When he looks at photos sent back to Earth from NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft, Jim Benson sees much more than rocks in space. He sees a gold mine.
"There are more than 400 near-earth asteroids," Benson, 52, points out, "with gold and platinum deposits up to 100 times the concentrations of the ores mined on Earth." Since terrestrial mining companies often spend US$50 million a year for prospecting and $2 billion to establish new mines in remote areas, Benson thinks space mining may be economically feasible.
That's why he's looking for $50 million to build a Near Earth Asteroid Prospector, to be launched in 2000 or before. "After landing, we'll stake any mining and patent claims, then declare ownership of the asset," he says.
Bringing the mother lode back to Mother Earth will be the tricky part, so, in the near term, Benson hopes to extract ice from asteroids and sell it to manned space stations such as Mir. Since it costs $20,000 per pound to lift supplies into orbit, he figures it's a seller's market.
A former software executive, Benson has assembled groups from the University of California at San Diego, the state of New Mexico, and the University of Texas at Austin to design his spacecraft, and he's started recruiting engineering talent from Hughes and General Dynamics to help him build it.
One potential snag remains: the 1979 United Nations Moon Treaty states that space resources are owned by humanity and must be shared equally. The US Congress never signed off on the treaty, however, so Benson prefers to cite the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which Congress ratified. The 1967 document prohibits nations from owning extraterrestrial real estate – but does not say anything about private firms.
Benson is convinced that the possibilities are enormous. "We're at the dawn of a new era in space," he says. "I'm determined to be on the leading edge of it."
This article originally appeared in the November issue of Wired magazine.
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