Saturday, August 04, 2012
Mining the Moon
Writing at Le Monde diplomatique, Philippe Riviere looks at privatising space, where venture capital from Internet moguls and other entrepreneurs is seeking to exploit commercial opportunities from mining the moon to blowing up asteroids. As these captains of industry seek to further enrich themselves from space stations and yuppies in orbit, the chaos of capitalized space traffic poses another problem fairly familiar to us here on earth: how to clean up the mess.
While space debris and accidents outside our atmosphere might not be our most pressing concern, consequent disruptions of satellite communications could become one. Then again, why worry? They've done such a good job managing things here on this planet, what could possibly go wrong?
While space debris and accidents outside our atmosphere might not be our most pressing concern, consequent disruptions of satellite communications could become one. Then again, why worry? They've done such a good job managing things here on this planet, what could possibly go wrong?
