The current state of the global economy has led to a shortage of available physical Gold and Silver bullion.Hard rock minerals could be mined from an asteroid or a spent comet. Precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum group metals could be transported back to Earth, while iron group metals and other common ones could be used for construction in space. Being the largest body in the asteroid belt, Ceres could become the main base and transport hub for future asteroid mining infrastructure,[54] allowing mineral resources to be transported to Mars, the Moon, and Earth. Because of its small escape velocity combined with large amounts of water ice, it also could serve as a source of water, fuel, and oxygen for ships going through and beyond the asteroid belt.[54] Transportation from Mars or the Moon to Ceres would be even more energy-efficient than transportation from Earth to the Moon.[55] Hobe explains that the Outer Space Treaty “explicitly and implicitly prohibits only the acquisition of territorial property rights” but extracting space resources is allowable. It is generally understood within the space law authorities that extracting space resources is allowable, even by private companies for profit. However, international space law prohibits property rights over territories and outer space land. Hobe further explains that there is no mention of “the question of the extraction of natural resources which means that such use is allowed under the Outer Space Treaty” (2007: 211). He also points out that there is an unsettled question regarding the division of benefits from outer space resources in accordance with Article, paragraph 1 of the Outer Space Treaty.[82] The Article 11 establishes that lunar resources are “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”[85] However, exploitation of resources is suggested to be allowed if it is “governed by an international regime” (Article 11.5), but the rules of such regime have not yet been established.[86] S. Neil Hosenball, the NASA General Counsel and chief US negotiator for the Moon Treaty, cautioned in 2018 that negotiation of the rules of the international regime should be delayed until the feasibility of exploitation of lunar resources has been established.[87] The broader impacts of the control subchallenge help solve open problems in industrial production and metabolic engineering. These include, respectively, the sensing of and (optimal) response to complex environments such as those found in large bioreactors, and providing a means of flux regulation to facilitate unnatural chemical production. Similar to the versatile abiotic applications of control engineering, it is anticipated that the accomplishment of generic biological control that is independent of host system and that can compensate for certain off-pathway effects, recoverable mutations and environmental fluctuations will have many uses beyond space-related applications. Additionally, solutions to the artificial life subchallenge may constitute future Earth-based medical technologies, for instance, hybrid robot versions of tumour-killing bacteria . Synthetic biological control systems for use in space. (a) A traditional feedback control system consists of a controller, an actuator, a sensor and a system to be controlled, all arranged within a feedback loop. (b) ‘Biology-in-the-loop’ control refers to contemporary electromechanical (e.g. microfluidic or optical) techniques of externally controlling a biological system. (c) Challenge 5 moves towards a methodology that completely integrates biological controllers (perhaps based on gene regulatory networks), actuators (perhaps one or more proteins) and sensors (perhaps levels of chemicals of interest) with the biological system to be controlled (the control subchallenge). (d) Challenge 5 also includes the case where biological controllers and the systems to be controlled constitute separate biological subsystems that individually interact with abiotic sensors and actuators, all of which are part of a larger system, e.g. a hybrid robot (the artificial life subchallenge). Accordingly, there is a need to identify the potential near-term and longer-term goals that space synthetic biology can progress towards. There is also a need to outline the anticipated techniques that can achieve these objectives, and a need to document the impact that attaining these milestones can have on the space community and, more broadly, humankind. The associated challenges and opportunities deal with the biological extraction and utilization of limited space resources, the manufacture and construction of products useful in space, the support of human life, the treatment of human health, the development of biological devices that can emulate and interact with non-biological components and, ultimately, the large-scale transformation of worlds from harsh environments into more hospitable ones. These challenges and opportunities are illustrated in figure 1, summarized in box 1, and elucidated in the following sections. Development of an infrastructure for altering asteroid orbits could offer a large return on investment.[69] Private companies like Planetoid Mines has developed ISRU equipment to mine and process minerals in space, and piggybacked a process to extract water and helium-3. Producing Curiosity class rovers, launching a satellite to LEO producing ZBLAN optical fiber, and developing space “tugs”, they are building what NASA calls the “workhorse of the solar system” propulsion and are utilizing the mission parameters from NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission by using a gravitational assist maneuver to redirect an asteroid to cislunar orbit mining. ISRU raw materials will be fabricated on-site for the manufacturing of building materials, landing pads, spaceports and spacecraft, and a moon base. The framers of Outer Space Treaty initially focused on solidifying broad terms first, with the intent to create more specific legal provisions later (Griffin, 1981: 733–734). This is why the members of the COPUOS later expanded the Outer Space Treaty norms by articulating more specific understandings which are found in the “three supplemental agreements” – the Rescue and Return Agreement of 1968, the Liability Convention of 1973, and the Registration Convention of 1976 . It states when natural resources exploitation is “about to become feasible”, the state parties to that treaty will agree on an appropriate international regime. But the Moon Agreement has only 18 state parties, and was never agreed to by any major space power such as Russia, China or the US. Space weather forecasting NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) is the official source for space weather forecasts for our nation. They forecast solar storms, much like our National Weather Service offices forecast weather here on Earth. SWPC forecasters use ground-based instruments and satellites to monitor the active regions of the Sun for any changes and issue watches, warnings, and alerts for hazardous space weather events. Just like there are categories used to classify hurricanes, there are also Space Weather Scales for communicating the severity of solar storms. To predict these storms, forecasters watch the Sun for solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Solar flares are massive explosions on the Sun’s surface. They often arise near sunspots and release a wide spectrum of photons such as X-Rays, visible light, and ultra-violet light, as well as highly energized protons outward into space. The biggest solar storms arise from coronal mass ejections (CME). A CME is an enormous bubble of plasma expelled by the Sun; it contains billions of tons of fast-moving solar particles as well as the magnetic field that binds them. The velocity of a CME can even exceed 5 million miles per hour! In 2006, the Keck Observatory announced that the binary Jupiter trojan 617 Patroclus,[16] and possibly large numbers of other Jupiter trojans, are likely extinct comets and consist largely of water ice. Similarly, Jupiter-family comets, and possibly near-Earth asteroids that are extinct comets, might also provide water. The process of in-situ resource utilization—using materials native to space for propellant, thermal management, tankage, radiation shielding, and other high-mass components of space infrastructure—could lead to radical reductions in its cost.[17] Although whether these cost reductions could be achieved, and if achieved would offset the enormous infrastructure investment required, is unknown. The US executive order acknowledges space resource mining activities are subject to international law. But from the US perspective, the relevant law is centred around the Outer Space Treaty, with the Moon Agreement playing no part. These are all “guesstimate” figures. But they serve to demonstrate just how plentiful are the resources of the Solar System, in terms of minerals, metals and energy, once we decide to go out and get them. Bibliography Asteroid mining 1970, Viewed 5 August 2020, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining>. Grand challenges in space synthetic biology 1970, Viewed 5 August 2020, <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4707852/>. Sci/Tech | Gold rush in space? 1970, Viewed 5 August 2020, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm>. Space weather | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 1970, Viewed 5 August 2020, <https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/weather-atmosphere/space-weather>. Steven Freeland 1970, Giant leap for corporations? The Trump administration wants to mine …, Viewed 5 August 2020, <https://theconversation.com/giant-leap-for-corporations-the-trump-administration-wants-to-mine-resources-in-space-but-is-it-legal-136395 via Jupiter Future https://jupiterfuturespaceshop.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/gold-and-silver-shortage-lets-go-to-space-to-get-some-precious-metals/
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