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An international team of scientists led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, has identified a problem with the growing interest in mineable resources on the moon: there aren’t enough of them to go around.
Without international policies or agreements to decide “who gets what and from where,” scientists believe that tensions, overcrowding and rapid resource depletion represent a possible future for lunar mining projects. The article published today in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
“Many people think of space as a place of peace and harmony between nations. The problem is that there is no law to regulate who can use the resources, and there are a significant number of space agencies and others in the private sector that target. will land on the moon within the next five years, “said Martin Elvis, Center for Astrophysics astronomer | Harvard & Smithsonian and the lead author of the article. “We went through all the maps of the Moon we could find and found that not many places had resources of interest, and those that did were very small. This creates a lot of room for conflict over certain resources.”
Resources such as water and iron are important because they will allow future research to be conducted and launched from the moon. “You don’t want to bring mission support resources from Earth, you would much rather get them from the Moon. Iron is important if you want to build something on the moon; it would be absurdly expensive to transport iron to the moon,” Elvis said. “You need water to survive; you need it to grow food – you don’t take your salad with you from Earth – and to split into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel.”
Interest in the moon as a place for resource extraction is not new. A large body of research dating back to the Apollo program has explored the availability of resources such as helium, water and iron, with more recent research focusing on continuous access to solar energy, cold traps and ice water deposits, and even volatiles that may exist. in shaded areas on the surface of the moon. Tony Milligan, senior researcher with the Cosmological Visionaries project at King’s College London, and co-author of the paper said: “Since the lunar rock samples returned by the Apollo program indicated the presence of helium-3, the moon was one of the several strategic resources that have been targeted “.
While some treaties exist, such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty – which bans national appropriation – and the 2020 Artemis Accords – which reaffirm the duty of coordination and notification – neither is meant for robust protection. Much of the discussion about the moon, including current and potential policy for the government of satellite missions, has focused on scientific versus commercial activity and who should be allowed to tap into the resources locked up in and over the moon. According to Milligan, it’s a true 20th century debate and it doesn’t address the real problem. “The biggest problem is that they all point to the same sites and resources: states, private companies, everyone. But they are limited sites and resources. We don’t have a second moon to move to. That’s all we have to work with.” Alanna Krolikowski, assistant professor of science and technology policy at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) and co-author of the paper, added that a framework for success already exists, and coupled with antiquated good business sense, it can set policy on the right path. “Although a comprehensive international legal regime for space resource management remains a distant prospect, important conceptual foundations already exist and we can begin to implement, or at least deliberate on, concrete local measures to address anticipated problems at specific sites today,” said Krolikowski. . “The first likely step will be to convene a community of potential users, made up of those who will be active on a given site within the next decade or so. Their first agenda should be identifying the worst performers, the forms more pernicious than crowding and interference, which they try to avoid at every site. Loss aversion tends to motivate actors. “
There is still a risk of resource locations turning out to be scarcer than currently believed, and scientists want to go back and get a clearer picture of resource availability before anyone starts digging, drilling or harvesting. “We need to go back and map the resource hotspots with better resolution. Right now, we only have a few kilometers at most. If the resources are all contained in a smaller area, the problem will get worse,” Elvis said. “If we can map the smaller spaces, it will inform the decision-making process, enable information sharing and help everyone play well together to avoid conflicts.”
While more research on these lunar hotspots is needed to inform policy, the framework for possible solutions to potential crowding is already in sight. “Examples of analogues on Earth point to mechanisms for managing these challenges. Common resources on Earth, resources over which no single act can claim jurisdiction or ownership, offer insights to gather. Some of these are global in scale, such as the high seas. while others are local such as fish stocks or lakes to which several small communities share access, “Krolikowski said, adding that one of the first challenges for policy makers will be to characterize the resources at play at each individual site. “Are these resources, for example, areas of real estate at the high-value peaks of eternal light, where the sun shines almost continuously, or are they units of energy to be generated by the solar panels installed there? At what level can they realistically be as they should be. Are the benefits of these activities distributed? Developing agreement on these issues is a likely precondition for successful coordination of activities at these extraordinarily attractive lunar sites. “
About Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian
Based in Cambridge, Mass., The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.
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