22 February 2010

Just an asteroid miner's daughter

I do just love it with ethics, international law, and totally ridiculous schemes for outer space coalesce to form a nice little nerd loaf. Take, for instance, this discussion on the ethics of mining asteroids. On the one hand, there's enough metal in those things to build star ships. That's right, star ships! Warp speed and what not.

On the other hand, the glut of materials on earth's raw materials market would basically shutter the economies of entire nations, including some pretty big ones. Is warp speed worth mass starvation? Depends on the particular brand of nasty capitalist you speak to.

Still, mining in space... pretty cool. And the legal discussion around it will also give IR people a nice distraction for the next 150 odd years.

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