Crawford introduced a special issue of Space Policy in 2016. He indicated that to-date, all human economic activity has depended on the material and energy resources of a single planet, and it has long been recognized that developments in space exploration could in principle open our closed planetary economy to external resources of energy and raw materials. Recently, there has been renewed interest in these possibilities, with several private companies established with the stated aim of exploiting extraterrestrial resources. Space science and exploration are among the potential beneficiaries of space resources because they may permit the construction and operation of scientific facilities in space that would be unaffordable if all the required material and energy resources had to be lifted out of Earth's gravity. Examples may include the next generation of large space telescopes, sample return missions to the outer Solar System, and human research stations on the Moon and Mars.
These potential scientific benefits of space resource utilization were discussed at a Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) meeting held in London on 8 April 2016 on ‘The Use of Extraterrestrial Resources to Help Facilitate Space Science and Exploration.’ That meeting, a summary of which can be found in Ref. [1], was the inspiration for this Special Issue of Space Policy. Specifically, six of the eight papers in this Special Issue (i.e. those by James Carpenter et al., Ian Crawford, Colin McInnes, Martin Elvis, Phil Metzger and Vibha Srivastava) are peer-reviewed elaborations of talks presented at the meeting, and two papers (i.e. those by Marshall Eubanks & Charles Radley and George Sowers) were invited to complement the others from an industry perspective. It is also worth drawing attention to the fact that the main points covered by several papers presented at the RAS meeting (including those by Olivier de Weck on how lunar resources may help make human Mars missions more affordable [2], Paul Spudis on the Moon as an enabling asset for spaceflight [3], and Jim Keravala on the activities of The Shackleton Energy Company [4]) have already appeared in the literature, and are therefore not included in this collection (interested readers are referred to references given above).
Crawford hoped that this Special Issue of Space Policy will be a useful addition to the literature of space resource utilization, and stimulate discussion of how space resources may facilitate space science and exploration.The papers included are:
1. Establishing lunar resource viability, James Carpenter, Richard Fisackerly, and Berengere Houdou , PDF page 2.
2. The long-term scientific benefits of a space economy, Ian A. Crawford, PDF page 8.
3. Near Earth asteroid resource utilization for large in-orbit reflectors, Colin R. McInnes, PDF page 12.
4. What can space resources do for astronomy and planetary science?, Martin Elvis, PDF page 15.
5. Space development and space science together, an historic opportunity, Philip T. Metzger, PDF page 27.
6. Microwave processing of lunar soil for supporting longer-term surface exploration on the Moon, Vibha Srivastava , Sungwoo Lim, and Mahesh AnandPDF page 42.
7. Scientific return of a lunar elevator, Thomas Marshall Eubanks, and Charles F. Radley, PDF page 47.
8. A cislunar transportation system fueled by lunar resources, George F. Sowers, PDF page 53.
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