Manufacturing in Space-will be Routine

The SpaceX company owned by Elon Musk has been in the news for achieving certain milestones in space travel.

The company has been in the news time and again sometimes for its success and at times for failures. But it has consistently delivered on some of the endeavors it undertook. Their reusable rocket which can be sent into space and be recovered to be used again, is I feel, a milestone in space travel.  There are of course other companies and non-governmental entities who are also into developing cheap technology for space exploration. The space industry is destined to grow by leaps and bounds as new entrants come into the market. The main reason for this is that much of our resources in the future will come from outer and inner space. Man has already started exploring some near earth asteroids.

A recent NASA call for ideas on how to tackle the problem of moving asteroids in space resulted in the agency receiving more than four hundred responses from all over the world. There is no dearth of ideas out there if exploration starts, And start it will have to, as space being the final frontier is already on the radar of commercial private companies who want to exploit the seemingly abundance of resources to be found in space.

Why are more and more countries developing their own space programs? The answer is simple. Space exploration has some glamour and prestige attached to it. A country having its own space exploration program will always be known to have mastered technology to a considerable level. NASA is known as the premier organization to go to for hi-tech rocket science and space craft.  However countries like India, Israel, Japan and China are also rapidly scaling up their programs to be in the race for exploration. The real word that needs to be used here is ‘exploitation’. Man has realized that the much needed  raw material  for our industry in the future will have to come from space. One may say that this will take a long time and that man just does not have the capability to get the job done given the current level of technology. Also there is the question of money. Space exploration is very expensive today. Raw material from space is too expensive to use effectively today. However we are underestimating the ingenuity of man as well as his hunger(greed?) for resources to keep the world economy moving.

If there is an announcement by the space exploration agency of any nation that they have definitely found (for e.g.)some deposits much needed by industry on earth,  on some nearby asteroid, there would be an immediate rush from amongst the industry to see how it could be exploited economically. Laws, rules and regulations regarding space mining would be framed in no time at all. Money would be invested in developing specific technology to mine and process the ore. It would be the Wild West all over again, only this time it will be in space.

In the future as I see it, this industry (space exploration) will loose all its glamour and will be just another industry like Real Estate or Finance. Exploiting resources in outer space will mean establishing colonies in space or on the Moon or Mars.  (recall the movie Total Recall). Commuting to these colonies will become routine. It will be as attractive as a commute to an off shore drilling platform today. The weekly, monthly commute or yearly journey to and from nearby asteroids or space factories would become routine.  

Some asteroids or space stations could be turned into holiday resorts. We already see this happening. Today only a few billionaires  on the planet can afford a trip in space. But with time this will be cheap enough to be done routinely. The common man will do it at least a few times in his life in the near future. In the far future some people may see earth rarely. They may spend most of their working life away from earth and an incentivized retirement as well. Governments may ask people not to crowd the earth and pay extra pension to those who choose to settle on an asteroid or a space station in their retirement.

This industry like most industry today will be controlled by private players.  Global integration of this industry into the world economy would be a priority for the investors. Thus it will not take long for the space industry to loose its glamour quotient and its exclusiveness to the humdrum of daily economic grind.