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Luxembourg on the way to becoming the Lord of the space
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Loading...Nearly 40 years after Luxembourg has shone on the international stage with becoming the leader in satellite communications, today the small country is again looking at the space with even brighter dreams - "asteroid mining".
Many of you most likely to think this is impossible, but the prospect of extracting raw materials from space is reminiscent of gold rush in the 19th century and two companies are already working hard on it. California-based Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources (Washington) have been working for a few years on a plan to extract valuable resources from space. The goal is simple - to find valuable metals that can be used on the ground or water to be distilled in rocket fuel to serve for future missions in deep space.
This is where Luxembourg sees the opportunity to host entrepreneurs and startups with their remarkable ideas in the field. Space exploration is a brand new market with a potential worth trillions of dollars. Meanwhile, the federal aviation administration expects space tourism to be a sector of 1 billion. dollar over the next few years. On the other hand, experts like Neil de Grace Tyson said the world's first trillion would "be the man who exploits the mineral content of metal asteroids." These are the floating pieces of rock and metal that predominate between Mars and Jupiter and represent real treasure boxes packed with gold, platinum and alloys necessary for the production of modern technological gadgets.
"Our goal is to create a comprehensive framework for exploring and commercializing resources from celestial bodies such as asteroids or from the moon," said Etienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy of Luxembourg.
Why Luxembourg? In short, because of low taxes and ... something else. An adventurous and non-produced enterprise as a space mine needs financial support, legal frameworks and favorable regulatory structures that allow it to take place. Luxembourg has experience in this area, given its experience in the mid-1980s with the private satellite industry. By this decade, satellites in space had been funded by the government or authorized by it. This changed in the 1980s when Luxembourg broke into the satellite communications industry, launching the Société Européenne des Satellites (SES) in 1985. In a sense, SES is the first private satellite operator in Europe and today the second largest satellite operator in the world.
Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources are already working closely with the Luxembourg government. Both companies predict that as early as the middle of 2020, water, hydrogen, oxygen and precious metals can be extracted, processed and used either as a fuel for deep-space missions to Mars and beyond, or as commodities on Earth.
Goldman Sachs' research report, published last year, noted that asteroids could "be more realistic than you imagine," quoting Planetary Resources, and calculating that platinum found on an asteroid with the size of a football field is worth between $25 billion. and $50 billion.
Actual asteroid retrieval mechanisms are still being developed, but companies such as Deep Space Industries foresee a future when robotic spacecraft will touch the surface of the asteroid, map it and retrieve the materials it contains.
And last but not least, the financing structure is the regulatory structure created by Luxembourg. In 2017, it became the first European country to adopt a law that gives companies ownership of all the resources they derive from space.
Source: CNBC
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