Pioneering Commercial Celestial Mining (English Edition)

Space mining may seem like an unreachable fiction, but it may be our only way to maintain our rising standards of living with the exponential growth of our human population. Modern advancements in space technology prove our society is no longer stranger to space; rather, space is home to many carrying out missions at the International Space Station, home to over 1,400 satellites, and home to numerous rovers exploring lands afar. While international law provides some guidance for our space mining pioneers, to best facilitate the space mining pioneers, the spacefaring nations of the world must work together to promulgate, oversee, and enforce a new efficient legal framework that mitigates space industry dangers, and takes the uncertainty out of the space mining venture. Finally, the United States must further facilitate commercial entities’ space mining ventures through various government incentives because—as Earth’s leading space authority—we have a duty to use our expertise for the better of all humanity. As former President John Kennedy stated in 1961, “[n]ow it is time to take longer strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on [E]arth.”