The Case For Interplanetary Mining
(A logical examination of the steps to long term survival, expansion and universal awareness of a given species. Copied from msword, expect alignment issues.)
This artical assumes two things:
- Other planets have in “some form”, a table of elements, we could selectivly mine from and that under the proven theory of spontanious life, other garden worlds would too exist with corelating minerals.
- The causes of periodic destruction or global dissruptions are natural, like increased solor activity and not little green men interfering with us.
So, we want to become an interplanetary dwelling species. What does that mean? What would it take? When could this happen, 20 minutes or 10,000 years? Can it realistically be done?
These are questions I attempt to address in this paper.
Let’s start with definition; What is an interplanetary dwelling species? In terms of long term survivability, it means being able to avoid natural and inevitable planetary catastrophes. Global changes like food pyramids toppling, impacts, solar changes, disease, volcanic activity –> insert doomsday mechanism of choice <- would be avoided by moving large masses of its population to new or existing alternate locations as individual system stability changed favorably. (See Dr. Michio Kaku on NASA’s findings in regard to the solar activity spike of 2012, and how large enough spikes in solar activity could be a global hazard to ALL LIFE.)
Even being able to move a substantial portion of the population to thrive elsewhere would keep the species alive and possibly provide them with data to more accurately predict specific global changes in the future. Much like we slowly drew up a knowledge base of planetary weather to predict many unfavorable conditions, we would slowly draw up a much larger weather map, a galactic weather map to predict favorable or unfavorable future conditions within individual star systems.
With this idea in mind, imagine another world, when we know that earth with have a one year solar radiation bath at deadly levels in 2012. Having know this event would occur precisely at “x” moment for roughly 100 years, we have already prepared the population for relocation via temporary starship transport and living quarters.
Imagine we mined up a new exotic mineral allowing us to make cheap solar shielding that also acted as a solar conductor stopping the deadly radiation while making it into something useful. Imagine the possibilities.
This cycle of global change occurs naturally and periodically. While I do not believe there is a consensus of timeframe, there are several theories.
The time frame on which this periodic change occurs is only directly relevant in that civilizations arising to apex while natural oil is high volume and gets discovered will have from then until the next major global change generally in which to make the leap to interplanetary operations, that being the only critical relevance to this case, the time frame of global changes affecting the rise or fall of civilizations will not be addressed in this paper.
I think if a civilization became advanced to where ours is today, the step to intergalactic travel is right now, if not a little late. As the paper continues, it will become clear how important oil production is to industries that build the first stages of an interplanetary mining network and how that leads to stepping up from a Type 0 to a Type 1 civilization. If oil production stops or becomes too sparse before this leap is made, it very likely will not happen.
“A species must be able to take a given planetary amount of x=fuel resource (we don’t know all civilizations would use oil or that their planet would even make oil.), time experimenting, global resource management and with those key steps, launch mining operations onto other planetary bodies, before their own planetary fuel resources ran out, to even begin long term species sustainability.” – Necessary and unavoidable steps to advance from a Type 0 to Type 1 civilization.
The minerals extracted on other worlds, (Preferably dead worlds however that is likely a moral debate involving factors we cannot yet be aware of.) are the lifeblood of the interplanetary species. If resources are wasted or remain unfound within a planetary body, a given civilization will not make the leap required in time, to avoid an inevitable planetary catastrophe, and most likely will largely die out. Chance A: If the resources remain unfound, a future civilization could have another chance to make this leap. Chance B: If the resource is wasted, the chance could be gone forever. (With the exception of outside intervention.) Is our planet one of those? We don’t know.
The possibilities; a yet unfound element with favorable fuel properties, an element mined away so extensively long ago we see no trace of it, an element the earth simply does not naturally make, an oversight in the nature of a known element, mining minerals on another planet is for the devil and shouldn’t be done or it simply is not possible. (Resource x)? It is very possible our table of elements is not complete. Other planets and process may have combined in different ways to create elements we are not aware of, elements with very favorable fuel properties. But for now, we work with what the earth gave us, oil.
Theoretically, Option #1, another interplanetary civilization who choose the less moral path of interplanetary mining could have found resource x before our time and marked us as a low travel zone so we wouldn’t find much about life in the universe before natural cycles of planetary changes wiped us out.
Option #2, a previous civilization (If you’ve ever read about “Out of place artifacts or OOPAR”) mined this resource to exhaustion before it got a firm interplanetary grip.
How likely are these two scenarios?
Well, Option #1, we have no idea. We don’t know if there really even are other civilizations out there, so we can’t really calculate those odds. While I realize that isn’t really answer, I must insist; Sometimes “I don’t know.” is indeed an acceptable answer. Not knowing something is only proof that there are things that you do not know. It proves nothing more and nothing less, and while we may not like it, must be a temporarily acceptable answer sometimes.
Option #2,When you consider “OOPAR” you must admit while small, there is some chance an advanced civilization arose here on earth before what we see today. Taking into account odd and end artifacts that represent knowledge we feel various civilizations of the time should not have known, structures they built we cannot replicate even today. This clearly becomes a theoretical possibility as well.
However the odds are still in our favor. Some mysterious “Resource X” may not be needed after all, oil could be that resource. Commonly accepted as the broken down remains of previous organic life, fossilized plant matter etc. Oil would naturally replenish itself after a great deal of time as organic life forms grow and die over vast amounts of time, meaning this could also be a common mineral on garden worlds.
Theoretically, I suppose among the variety of possible garden worlds, there could be garden / oil producing worlds inhabited by all varieties of non sentient life or worlds longer organically active (Dead worlds).
As for earths oil, we have a conundrum, we are almost out of it and we have not launched any kind of mining operations outside of our own planet for mineral resources. If oil is the fuel we need to get payloads out of the atmosphere, we must focus enough of what’s left to explore other worldly mining.
If we don’t, we then fall into the “Chance B” category; A civilization that used up their planetary fuel before expanding mining to other planetary bodies.
While oil might not be about to stop pumping tomorrow, it will soon enough. Without it we do not have a means to launch materials in or out of a planets orbit, making interplanetary mining highly improbable at that point due to exhausted fuel resources. (This does not mean there is not another way, we simply do not yet know of another way to put payloads in space.)
*fig 1
| An Elementary Table | 1 | 2 | |
| Chance / Option | Used Wisely / Not Yet Found | Wasted / Taken before Man’s time. | |
| A | Oil is interplanetary fuel | Interplanetary mining achieved. Chance to sustain species greatly improved. | Interplanetary mining not achieved. Chance to sustain species very low. |
| B | Interplanetary fuel is not oil | If not yet found, funds should be allocated to identify this property and uncover it. This is however very unlikely and bad news if true. As oil diminishes mining grinds to a halt. | Not much we can do about that, file a complaint? However this is also very unlikely. Some kind of trace of such an elemental fuel would have likely been found. |
Here (*fig 1) we have an elementary table, displaying the possible precursors and outcomes. We have 2 realities here, Row A, and Row B. Each represents an existence where oil “IS” or “IS NOT” the best interplanetary fuel earth has to offer. Column 1 and 2, represent another chance, or option. Row A, Column 1 gives us our best shot under current knowledge and tech to achieve interplanetary mining. The case for starting mining operations on other worlds gets very strong at this point. Using oil resources in a mankind-wide goal of achieving interplanetary mining must be the first step in habiting other worlds. The resources to occupy multiple planets cannot and will not come from Earth alone.
At this point some of you may have observed, “Oil is not exactly the fuel we burn for space flight.” and you are right. However, oil is the fuel used to drive all of the industries that make space flight possible. It manufactures the machines, that are used to make the high tech machines used to build the space ships to safety specs. Oil is used in some small way in almost everything we use, build, eat, move, design. Without it, the process of interplanetary mining becomes an even more monumental task, lower the chances of the species surviving long term. So with the remaining oil reserves we have, globally as a species, should we dawdle it away on petty territory or religious wars? Sounds like something we would do with our last days doesn’t it? “Screw it, we’re out of fuel and we’re all gonna die, lets slaughter each other for what’s remains until no one is left.”
Mining on other planetary bodies is the only way to provide the physical mineral resources needed like steel, copper, iron, diamond, quartz and even fuels like oil or natural gas to build an interplanetary network with industrial transport ships, personal travel vessels, commercial travel. The raw materials required can only be procured through interplanetary mining for minerals. This also brings a high probability of finding new exotic elements to build with or use as efficient fuels, super conductors, who knows what else it could lead to discovering. Archeological remains, fossils, evidence of past life on a given planet? A more accurate understanding of the history of the planets in our system and others for certain, as well as valuable mineral resources that would be used to physically build the multi-planet network.
Perhaps we find history and perhaps not but to think of the world as anything but a flat disc was once such a silly notion that main stream scientists of the time would have laughed you out of a room for thinking about it any other way. As it turned out, the world was round and there very well could be some kind of life architecture past or present on almost any given planet. Accounting for impacts, planetary collisions, intruder bodies, colliding systems and all the other strange universal phenomenon, any given planet, in any given system could harbor some fashion of remnant from previous life architecture be they fossil or construct in nature. Learning to find and identify these remains is a challenge. But honestly very little about the world around us has been proven, nothing is yet impossible. Much of modern science is based on standing theory, not proven fact. Not that they aren’t very good theories, they are fascinating possibilities, but they are not facts until rigorously proven beyond doubt. Most have not been, and many have standing contradictory theories or even directly challenging evidence.
The crucial step of interplanetary mining provides the necessary building material to support population expansion, stable planetary safety measures, and interplanetary industrial / civilian travel networks in prolonged species existence. This ideal could seem for many civilizations like it does for ours here on earth. “A distant future dream, not a reality I’ll see in my lifetime.” and with that “it’s in the future only” mentality, they globally mismanagement resources on things like “My god is stronger than your god!” wars and wasteful “I own 13 homes over 13 million dollars!” lifestyles. This chance at real species wide sustainability passes them by while they burn through the remaining resources completely unaware of the (possibly one time) chance to break out of the “Single planetary dwelling cycle” that they just missed.
In closing, I would like to assert that I am no expert on the related material. I am however well read over my twenty-eight years. Space in general has been a lifelong passion of mine, and while I don’t know much in the way of mathematical physics I would like to believe I have a firm grasp on a wide variety of space related fields. The case in question however is not a case born of academic field study, it is a case born of simple logic. I do not believe one can really be granted a degree for logic. You either get it or you don’t. If Humans want to live as a self sustained, long term species, we have to make a choice; Go outside our home planet for resources OR blindly have “faith” earth will just magically always have enough for us.
To me it seems a clear resounding choice. Live or Die. Use the resources we have mining yet more, or burn through earths mineral reserves and re-deliver us unto a new stone-age every time the earth undergoes dramatic changes. We must start probing other planets for minerals and developing advanced yet reasonable ways to mine outside of our homeworld.