Kargel and 3 co-authors, reported in 2008 that if the goal of planetary exploration is to build a permanent and expanding, self-sustaining extraterrestrial civilization, then clever and myriad uses must be made of planetary resources. Resources must be identified and evaluated according to their practicality. A new economy should be devised based on resource occurrence, ore accessibility, options for ore transport, material beneficiation, and manufacturing; end uses and demand; and full economic cost/benefit assessment.
Locating and evaluating these resources should be done with coordinated robotic assets arrayed in orbit and on the surface. Sensor arrays and tandem on-ground means of physical manipulation of rocks should incorporate highly capable onboard data processing, feature detection, and quantification of material properties; intelligent decision making; a flexible capacity to re-order priorities and act on those priorities in carrying out exploration programs; and human-robot interaction. As resource exploration moves into exploitation, sensors working in tandem with robust physical manipulation will place increased emphasis on automation in effective and safe robotic quarrying, tunneling, boring, and ore beneficiation.
Any new global planetary economy will have to weigh the efficiency of resource identification and utilization with full-spectrum cost/benefit assessment for human health and safety, the environment, future habitability and sustainability, and human priorities in the development and growth of civilization. It makes no sense to rove from one planet to another in a wave of resource use and depletion, like interplanetary locusts. Robotic systems will open new worlds to human use, but they will also place a premium on human ability to control exponentially growing consumption.
The authors concluded that the visions laid out by O’Neill et al. (1976), Zubrin and Wagner (1996), and others are compelling, but the hoped-for success of Mars settlement or asteroid mining or lunar development could lead quickly to self-limiting or self-defeating progress that renders the enterprise closed-ended; or worse, to the devastation of the worlds we wish to serve as stepping stones to the stars (Kargel 2004). The most strategically well placed near Earth asteroids and valuable water resources at the lunar poles may be depleted faster than anybody now thinks likely; or international competition for those materials and the lunar high ground may render none of us able to achieve anything lasting beyond Earth. The recent cycle of anti-satellite tests highlights possibilities that even low Earth orbit could be rendered useless for everybody by competing national aspirations to control space....like China, Russia, etc.
We would serve our future in space well by figuring out well in advance why we will go to Mars, why we would mine lunar polar ice and helium-3, or why we would extract platinum, cobalt, nickel, etc. from asteroids. The future, of course, will take care of itself and ultimately will pay little heed to today’s wisdom of human beings. However, if we take serious missteps right at the beginning, a calamitous dead end may be achieved sooner than anybody would wish, and we might not have a chance to do it again with greater wisdom. An unrestrained and ill-conceived international competition for valuable real estate, such as the lunar South Pole, could very well deny all contenders the chance to develop lunar resources. Hidden agendi in driving lunar and planetary exploration could well snowball into suddenly conflicting projects and snatch defeat for everybody from the jaws of victory.
The greatest promise of space settlement may be achieved with a view toward development of an integrated economy for the inner Solar System, where the best attributes of several objects may be exploited. The first thing to do is to get the justification for planetary resource exploration and development right, not basing it on overblown promises and unachievable or hidden goals, but by basing it solidly on something that resonates with the tens of thousands people who will lend their professional careers to the goal of settling Mars or developing the Moon’s South Pole or mining an asteroid, and the millions more who will bear the tax burden to make that happen. The justification necessarily will involve development of a sound economy, because without an economy there is no means to sustain the activity. An economy must rest on natural resources, as well as other attributes of the Solar System’s places. Effective use of the natural resources and construction of a Solar System economy first requires a survey of what’s out there. This can be done economically mainly robotically [under the direct management of geoscientists and mining engineers trained and experienced in mineral exploration and mine development, as on Earth. Strictly academic endeavors would be wasteful and in many cases would be counterproductive.]
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