Is it possible to have a lunar settlement on the moon? Lunar geologist Paul Spudis believes it is. He has suggested a plan to the Obama administration to return to the moon. In this plan it has a way to offset the costs of such a expedition such as a robotic lunar mining base. Yet Mike Wall, wrote on www.Space.com a article on how such an operation digs up legal issues. Then there is the matter of protecting your mining claim or transporting the resources back to Earth.
With the discovery of large amounts of water, helium and other rare earth elements on the moon there is potentially new lunar race on the horizon. This race would cause a massive amounts of funding to be transferred from programs in current use by many world governments to this lunar race. Such as Europe’s race to the new land now America or the race to colonize in Africa. While at the same time as being a huge economic drain this could reduce the cost of many goods which could be good for the consumer. If this lunar race takes off the entire world economy will be changed in a drastic move.
The probability of this happening in the near future is low being the legislation pointed out by Mike Wall shows that it is illegal to claim land on the moon so that puts the resources into a gray zone. These legal boundaries stand in place and could potentially prevent this new space race from happening. Will the world governments decide to create new legislation to allow this to provide a new economic region? Only time will tell, till then this huge economic game changer will loom on the table with a huge potential to re-write modern economics with the vast amounts of Land to be added into the market.
2 comments:
How could this new endeavor change the world economy? Just think of how much new legislation would be created and how jus that could change everything?
Smith, by adding this new large amount of land and the huge stores of resources that are limited or even scarce on Earth, the price of almost everything will be drastically changed. In addition to price change a new component to economics will be created, interplanetary commerce. In regard to the legislation, the amount of time, effort, and resources spent on just making this step into lunar mining would make getting every day legislation hard to pass. In comparison, you have the health care bill here in the US. That is just dealing with 50 states and two political parties, if you were to make this topic an international matter, add in several entire countries(only limited by those with space age technology) it is no longer just about one countries funds, time, or drive. It is about the entire world.
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