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The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon!
This book captures the most exciting advances in the harnessing of space as a global resource. The authors track the growing number of space businesses and opportunities for investors, and the many possible benefits of spaceplanes, space stations and even space colonies. The authors also discuss the need for more regulatory reform.
Companies like Planetary Resources are now forming to find mineral-rich asteroids and bring back new riches to Earth. Solar power satellites in the next few years will start to beam clean energy back to Earth, to meet the growing demands of a still-developing world.
Innovative space industries are vital to the survival of modern human life, and the authors demonstrate what can be done to encourage the growing of the "New Space" frontier. From lassoing and then mining asteroids to developing new methods of defending the planet from space hazards and setting up new hotels and adventures for tourists in space, this new industry will have profound effects on Earth, especially on its economy.
This book is based on a study of international experts commissioned ahead of the UNISPACE+50 meeting, having distilled the results of this comprehensive fact-finding process into a compact and very readable form. It can serve as an excellent starting point for understanding all the activities underway or planned to make space truly our next frontier.
Companies like Planetary Resources are now forming to find mineral-rich asteroids and bring back new riches to Earth. Solar power satellites in the next few years will start to beam clean energy back to Earth, to meet the growing demands of a still-developing world.
Innovative space industries are vital to the survival of modern human life, and the authors demonstrate what can be done to encourage the growing of the "New Space" frontier. From lassoing and then mining asteroids to developing new methods of defending the planet from space hazards and setting up new hotels and adventures for tourists in space, this new industry will have profound effects on Earth, especially on its economy.
This book is based on a study of international experts commissioned ahead of the UNISPACE+50 meeting, having distilled the results of this comprehensive fact-finding process into a compact and very readable form. It can serve as an excellent starting point for understanding all the activities underway or planned to make space truly our next frontier.
251 pages, Paperback
Published November 14, 2016
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November 27, 2020
This is my third book in the niche sub-subgenre of space mining. The New Gold Rush seems to be the spiritual successor to Mining the Sky published 20 years earlier.
Pelton is much more pragmatic and grounded than Lewis; there are no sci-fi vignettes or mention of Dyson spheres; he's much less excitable. Still, Pelton covers a pretty-up-to-date (in 2020, the book is now a few years old) overview of the business case for space mining, the absolutely critical role that satellites play today (I had no idea: watch this 3-minute video), modern launch capabilities, planetary defense, space habitation, and more.
The author must have some strong background in telecommunications as the importance of spectrum allocations continually came up as one of the key enabling technologies. I found this really fascinating, especially how it might relate to harnessing solar power in space and beaming it (safely) back down to earth.
For a summary of current regulatory issues concerning space exploration and mining, the one chapter spent on it was MUCH stronger than the whole of Space Mining and Its Regulation.
Minor complaints (and I feel petty calling these out on a solid book, but they all just bothered me):
1) Some editor, possibly a robo-editor, screwed up all the language around time. You'll find text like "...produce clean energy 24 h a day..." (p3) and "...a likelihood they can 1 day accomplish" (p157 - and "1 day" appears more than "1nce"!) and "...once every 23 h and 56 min." (p191).
2) Weird references to terrorism to build exigency for space exploration and resource extraction; the INTRODUCTION's SECOND paragraph mentions the risk of terrorist attacks on big cities ahead of natural or space disasters. There is another reference somewhere to jihadism, but I didn't note the page. Just a really weird angle to take. Paragraph 3 pivots, "this book is about hope" - then lead with it!
3) In the conclusion, after not mentioning it anywhere else in the book, Pelton dives into global agreement on (human) population control as a key requirement for future civilization. He lauds China's "one-child" policy and drops some real eyebrow-raising sentences like, "Nigeria's growth at 6% per annum and India's growth at some 2.5% are literally eating us out of house and home". Yes, Pelton, it is the developing countries who are the ones consuming all the resources... oh wait. I am not a subject matter expert but there might be some misplaced cause & effect here (i.e. no time spent on the impact of education on populations. To be fair I believe this was published before Factfulness).
All in all a great book. I'd recommend this one to people more seriously, technically or legally interested in the subject. For sci-fi fans I'd say go grab a copy of Mining The Sky as it's just a fun read from front to back.
Pelton is much more pragmatic and grounded than Lewis; there are no sci-fi vignettes or mention of Dyson spheres; he's much less excitable. Still, Pelton covers a pretty-up-to-date (in 2020, the book is now a few years old) overview of the business case for space mining, the absolutely critical role that satellites play today (I had no idea: watch this 3-minute video), modern launch capabilities, planetary defense, space habitation, and more.
The author must have some strong background in telecommunications as the importance of spectrum allocations continually came up as one of the key enabling technologies. I found this really fascinating, especially how it might relate to harnessing solar power in space and beaming it (safely) back down to earth.
For a summary of current regulatory issues concerning space exploration and mining, the one chapter spent on it was MUCH stronger than the whole of Space Mining and Its Regulation.
Minor complaints (and I feel petty calling these out on a solid book, but they all just bothered me):
1) Some editor, possibly a robo-editor, screwed up all the language around time. You'll find text like "...produce clean energy 24 h a day..." (p3) and "...a likelihood they can 1 day accomplish" (p157 - and "1 day" appears more than "1nce"!) and "...once every 23 h and 56 min." (p191).
2) Weird references to terrorism to build exigency for space exploration and resource extraction; the INTRODUCTION's SECOND paragraph mentions the risk of terrorist attacks on big cities ahead of natural or space disasters. There is another reference somewhere to jihadism, but I didn't note the page. Just a really weird angle to take. Paragraph 3 pivots, "this book is about hope" - then lead with it!
3) In the conclusion, after not mentioning it anywhere else in the book, Pelton dives into global agreement on (human) population control as a key requirement for future civilization. He lauds China's "one-child" policy and drops some real eyebrow-raising sentences like, "Nigeria's growth at 6% per annum and India's growth at some 2.5% are literally eating us out of house and home". Yes, Pelton, it is the developing countries who are the ones consuming all the resources... oh wait. I am not a subject matter expert but there might be some misplaced cause & effect here (i.e. no time spent on the impact of education on populations. To be fair I believe this was published before Factfulness).
All in all a great book. I'd recommend this one to people more seriously, technically or legally interested in the subject. For sci-fi fans I'd say go grab a copy of Mining The Sky as it's just a fun read from front to back.
Displaying 1 of 1 review