Artificial Intelligence and Space Mining: the Gateway to Infinite Riches
What do Ted Cruz, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Goldman Sachs all have in common? They predict that the world's first trillionaire will make their innumerable fortune in space. While Cruz is not precisely sure how this will come to be, Tyson and Goldman Sachs believe that the gateway to this immense wealth is through mining asteroids.
The reason why space mining is so sought after is due to what is happening here on Earth. Based on known terrestrial reserves and estimates of the growing consumption in countries, essential elements needed for modern industry and food production (such as lead, phosphorus and gold) could be exhausted within the next 60 years. The space minerals extracted from the asteroids could be transported back to Earth to supply the ever-growing demand and any other precious metals such as platinum can be sold for a profit. If you're wondering how much these asteroids are worth, Asterank, a scientific and economic database of over 600,000 asteroids, lists over 500 asteroids that are worth more than $100 trillion. Additionally, according to NASA, the minerals located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter hold enough wealth that it is equivalent to $100 billion for every person on Earth. However, the untold riches in asteroids are worth much more in space than on Earth.
The exploration and colonisation of the rest of our solar system are feats that have piqued humanity's interest for a long time. Unfortunately, for a spacecraft to travel to the depths of the Universe, a lot of fuel is needed and it is not feasible to ship the fuel to the spacecraft often due to the use of fuel and the expense with the 1967 Apollo mission requiring nearly 950,000 gallons of fuel in total. Luckily, asteroids could be the answer. Water can be found on asteroids as well as other celestial bodies such as Mars and the Moon, and water can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen - two of the primary elements in rocket fuel. Therefore, asteroids could be used as pit stops and be used to refuel spacecraft. Additionally, the minerals found on asteroids could be used to create tools and help build the foundations to the structures that will help in the habitation of humans in space, although that is still a while away.
One problem while mining asteroids is that for a remotely controlled drone to carry out the procedures, there would be a significant delay in the signals used to communicate between the drone and the operator on Earth. A delay of many minutes could prove to be disastrous as it could lead to the loss of countless manhours used to build the machine as well as billions of dollars. This is why artificial intelligence would be necessary to make the mining machines intelligent enough to extract minerals and more importantly identify any hazards or solve any issues at hand without the need for immediate support from humans on Earth. Other uses of AI would be for trajectory and payload optimisations for spacecraft land on asteroids as well as aiding in the process for a machine to be able to map its position on an asteroid relatively without the need for a global positioning system (GPS) much like rovers on Mars. For companies to develop these complex AI models, an enormous amount of data is needed for these models to be successful and that could be a struggle to collect (at least in the short term).
Currently, one big name in the space mining industry is Planetary Resources. Founded in 2012 by Peter Diamandis, Chris Lewicki and Eric Anderson, it raised $50 million by 2016 with $21 million coming from distinguished investors including Eric Schmidt, the chair of the ‘U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Advisory Board’ and more notably the previous CEO of Google. The startup has started with three missions - ARKYD-301, ARKYD-6 and ARKYD-3R. The first two are crucial in the search for the asteroids that are rich in water which will allow for the design, construction and deployment of the first commercial mine in space. In July 2015, Planetary Resources successfully deployed its Arkyd-3 Reflight from the International Space Station's Kibo airlock and is vital in the development of more advanced spacecraft. Unfortunately, the company had some financial difficulties but was purchased by ConsenSys, a decentralised blockchain production studio founded by Joe Lubin.
Even though Planetary Resources hit a hurdle, the asteroid mining industry will continue to grow purely due to the substantial economic and social benefits it would provide to humanity. Furthermore, government bodies are also open to the progression of asteroid mining. For example, in 2015, Texas senator Ted Cruz helped write and pass the "U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act", which famously allows for asteroid miners to preserve ownership of any resources that were extracted from asteroids. With all of these factors combined along with the rapid improvement of artificial intelligence algorithms, the idea of the world's first asteroid mining trillionaire becomes more real day by day.
(Thumbnail Source: Unsplash/NASA)