Category Archives: Moon Colonization

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke by phone Thursday for the first time since Moon took office and agreed to closely cooperate on dealing with North Korea and on building a future-oriented relationship, a senior Japanese official said.

Moon did not express a negative view of the 2015 comfort women agreement, the official told reporters. Instead, he only told Abe that there are cautious opinions circulating in public about the accord, which was signed to put the issue of comfort women to rest finally and irreversibly, the official said.

Comfort women is Japans euphemism for women forced to work in Japans militarys brothels before and during the war.

Moon also said the two countries should wisely resolve history-related issues, the official added.

According to South Koreas Yonhap news agency, however, Moon used stronger rhetoric in describing public opinion in his country.

President Moon noted the reality was that most of his people could not accept the agreement over the sexual slavery issue, Moons chief press secretary, Yoon Young-chan, was quoted as saying.

During his election campaign, Moon pledged to renegotiate the deal with Japan.

During their 25-minute conversation, Abe told Moon that he would like to properly manage the bilateral relationship in light of the accord.

Abe also said hed like to host a trilateral summit in Tokyo with his Chinese and South Korean peers as soon as possible, and hold a bilateral meeting with Moon as well. Moon agreed, the official said.

Moons attitude during the call appeared to significantly relieve senior bureaucrats in Japan who were concerned he would take a tougher stance and be reluctant to cooperate with Japan and the United States in dealing with North Koreas provocations.

A high-ranking Japanese official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Moons willingness to meet Abe marks a clear difference from the attitude of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Park had long refused to meet Abe because of issues related to Japans brutal colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

In the 2015 comfort women agreement, Abe issued an apology over the issue and arranged for 1 billion to be deposited into a South Korean foundation for the dwindling survivors.

Many South Koreans, however, are critical of the deal, saying that Japan has yet to admit its legal responsibility for compensation and that the agreement was made without consulting the former comfort women, who mostly back the agreement.

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Abe and Moon agree to work on 'future-oriented' ties in first phone chat - The Japan Times

SEOUL South Korea's new president launched international efforts to defuse tension over North Korea's weapons development on Thursday, urging both dialogue and sanctions while also aiming to ease Chinese anger about a U.S. anti-missile system.

Moon Jae-in, a liberal former human rights lawyer, was sworn in on Wednesday and said in his first speech as president he would immediately address security tensions that have raised fears of war on the Korean peninsula.

Moon first spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping and later to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with how to respond to North Korea's rapidly developing nuclear and ballistic missile programs, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, dominating talks.

"The resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue must be comprehensive and sequential, with pressure and sanctions used in parallel with negotiations," Moon's spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, quoted Moon as telling Xi.

"Sanctions against North Korea are also a means to bring the North to the negotiating table aimed at eliminating its nuclear weapons," Yoon told a briefing, adding that Xi indicated his agreement.

Moon has taken a more conciliatory line with North Korea than his conservative predecessors and advocates engagement. He has said he would be prepared to go to Pyongyang "if the conditions are right".

Regional experts have believed for months that North Korea is preparing for its sixth nuclear test and was working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States, presenting U.S. President Donald Trump with perhaps his most pressing security issue.

Trump told Reuters in an interview last month major conflict with North Korea was possible though he would prefer a diplomatic outcome.

North Korea says it needs its weapons to defend itself against the United States which it says has pushed the region to the brink of nuclear war.

"Threats from North Korea's nuclear and missile development have entered a new stage," Japan's Abe told Moon in their telephone call, according to Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda.

"How to respond to North Korea ... is an urgent issue. I would like to closely cooperate with the president to achieve the denuclearization of North Korea," Abe told Moon.

But Abe also said "dialogue for dialogue's sake would be meaningless" and he called on North Korea to demonstrate "sincere and concrete action", Hagiuda said, adding that Moon shared Abe's views.

Japan has been concerned that Moon will take a tough line on feuds stemming from the bitter legacy of its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean peninsula and could fray ties at a time when cooperation on North Korea is vital.

Moon told Abe to "look straight at history" and not make the past "a barrier", though he raised South Korea's dissatisfaction with a 2015 agreement meant to put to rest a dispute over Japanese compensation for South Korean women forced to work in Japanese brothels before and during World War Two, Korea's presidential office said.

(For a graphic on South Korea's presidential election, click tmsnrt.rs/2p0AyLf)

'IMPROVE UNDERSTANDING'

While South Korea, China and Japan all share worry about North Korea, ties between South Korea and China have been strained by South Korea's decision to install a U.S. anti-missile system in defense against the North.

China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) undermines its security as its powerful radar can probe deep into its territory.

China says the system does little to curb the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, which it has been pressing ahead with in defiance of U.S. pressure and UN sanctions.

The deployment of THAAD was agreed last year by South Korea's previous administration after North Korea conducted a long-range rocket launch that put an object into space.

Moon came to power with a promise to review the system and he told Xi that North Korea must cease making provocations before tension over the deployment could be resolved, officials said.

In the first direct contact between the South Korean and Chinese leaders, Xi explained China's position, Yoon, the South Korean presidential spokesman said, without elaborating.

"President Moon said he understands China's interest in the THAAD deployment and its concerns, and said he hopes the two countries can swiftly get on with communication to further improve each other's understanding," Yoon told a briefing.

South Korea and the United States began deploying the THAAD system in March and it has since become operational.

Xi told Moon South Korea and China should respect each other's concerns, set aside differences, seek common ground and handle disputes appropriately, China's foreign ministry said in a statement.

As well as clouding efforts to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the THAAD deployment has also led to recriminations from Beijing against South Korean companies.

Moon explained the difficulties faced by South Korean companies that were doing business in China and asked for Xi's "special attention" to ease those concerns, Yoon said.

China has also denied it is doing anything to retaliate against South Korean businesses.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Kiyoshio Takenaka in TOKYO; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

SEOUL North Korea demanded on Thursday the handover of "terror suspects" who plotted to kill leader Kim Jong Un with a biochemical substance, repeating accusations it made last week that U.S. and South Korean spies were behind the plan.

LONDON U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Thursday that Washington was committed to protecting its NATO ally, a spokeswoman said, as Turkey fumes over a decision to arm Kurdish fighters in Syria.

WASHINGTON CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on Thursday there are large caches of weapons in Venezuela and a risk of them falling into the wrong hands as the country grapples with economic crisis and street protests.

The rest is here:
South Korea urges 'parallel' talks and sanctions to rein in North Korea - Reuters

The human race got its eviction notice last week. Be out by 2117 sharp, or the sheriff is going to toss out all our stuff on the cosmic curb, leaving our sorry selves to seek warmth and shelter in whatever intergalactic library we might happen to find.

That is the word from the prodigious thought process of Stephen Hawking, who, as late as last fall, thought planet Earth might have another thousand years of tread on the tires.

"Professor Stephen Hawking thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive. With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious, according to the BBC.

Bummer. You just cant get a good warranty on a planet these days. Looks as if we should have gone for the extended care plan. It is great blanket coverage. If your planet gets hit by an asteroid or falls into the toilet, you are covered.

And falling into the toilet is pretty much what has happened to us. When the Chinese whose smog is so thick they have to fake photos of tourists standing in front of a blue skyline have become the worlds leading environmentalists, you know you have a problem.

And it is unlikely to get any better. When the only thing Congress can agree on is that Americans need to be stripped of their health care, then I dont expect much action in the direction of saving the planet.

And I know we are not dealing with a crackpot-style, doomsday prediction here, but, in all due respect, I think Hawking might have overplayed his hand. Even the most progressive Congress ever would not be able to do much in 100 years, not as far as star travel and colonization are concerned.

As for colonizing Mars or the moon? That is kind of like leaving one charred cinder for another. On Earth we have chopped down all the trees, dried up all the lakes, killed off all the wildlife and burned up the atmosphere. And you want to go to the moon? How is that going to help?

Of course, along with climate change, Hawking mentions some other potential body blows, including asteroid strikes, epidemics and overpopulation.

So, if we are about to be blown up by an asteroid, I suppose an escape hatch to Mars makes sense. Better a bad planet than no planet.

And overpopulation? Let me guess, Americans will want everyone else to go to Mars, and we will stay here, since we deserve it more because that is how we think.

Epidemics are a bit different because the decision is pretty much out of our hands. It is hard to move to a new neighborhood when everyone is convulsing on a gurney.

But the fascinating endgame to me is death by artificial intelligence and it is going to have to be artificial, since we dont have any of the natural stuff left.

Here is the way it works: We develop artificial intelligence capable of figuring out the conundrums of space/time travel that currently prevent us from exploring deep space.

But this artificial intelligence, not being stupid, concludes that giving the human race a new planet is like giving Boris Yeltsin a new liver what is the point, since we will just destroy the new one like we did the old one.

So the artificial intelligence thinks it over for about 30 seconds and then crushes us like a bug.

Either way, it looks as if planet Earth is going to be one big amusement-park ride from here on out. Might as well sit back and enjoy it.

Read more from the original source:
Earlier eviction notice posted for planet Earth - Herald-Mail Media

About 100 years ago, when countries began considering the whole cosmos legal territory, the rules seemed simple. In 1919, an international law provision extended state air rights vertically, all the way to outer space, and that sufficed for a while.

Today, international space law is much more developed. But its preoccupied with state actors, so rules mostly address national governments. Commercial space enterprise and its regulation are not at all sorted, and companies may start exploiting cosmic resources that belong to all before a global agreement is reached.

Whats more, the line between state and private space interests could become fine. For example, the US space agency NASA announced on May 1 that its seeking information from American commercial space transportation companies for travel to the lunar surface in 2018 and the decade to come.

On April 27, the US Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness held a hearing attended by space company chiefs, including Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, maker of space habitations. He urged lawmakers to limit regulation so as to speed up commercialization and colonization. Meanwhile, Texas senator Ted Cruz, chairman of the subcommittee on space, advised attendees that America must expand commerce and ultimately settlement into space. And we must do it first.

When the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik I into low Earth orbit in 1957, it crossed US air territory, violating the 1919 law, but Americans accepted the transgression, intending to commit similar violations soon enough. So began the Space Race and global hustle to codify a law worth following.

A decade later, the founding principles of space law, still elaborated upon today, were created. The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (aka the Outer Space Treaty) is a heartening read for any citizen of the Planet Earth.

It provides that space is open to all states and may be used and explored solely for the benefit and interest of all humanity. Its not subject to national appropriation. Also niceno weapons of mass destruction are permitted in space. The Moon and other celestial bodies must be used exclusively for peaceful purposes, and nations are to avoid harmful contamination of the cosmic environment.

Under the accord, each state is responsible for national activities in outer space, whether carried on by governmental or non-governmental entities. States retain jurisdiction and control over their space objects and personnel on them, and are liable for damages they cause. Each must supervise and authorize anyone acting in outer space.

Commercial space activity is easy to regulate in theory, based on the 1967 treaty. Each state is responsible for its people and anything it places in space, which arguably extends to any corporations it authorizes to operate there. Sounds simple enough. But remember 1919 and the extension of air rights; its not going to be simple and laws may be broken before suitable agreements are reached.

Humans traditionally move around in pursuit of profit, which drives much exploration. Yet space belongs to all, according to 1967 international law, and its exploitation for private gain isnt sanctioned even if the likelihood thats going to happen is widely recognized.

There have been many attempts to reach agreement on cosmic resources, among them, the 1979 Moon Agreement. It is international law and reiterates that space is common property, attempting to further address exploitation of natural resources, the environment, and scientific exploration in recognition of future commercialization efforts. But it was rejected by some nations, including the US, as too restrictive. Unlike the 1967 treaty, the small group of signatories struggled long and hard (pdf) over terms that ultimately read like benign reminders to keep the common good in mind.

Not a party to the 1979 treaty, the US may pull a Sputnik of sorts and just go for it, sanctioning space exploitation in violation of that international agreement. In 2015, US president Barack Obama signed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which allows Americans to own and sell space resources, including minerals and water. How the law is implemented will determine whether American companies end up violating international accords, and many details have yet to be addressed. The US can argue that its law doesnt violate the definition of use of space in the 1967 treaty and others will argue otherwise. These matters arent finally decided for now.

Alexander Soucek, head of legal services at the 22-nation European Space Agency, says the act is at the very least very controversial. It may even be an outright violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treatys prohibition on national appropriation. In any case, it sets precedent and perhaps encourages other countries to go rogue.

Of course, companies banking on making money in the multiverse someday are pleased by these developments. One of them is Planetary Resources, an asteroid mining concern whose motto is, Our vision is to expand the economy into space. Co-founder, Eric Anderson told Tech World News that US plans to allow citizens to exploit space is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history.

He must have just spaced on those other agreements granting humanity the Moon and all celestial bodies.

Read more from the original source:
You are part owner of the Moon and stars, by law. No joke. - Quartz

Many years ago, when I first went to college, I joined two off-campus organizations, both of which were dedicated to getting people living and working in outer space.

I saw expansion into space as the solution to many of the worlds biggest problems, including energy shortages, overpopulation and world hunger to name a few, and I could see myself actually doing it, going off and living or working in a space colony somewhere between Earth and the moon more specifically at L5, a point in space that is always in the same spot relative to Earth and the moon.

I became somewhat of a disciple of physicist Gerard ONeill, and his cylinder design, to the point I could explain its key features and concepts to others, including mirrors, farming pods, dimensions, rotation and scenery, and the use of an electromagnetic mass driver to mine materials from the moon and asteroids, so the colony could be constructed entirely on-site, in space.

Now, with space travel finally becoming a reality thanks to billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and their privately funded space race, I no longer have any interest in moving away from our home planet. Not that I could even if I wanted to, given the hefty price tag for a seat on any of these expeditions.

Bezos and Branson are each selling a five-minute thrill ride to suborbital space, which is about 62 miles from Earths surface, for around $250,000 a seat, while Musk is selling a one-week trip around the moon, 300,000 miles, for an undisclosed amount that is estimated to be between $35 million to $100 million a ticket.

I dont remember when it was I first stopped wanting to go into space, but my guess is it was after I moved to a place where I could live, each and every day, in close contact with the Earth and its beauty. Not that I didnt have an appreciation for such beauty before that, or I hadnt experienced its transformative effect on the heart and the senses, or I wasnt already in love with life and people, but growing up in a flat personality-less suburb, my natural impulse and inevitability was to move away and go somewhere else, and I guess a space colony was one possible place to move to, even though I knew California was the much greater likelihood.

As my love for and connection to Earth increased, my desire to leave it behind diminished.

Add to that my growing sense of self-awareness, which included the realization that I am extremely uncomfortable riding in fast cars, boats on the ocean, small airplanes performing trick maneuvers or any size plane during moments of turbulence and roller coasters and drop towers and pendulum rides and gravity rides and other such horrors at carnivals and amusement parks, and it all added up to, why would I want to ride in a spaceship of any sort?

I believe the ongoing survival of our species will necessarily involve and require space colonization. Then again, dont the Hopis say humanity already started and ended, then started again seven other times in our history, so in the big picture is it really that big of a deal? Throw in some Einstein and Mayer to remind us that energy and mass are neither created nor destroyed, but transformed, converted, redistributed, reassembled and re-expressed.

Im a fan of science, and of ever expanding our horizons, so I support space colonization efforts. But it is no less difficult or palatable for me to try and conceive of our extinction, transformation, evolution than it is to imagine us spreading our greed and war, fear and violence and prejudice and pollution to the rest of the universe.

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Space colonization then and now - Santa Ynez Valley News

Many years ago, when I first went to college, I joined two off-campus organizations, both of which were dedicated to getting people living and working in outer space.

I saw expansion into space as the solution to many of the worlds biggest problems, including energy shortages, over-population and world hunger to name a few, and I could see myself actually doing it, going off and living or working in a space colony somewhere between Earth and the moon more specifically at L5, a point in space that is always in the same spot relative to Earth and the moon.

I became somewhat of a disciple of physicist Gerard ONeill, and his cylinder design, to the point I could explain its key features and concepts to others, including mirrors, farming pods, dimensions, rotation and scenery, and the use of an electromagnetic mass driver to mine materials from the moon and asteroids, so the colony could be constructed entirely onsite, in space.

Now, with space travel finally becoming a reality thanks to billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and their privately-funded space race, I no longer have any interest in moving away from our home planet. Not that I could even if I wanted to, given the hefty price tag for a seat on any of these expeditions.

Bezos and Branson are each selling a five-minute thrill ride to sub-orbital space, which is about 62 miles from Earths surface, for around $250,000 a seat, while Elon Musk is selling a one-week trip around the moon, 300,000 miles, for an undisclosed amount that is estimated to be between $35-$100 million a ticket.

I dont remember when it was I first stopped wanting to go into space, but my guess is it was after I moved to a place where I could live, each and every day, in close contact with the Earth and its beauty. Not that I didnt have an appreciation for such beauty before that, or I hadnt experienced its transformative effect on the heart and the senses, or I wasnt already in love with life and people, but growing up in a flat personality-less suburb, my natural impulse and inevitability was to move away and go somewhere else, and I guess a space colony was one possible place to move to, even though I knew California was the much greater likelihood.

As my love for and connection to Earth increased, my desire to leave it behind diminished.

Add to that my growing sense of self-awareness, which included the realization that I am extremely uncomfortable riding in fast cars, boats on the ocean, small airplanes performing trick maneuvers or any-size plane during moments of turbulence, and roller coasters and drop towers and pendulum rides and gravity rides and other such horrors at carnivals and amusement parks, and it all added up to, why would I want to ride in a spaceship of any sort?

I believe the ongoing survival of our species will necessarily involve and require space colonization. Then again, dont the Hopis say humanity already started and ended, then started again seven other times in our history, so in the big picture is it really that big of a deal? Throw in some Einstein and Mayer to remind us that energy and mass are neither created nor destroyed, but transformed, converted, redistributed, reassembled and re-expressed.

Im a fan of science, and of ever expanding our horizons, so I support space colonization efforts. But it is no less difficult or palatable for me to try and conceive of our extinction, transformation, evolution than it is to imagine us spreading our greed and war, fear and violence and prejudice and pollution to the rest of the universe.

Read the rest here:
Space colonization then and now | Ron Colone | santamariatimes ... - Santa Maria Times (subscription)

Forbes

Stephen Hawking Warns We Must Colonize Another Planet Soon - Here's Why He's Wrong Forbes The most likely worlds for colonization are our moon or Mars (which is also Elon Musk's target of choice for a colony in the next century), and in case you hadn't heard, neither of these places are habitable. Even if Earth were to suffer the ... Stephen Hawking gives humans just 100 years to flee EarthSacramento Bee Stephen Hawking will show how humans can move planet in 100 yearsBlasting News Home Science Stephen Hawking says we need to leave Earth in 100 years or...Mobiletor.com TechRadar -Telegraph.co.uk -BBC all 57 news articles »

Original post:
Stephen Hawking Warns We Must Colonize Another Planet Soon - Here's Why He's Wrong - Forbes

Wed, May 03, 2017 11:10pm

For those of you who like your space travel tinged with intrigue and scheming, we may have found a new show for you to get excited about: The First, an upcoming space drama about the first human mission to Mars. A year after abruptly leaving his Netflix creation House of Cards, Beau Willimon is jumping streaming ships to Hulu for a straight-to-series eight-episode order, with a premiere date of 2018.

He took to Twitter to share The First news ...

My interest is certainly to the moon, if not yet back. House of Cards was impeccably created, and is a huge early reason why Netflix is such a bright star in the original content universe. Perhaps if Willimon can get David Fincher to help kick off the look of this new series too, as he did with HoC, then I'll really be on my way back from the moon. Though no such mention was made in Willimon's seven-tweet-announcement, he was able to pack in a fair amount of details.

Besides sharing a picture of his beautifully diverse, "fearless as astronauts" writing team, Willimon says they'll "be telling the human story of space exploration: the challenges & sacrifices of the crew, engineers, scientists & their loved ones." They'll "also delve into the private & public sector players, what the near future looks like, and the technology of interplanetary travel... But at its heart, The First is about the insatiable desire to grasp the unknown, to achieve the impossible ... And most importantly, about the toll on those driven by that desire. How are we transformed by the journeys we choose?"

Though it may seem like a departure for political-playmaking and Juilliard-fellowing Willimon, getting a pioneering space mission off the ground has got to be a huge political process in its own right, as much as a scientific one. And don't get me started on the dirty politics involved in interplanetary colonization!

Okay, maybe I am to the moon and back about this one. What about you?

Via (Collider)

Read more:
House of Cards creator Beau Willimon shooting for Mars in new Hulu series The First - Blastr

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Building structures on Mars for future astronauts to live and work in could be much easier than scientists previously believed, according to a new study.

University of California-San Diego scientists were able to create sturdy bricks out of simulated Martian soil without using an adhesive. In fact, making small bricks on Mars was easier than doing so on Earth, researchers wrote in their study.

Experts on Mars colonization think this could be a huge breakthrough.

The question of whether an environment is habitable or not is only partially a function of the nature of the environment itself, Dr. Robert Zubrin, who helped design plans for NASAs manned mission to Mars and wrote the The Case For Mars, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. It is also a function of the ingenuity of the would-be settler.

Researchers scooped soil into into a rubber case, then compacted it. Iron oxide in the faux Martian soil seemingly caused the bricks to stick together without adhesive, according to the study. The ability to use native soils in construction could greatly simplify a long-term manned mission to Mars.

Other researchers have shown how we can make fuel, oxygen, food, plastics, and even steel on Mars, Zubrin said. These folks have shown a way to make bricks, providing another excellent addition to the Martian settlers tool kit. It is work like this that will help make the Red Planet a new home for humanity.

Zubrin said its easier to maintain a human settlement on Mars than it would be to colonize the moon or other celestial bodies.

Unlike the Moon, Mars has all the raw materials both the elements of life, including hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, as well as the elements of industry we need, but it is human inventiveness that transforms these raw materials into useful resources, Zubrin said.

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Study: You Can Easily Make Bricks On Mars, And That's A Big Deal - The Daily Caller

Is water the new oil of space?

It may be to Middle Eastern oil states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who are looking at space as a way to diversify out of the earthly benefits of fossil fuel.

Middle East oil states are investing in satellite technology and trying to transform their domestic economies into digital economies and knowledge-based economies, said Tom James of Navitas Resources, an energy consultant based in London and Singapore.

As space colonizers such as Elon Musk and Jeffrey P. Bezos (owner of The Washington Post) aspire to shrink the cost of space travel, interest has picked up among oil states and others in how to power space settlements using water and minerals mined from the heavens.

Oil states are investing in companies and infrastructure that could one day mine minerals and water found on the moon and in asteroids.

They are investing in it in order to attract business to the Middle East, James said. Oil states have large, empty spaces, relatively small populations and are located near the equator. The UAE has launched a multipronged effort to establish a space industry in which it has invested more than $5 billion, and that includes four satellites already in space and another due to launch in 2018.

The Middle East is ideal for launching rockets and spaceships, James said. Its the long-term solution. Oil and gas may not run forever. So they are looking to invest and be part of the new, future economy.

The water is critical. It can be turned into hydrogen to fuel the spaceship, oxygen for breathing or left untouched for drinking and everyday use. Requiring only a four-day trip and containing lots of ice, the moon is a prime candidate for resource extraction.

The interest in space mining and industrialization has picked up in recent years as Musk, Bezos and others push outward. Part of the key to unlocking affordable space travel and space industrialization is finding extraterrestrial materials such as water and minerals that do not have to be rocketed up from Earth.

Goldman Sachs wrote a recent research note explaining that space mining could be more realistic than perceived. The bank in the same report said the storage of water as a fuel could be a game changer by creating orbital gas stations.

Most of the minerals will remain for use in space. Some rare, highly valuable commodities could be brought back to Earth. Goldman Sachs, for instance, was quoted in a 2012 interview with Planetary Resources that estimated that a football field-size asteroid could contain up to $50 billion worth of platinum.

Asteroid mining could very quickly supply an emerging on-orbit manufacturing economy with nearly all the raw materials needed, according to the Goldman Sachs report.

The possibilities are beginning to register with the business sector.

Within the next five years, James said, mining and energy companies will start thinking about space mining before the shareholders start asking, What is your strategy? and they answer, Oh, we dont have one.

The technology already exists. NASA launched a billion-dollar mission in September to vacuum materials from an 2,000-foot-wide asteroid called Bennu. The spacecraft is scheduled to sidle up to the asteroid in 2018, extend its arm and pull in its cargo. The ship will return to Earth a couple of years later.

But it is unclear whether mining on a wider scale is a real business, said Paul Chodas, an astronomer and asteroid expert with NASA.

The technology is there, but its not simple. Asteroids travel through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Tracking asteroids and determining their composition is difficult.

Its hard to determine which ones will have the most valuable minerals, Chodas said. He said it is doable, but the question is cost-benefit. Is it worth the cost? We dont know yet. There is simply more work to be done to determine whether space mining is profitable. But its promising.

Chris Lewicki is chief executive of Planetary Resources, a Seattle-area company studying asteroids to find one that is an appropriate candidate for mining.

Lewicki said the mining industry is a natural to make the first move when it comes to recovering space minerals because of its earthbound expertise. He foresees a small, robotic mining operation drilling for water on an asteroid in as soon as about 10 years.

This is how [the mining industry] continues, Lewicki said. Mining asteroids isnt a space project. Its a resource project. In the same way having minerals and materials are very important for our economy, space becomes a new medium for furthering that economy.

The regulatory phase got a major boost in 2015, when President Barack Obama signed legislation recognizing asteroid resource property rights.

The law recognizes the right of U.S. citizens to own asteroid resources and encourages the commercial exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids.

In addition to the UAEs space industry, Bloomberg News reports that the Saudis signed a pact with Russia in 2015 for cooperation on space exploration. Abu Dhabi is an investor in Richard Bransons space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic.

Several private companies, including Deep Space Industries, Planetary Resources and Shackleton Energy, are trying to crack the mining potential.

If you have any significant human activity in space, then you are going to need resources, said Peter Stibrany, chief strategist and business developer for Deep Space Industries. It will get too difficult to launch everything from the ground.

Deep Space Industries is four years old and living off seed money from investors and founders. Stibrany said the company is in the technology development stage and working to create delivery systems for lower orbit launches.

He said mining space resources faces what he calls a four-dimensional problem.

The first two are technological and regulatory, which are being addressed.

While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower, according to the Goldman Sachs report. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each, and Caltech has suggested an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft could cost $2.6 billion.

James pointed to nano-sats, small satellites priced relatively inexpensively at $2 million each, far less than the hundreds of millions needed to place current satellites in orbit.

The third concern is the lack of a current market in asteroid resources. That should resolve itself when the space population hits critical mass, demanding infrastructure.

Then a business will follow if investors see that a reasonable return is likely over a reasonable amount of time with appropriate risks. That is the fourth hurdle.

The end game, Stibrany said, is that if you have 1,000 or 10,000 people living and working in space, there is no practical way that is going to work without using in-space resources.

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Middle East oil states investing companies, infrastructure to one day ... - The Denver Post