Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently sat down with Rolling Stone for a wide-ranging, rambling interview. The subject turned to Sanders's least favorite person on the planet: space and electric car tycoon Elon Musk. Sanders made a strange accusation against the SpaceX CEO.
“It’s no secret Musk wants to develop Mars. And by the way, the kind of riches that he could benefit from mining, literally mining, meteors is a huge amount of money. Do you know that? No one is talking about it. Right now, Musk and Bezos literally have the legal right to take rare minerals off a meteor for their own personal gain — which, to me, is literally beyond comprehension,” Sanders said.
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Mining meteors? How does that work, exactly?
NASA defines meteors as objects that “enter Earth’s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up.” Meteorites are objects that survive to impact the Earth.
Good luck getting rare minerals from a meteor.
If nothing else, Sanders displayed as much ignorance of astronomy as he does of free market economics.
Doubtless, the senator meant mining asteroids for the rare minerals, a subject that is being widely discussed in space circles. Indeed, asteroid mining is a major plot point in this season of the Apple TV+ alternate history series For All Mankind .
Sanders is correct that Musk, Jeff Bezos, or anyone with the means to do so has the legal right to mine celestial objects such as asteroids. The Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 , crafted and passed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) with bipartisan support, grants that right. Former President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law.
A section of the act bestows ownership of any natural resource from the moon, an asteroid, or any other celestial body to an American citizen who has the means and desire to extract it. The idea was to jump-start a space mining industry in the future.
Sanders finds the idea that anyone should be allowed to mine natural resources in space incomprehensible. The senator did not expand on why he finds the idea impossible to understand or why, as he implied, space mining should be prohibited.
The Harvard International Review suggests that mining shows a great deal of promise. The asteroids contain a wealth of valuable minerals that can be obtained without the environmental degradation and the human rights violations (i.e., child labor in the developing world) inherent in many Earth-side mining operations. The minerals necessary to run a technological civilization are running in short supply on Earth but are abundant on the moon and the asteroids.
While Musk has not shown signs of getting into the asteroid mining business, whoever does so will potentially garner wealth greater than the dreams of avarice. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the celebrity astrophysicist, has suggested that the world’s first trillionaire will likely be an asteroid miner. Sanders will, no doubt, get even more grumpy at the thought of trillionaire asteroid barons.
The growth of an asteroid mining sector does have certain drawbacks. The sudden influx of what are now precious metals such as gold and platinum would diminish their unit value, causing economic disruption. Certain countries in Africa, dependent on the export of raw materials, would have to diversify their economies, much in the same way as the Persian Gulf states are moving from oil and gas to high tech.
But far from being a bad thing, as Sanders suggests, asteroid mining would usher in an age of abundance on Earth. Many of the raw materials mined in space would be used to create products in space-based manufacturing facilities. Since these manufacturing processes would take advantage of microgravity and other environmental factors unique to space, products that are impossible to create on Earth would become available to consumers. Space mining could lead to space manufacturing.
People such as Musk would become even more fabulously wealthy. Jobs would be created, and the world’s economy would rise faster than what otherwise would be the case. The argument for socialism, which Sanders favors, would be further diminished.
The senator will just have to grin and bear it.
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Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond , and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.
Bernie Sanders wants to bring socialism to space
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18.11.2023
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently sat down with Rolling Stone for a wide-ranging, rambling interview. The subject turned to Sanders's least favorite person on the planet: space and electric car tycoon Elon Musk. Sanders made a strange accusation against the SpaceX CEO.
“It’s no secret Musk wants to develop Mars. And by the way, the kind of riches that he could benefit from mining, literally mining, meteors is a huge amount of money. Do you know that? No one is talking about it. Right now, Musk and Bezos literally have the legal right to take rare minerals off a meteor for their own personal gain — which, to me, is literally beyond comprehension,” Sanders said.
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Mining meteors? How does that work, exactly?
NASA defines meteors as objects that “enter Earth’s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up.” Meteorites are objects that survive to impact the Earth.
Good luck getting rare minerals from a meteor.
If nothing else, Sanders displayed as much ignorance of astronomy as he does of free market economics.........
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