Imagine with us if gold prices fell due to the high supply as a result of space mining. This will confuse and destabilize the jewelry industry, down to some of the current applications of gold, such as the manufacture of electrical cables using gold conductors. This includes dentistry, cosmetics, printing devices, computers, electronics and mobile phones. Likewise, in the turmoil of the reserves of central banks and countries, where one of the primary roles of gold in central banks is to diversify their precious reserves, and we compare this with the rest of the rare metals and the extent of their applications if we know that China acquires 80 percent of the rare minerals in the world, and the struggle of rare minerals in The world deserves an article alone.
The return to space exploration after decades of disillusionment, a combination of technologies, low costs and competitive energy from the private sector, has put space travel at the forefront. Many researchers believe that commercial developments in the space industry may be about to start the largest resource rush in history, which will begin with mining on the Moon, Mars and asteroids. While this may sound fanciful, steps have already been taken towards that goal.
In 2020, NASA awarded contracts to four companies to bring quantities of soil from the moon by 2024 and study its minerals, which effectively led to the start of the era of commercial mining in space, and as science fiction fans know, the resources of the solar system seem almost unlimited compared to those on Earth. Earth, there are other planets, dozens of moons, thousands of huge asteroids and millions of small planets that undoubtedly contain huge amounts of rare and very valuable minerals. Dreamers, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, imagine that heavy industry can go into space, and the outer world becomes residential.
While entrepreneurs look to harness wealth beyond the atmosphere, access to space resources remains entangled in the realities of economics and governance, and space is being exploited effectively, because space resources include intangible assets, such as orbital locations, and the abundance of sunlight that satellites enable to provide services down to earth. It is noted the fact that space does not belong to any country, which may be believed to move away from the difficulty of traditional methods and procedures for resource allocation, property rights and trade, and we will talk later about the regulation of the space industry later, because it is indeed not as easy as we might imagine.
The prospects for space mining are driven by technical advances across the space industry, and the advent of large-scale, reusable rocket components has lowered launch and operations costs. Private companies are now emerging as leaders in the development of space activities including orbital tourism, orbital manufacturing and small satellites providing specialized services.
With the aforementioned, there are real challenges in the space mining industry, including the high cost of spaceflight, unreliable identification of asteroids suitable for mining, and the challenges of extracting usable materials in an unknown space environment, among others. Perhaps the most important challenge is the legislation of international space regulations and laws, as space is not owned by anyone, which may create an international conflict. Although uncertainties remain high in the space mining industry, space mining holds promise for accelerating space exploration and boosting economies.
The idea of the space industry in general, and space mining in particular, was rejected only a few decades ago as science fiction, but space mining is no longer a dream or science fiction, but rather a market that goes along with exploration, manufacturing and development.
