When Earth Is No Longer Everything
In the space economy, the geocentric economic model could give way to a heliocentric future
There was a time when proponents justified funding for NASA in part by all of the wonderful new technologies and societal advances taxpayers could expect from it. And there is still a tendency for government websites to extol the benefits of spinoffs from their space activities.
But we’re now living in a different universe. Society has been transformed by cheaper, more capable rockets and burgeoning satellite services that are largely owned and operated by private companies.
Meanwhile, private investment in space has shot up in recent years. New York-based venture capital firm Space Capital recently issued a report saying total equity investment in the space economy has amounted to $357.8 billion across 2,247 companies since 2009, with $29 billion coming in the last 12 months alone. Not only is more private money flooding into the industry, a growing number of companies are vying for it.
Investors are backing technology, systems and services geared toward the Earth market, which is understandable because there is no other option at the moment. The Earth is the center of the space economy universe. However, recent discoveries and exploration goals are building the framework of a future solar system economy where Earth is sidelined by its inconvenient location deep down a gravity well.
From Ptolemy to Copernicus and Beyond
Bankable opportunities in a space-based economy are grounded in a geocentric model of the solar system. As ancient astronomers exemplified by Ptolemy observed, all celestial bodies seemingly revolve around the Earth. The so-called Ptolemaic system and its precursors were useful for thousands of years for accurately predicting the movement of the planets, allowing for epicycles and a few other kluges.
As the Space Capital report shows, the current space-based economy with Earth at the center works just fine as a model for the purpose of making money. According to another report from consultancy McKinsey & Co., the global space economy will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from $630 billion in 2023, and almost all of it will be connected to providing Earth-based services.
The skyrocketing value of the global space economy is why near-Earth orbit (NEO) is a going concern. This is also why it is attracting the private investment that has created companies like SpaceX, which has brought new life to what was a moribund, largely government-controlled industry.
At this moment, the vast majority of economic value generated from space comes from NEO satellites. NEO includes low Earth orbit, where the most satellites and space stations operate, out to geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles above the planet, where specialized telecommunications, weather, navigation (e.g., GPS) and some national security satellites dwell. NEO is where all the money is.
Visionaries are looking beyond NEO to the limitless potential of the solar system as a source of resources, knowledge and livelihoods. Lunar and Mars colonies, asteroid mining and scientific examination of outer planet moons and non-planetary objects have the attention of governments, academia as well as entrepreneurs and their financial backers. Unmanned probes have undertaken exploratory missions in all of these endeavors, not to mention NASA’s Apollo manned moon program of the 1960s.
There is general agreement that all elements found on Earth can be found in space in even greater abundance. It has become almost obligatory to mention in the context of space resources that asteroid 16 Psyche is calculated to contain $100,000 quadrillion or some similarly inconceivable figure's worth of precious metals, including gold, platinum and nickel. U.K.-based startup Asteroid Mining Corp. has a two-part mission statement: “Use space technology to disrupt Earth markets; use Earth revenue to unlock space markets.”
For the sake of example, a standard 20-ft. shipping container, which weighs 2,200 kg empty and has a volume of 33 cubic meters, has a launch cost of $3.3 million at Space X’s Falcon Heavy rates ($1,500/kg). You can fill it at your 16 Psyche mines with just under $3 billion worth of platinum at $50,000/kg. Of course, this doesn’t count the container ship, crew and supplies, or reentry back to Earth, not to mention the cost of the asteroid mining infrastructure, but the returns still sound astounding and well worth the investment.
According to precious metals dealer APMEX, about 10,000 metric tons of platinum has been mined throughout human history, an amount that would be worth nearly $500 billion in today’s market. Realistically, though, prospective asteroid mining entrepreneurs disrupting Earth markets by bringing bus-sized nuggets of platinum back is not the real opportunity in tomorrow’s space economy. For one thing, the market would crash with the first platinum shipment's pending arrival. This makes the second part of Asteroid Mining Corp.'s tagline more intriguing: Use Earth revenue to unlock space markets.
The distance between objects in space is not so important as the amount of energy needed to travel from one to the other. Even if launch costs continue to plummet, as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute relates, the prospect of replacing Earth resources with space-sourced substitutes remains, in a word, far-fetched.
As science-fiction author Robert Heinlein supposedly said, “Once you get to Earth orbit you are halfway to anywhere in the solar system.” This means the real effort of space travel is getting off the Earth in the first place. Rockets must produce enough thrust to achieve a change of velocity in order to achieve low Earth orbit, burning a lot of fuel in the process. More is needed to get to geosynchronous orbit and more still to achieve a transfer orbit with the sun to head toward other objects in orbit around it, such as planets and asteroids.
An excellent way to visualize the effort is a delta-v map of the solar system produced by reddit publisher Curious Metaphor. As shown in the chart at the link, the delta-v needed to escape the Earth's orbit is 12.21 kilometers per second. Getting to Jupiter's gravity capture requires another 3.36 km/s of delta-v. It costs more getting into the gravity well of the Jovian system, as is the case for any planet with significant gravity. But getting around the solar system to asteroids and moons generally requires a lot less total energy than going to and from Earth.
However, if your space-based transportation infrastructure is already in space beyond Earth's orbit (having used Earth revenue to build it), then getting around the solar system is much easier in terms of fuel requirements, provided you don't make too many landings on other planets. It is possible to imagine a space station complex as a terminal in a solar-system-wide network reaching out to near-Earth asteroids and those farther afield, such as the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where 16 Psyche and other resource-rich asteroids beckon. Even water is apparently abundant off Earth, and with water all things are possible.
In this heliocentric model of a space-based economy, Earth is just another stop. Over time, it may not even be a particularly essential one because all of the resources for manufacturing, fueling and provisioning activities in space are available off world. (Although all steaks in space would carry wagyu prices, at the very least.) The big question is, what's the draw?
Unburdened by Earth
Investment costs of entry aside, the difficulties of living in space for an extended period are well documented. If anything, the more space time and experience humanity racks up, the harder it looks. Radiation, microgravity and even the psychological effects of being confined in an artificial environment all the time must be overcome.
Time is one element that is often missing from this list of difficulties. Current calculations assume vehicles are using Hohmann transfer orbits that use the least fuel possible by taking advantage of the existing orbital velocities of the launch point and objective. But fuel efficiency doesn't mean time efficient: It takes many months with current engine technology to reach inner solar system objects, and many years to reach the asteroid belt and beyond. For example, NASA's Psyche mission launched in 2023 and is scheduled to arrive at the storied asteroid in 2029.
Life and work in space is a long-duration commitment, if not a lifetime one. In order for there to be a space-based economy to serve people, there need to be reasons for them to be there. Moreover, such people will have to be the sort willing to forgo much of the pleasure, abundance and security of living under an open sky.
However, it is a safe bet that when technology makes it possible, some percentage of humanity will be lining up to take the risk. In the beginning, there will be some payoff on Earth for those undertaking–and underwriting–space ventures beyond the moon. The majority of these missions will necessarily be for scientific investigation and geologic surveys with an eye toward future exploitation. The knowledge–pure science and practical–will have value on Earth.
Early missions will inform plans for resource collection from relatively “close” near-Earth asteroids. Rather than acquiring precious metals or building materials, the mission objectives will be those observed to be rich in water, carbon and volatiles for use in life support, fuel, fertilizers and other purposes. Ongoing operations in deep space, such as habitats and stations, would be markets for such consumables and would benefit from not having to go back down the gravity well to Earth for them.
The next stage of developing a persistent manned presence in space to support a Copernican economic model would be space-based manufacturing. It is worth mentioning that plans to move heavy industry off-world, as Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has proposed, have little to do with terrestrial consumption but are focused on mankind's expansion throughout the solar system. While the concept of space-based manufacturing is sometimes slyly positioned as a solution to pollution and environmental damage on Earth in order to deflect critics, the realities are that the enormous expense of moving heavy goods back to Earth from space factories makes off-world manufacturing a non-starter.
On planet Earth, about 80% of world trade by volume is carried by ship. In space, essentially everything would have to be carried by a vessel of some kind. While it might not exactly be instructive to make direct comparisons between cargo hauling in the two domains, it does provide some idea of the scale involved.
According to Atlas Magazine, there are about 60,000 cargo vessels plying the world's oceans, mainly container ships, tankers and bulk carriers. U.K.-based maritime services firm Clarksons says the huge bulk carriers number about 5,000, with Panamax types being popular because they can transit the Panama Canal. These classes have an unladen weight of between 11,000 and 15,000 metric tons. So, at the Falcon Heavy rates cited above, it would cost $21 billion to put the pieces of an empty 14,000 mt Panamax bulk carrier into LEO for assembly.
Nobody is going to be moving refrigerators and color TVs, let alone Teslas, from space to Earth.
Risk Is Our Business
Except for specialty high-value, low-weight items that benefit from microgravity and can be delivered by reusable spaceplane, what's built in space will stay in space. Thus, to have any sort of sustained space-based economy, cargo vessels and personnel transports would eventually need to be produced outside of the Earth's gravity well, ideally using materials obtained from sources requiring low velocity trips, such as asteroids. Again, making this an attractive investment would presume a large enough market for the game to be worth the candle.
There is a conceivable future with people under long-term contracts to set up mining facilities using skills, judgment and manual dexterity that are beyond robotic capabilities. The actual resource collection, refining and loading could be automated. Merchant fleets of automated bulk carriers would move in their serene, Hohmann transfer orbits to crewed receiving stations and ultimately onto manufacturing centers that would have a mix of technicians and automation. The supply chain would be regular and predictable, even if each individual hauler took years to reach its destination. Crewed maintenance complexes in deep space could shepherd flocks of asteroids, rocketing out to troubleshoot problems when needed.
After a 10-year stint in the outer system, workers could retire to Earth or some other attractive space habitat or domed development on Mars. Improvements in propulsion, even fusion power, may allow more direct – and shorter – solar system transportation services. Copernicus Express: When it absolutely has to get there this year.
People will go to space to explore, work and live for their own reasons. If early vessel and station crews and small populations in planetary and space habitats start as extensions of the mother country (or homeworld), the necessities of the space economy will gradually alter this perspective. As humanity becomes a solar system-spanning species, resources and travel time will become its primary concerns. Our current generation of space entrepreneurs have already set the celestial spheres in motion.
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