ? A thousand times cheaper than a rocket, is still too expensive for a big project."
    "For serious space construction, materials have to be as cheap as they are on Earth. The Elevator won’t do to that, but it doesn’t need to. Everything you need to take to space is already there in abundance."
    "You mean energy?" asked Darly Spektorov. The venture capitalist looked like he’d been born wearing a sports jacket.
    "I mean sand, water ice, iron. Everything ," said Damien. "There are thousands of Near Earth Asteroids. We’re used to seeing them as a threat, but they’re also an opportunity. The closer they come to Earth, the lower the cost of reaching them." [i]
    "And these mass drivers ," Daryl said the words slowly as if they were foreign, "they can bring them in, safely?"
    "The mass drivers are just electrified rails," said Elijah. "They’re loaded with buckets, full of rocks from the asteroid. The buckets are accelerated and the rocks flung out into space. The asteroid receives a small nudge. A few nudges at the right points, and you can change their orbits."
    "Is there something here that can be patented?" asked Daryl. "'Cause that's what you need. Patents, proprietary control, anything that keeps out copycats."
    "You can't patent asteroid mining, sorry," said Damien, "It's just an idea. People have been working towards it, for decades. Several companies are focusing on collecting Water Ice.  We may as well cede that to them.
    "But, there are two barriers to copycats. One is proprietary. It's clear cut, but not a tremendous barrier to competitors. The other is property . That would make it an absolute barrier. However, it is on shakier legal ground."
    "Property, but on shaky legal ground? You're really selling me here, kid. Let's talk about the first one. That's your catalog, right? The one with the best asteroid candidates?"
    "Yes," said Damien. "Two years of data, sifting through every known NEA and working out their density.  It's very crude, but we’ve identified the candidates with the most metals.  Some are so dense they must contain particularly heavy metals, like lead. Radioactive ores are not impossible."
    "And you two, Sun Star Prospecting, own this catalog, one hundred percent?"
    "Yes," said Elijah. "The problem though, is that anyone else can put together their own one. The information needed is publicly available. It’s a fair amount of work though; it will take them some time. Unless they hire an astronomer or mathematician, they’ll likely fuck it up, too."
    "Like I said, it’s not a considerable barrier," said Damien. "And, if you want data good enough to start mining, you'll still need to send probes to do proper prospecting. The catalog just buys you time. A competitor needs to do that research to have as good an idea as we do on what's out there."
    "You're right, it's not great."
    "The property barrier though," Damien, "That would be absolute."
    "I like absolutes. Let's talk about that one."
    "There’s not a whole lot of space real estate laws. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty [ii] is what most space law is based on. It forbids state ownership, but doesn’t say anything about private ownership."
    "Now this I know about," said Daryl. "The ASTEROIDS Act [iii] allows ownership."
    "Actually, it only allows ownership of resources obtained from an asteroid. It doesn’t say that the asteroid itself can be owned."
    "Or what happens if the entire asteroid is