NATURAL RESOURCES AND OUR FUTURE IN SPACE Chapter 1

Chapter 1

As we begin the 21st Century, our society is being blind sided by a Natural Resources Short Fall.

According to a report by Martin Weiss to members of his Newsletter, we are currently consuming 22% more than the planet Earth can generate. This is a chronic deficit that threatens to drive up the value of natural resources for the rest of our life time and well beyond.

As a result of this growing and chronic short fall with Natural Resources the longer we wait to exploit the planets of our system and more importantly the ‘Minor’ planets in the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the moons of the Major Planets, the further behind we will be in the race to maintain our place in the world of Technology. We can maintain our life style by utilizing this Systems vast, but, finitely limited resources.

As things are right now, on average it takes 2.2 hectares (22,000 square Meters, or approximately 3.45 acres) to support each person on the planet. The resources available are coming from the equivalent of 1.8 hectares. This is a resource deficit of 0.4 hectares per person, or roughly 22% deficit.

In the more developed countries the Natural Resource Deficit is even more severe. In the United States for example, our natural resource deficit is closer to 106%. In other words we are using twice as much water, food and energy as we can generate. Germany is consuming 2.4 times it’s capacity, the United Kingdom is consuming 3.5 times as much and Japan, a resource poor country, is consuming a whooping 5.4 times as much as they can generate. These short falls include Food, Metals, Petroleum, and non-edible agro-cultural products and anything else that you can think of.

We have to consider the future when the ‘Third World Countries’ start approaching the consumption of the Developed Countries. What then?

Do we try to recycle everything that we use to recover as nearly to a 100% of the original natural resource? The recycling of everything would be totally impossible. Or do we put our Technology to work developing ways to generate new sources for Metals, Chemicals, Plastics, Ceramics, Pharmaceuticals, Power and Technological Products.

As for the shortfall in energy products we have to start developing the technologies and incorporating them into daily use; Wind Power, Solar Power, Wave Power, Nuclear Power and the use of Orbital Solar Power plants. For the metals and ceramics that we need we need to utilize our Technology to return to the Moon and to Mars and beyond. We will require the minerals and ores of the Moon, and other space resources. Why, because we are not going to be able to supply the Planet’s requirements nor the requirements of our move into space from only the Earth.

To further point out the economic liability of moving everything used in space from the Earth to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), it is twenty-two (22) times more expensive to lift from the Earth to orbit than it is to lift items from the Moon to LEO. This means that you could place 220 tons of material from the Moon in LEO for the price of 10 tons from the surface of the earth to LEO.

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