We Don’t Just Want to Get Insanely Rich. Poverty, Climate Change, Sustainability Are on Our List Too — AMi, Part XVI

ARCA, through the AMi Exploration Program is committed to send automatic mining equipment to the most valuable asteroids, extract platinum, rhodium and other valuable minerals, and send them to Earth and to Low Earth Orbit to ARCA’s orbital depot, using an eco-friendly and unprecedentedly cost-effective technology.

ARCA plans to use 10% from the resulted revenue from the asteroid mining operations to tackle problems related to the life on Earth, as well as issues related to the outer space. The remaining amount will be used to continue the program development and business growth as we are going to see in the next articles.

There are some major problems that humanity needs to solve on Earth, as its long-term survival depends on this. For in stance, we believe that protecting the environment can be effectively addressed by (among others) fighting poverty (food shortage, medical assistance, education).

In regard to outer space, humanity needs to expand, and the asteroid-mining activities are the much needed motor for this. We propose and execute a space-bound plan that is economically viable, by directly exploiting space resources and bringing them to Earth.

But let’s return to the Earth-bound problems.

Poverty

Poverty is a phenomenon that hits the vast majority of world’s countries, the percentage differing from a nation to another. Accordingly to the article, “Global Extreme Poverty”, as of 2019 most people in the world live in poverty. 85% live on less than $30/day, two-thirds live on less than $10/day and 10% of the world population live on less than $1.9per/day, which is defined as absolute poverty by the World Bank. This value of $1.9/day representing absolute poverty differs from a country to another. For instance, in the US, extreme poverty was considered in 2010 to be at $15.15/day, while in the same year, in China, it was considered at $0.55/day. Although there is a debate whether this value of absolute poverty is set as a correct average for all countries or not, based on this, we can see that almost all countries in the world are hit by poverty.

But what is poverty? The definitions vary among sources.

The United Nations considers that, “fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and cloth a family, not having a school or clinic available, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation”-UN Statement, June 1998 — signed by the heads of all UN agencies.

The World Bank considers that poverty is “pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life”, accordingly to “Poverty and Inequality Analysis” — The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time a book by Jeffrey Sachs, 2005.

The European Union’s “definition of poverty is significantly different from those in other parts of the world, and consequently the measures introduced to combat poverty in EU countries also differ from those in other nations. Poverty is measured in relation to the distribution of income in each member country, using relative income poverty lines. People are said to be living in poverty if their income and resources are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living considered acceptable in the society in which they live. Because of their poverty they may experience multiple disadvantages through unemployment, low income, poor housing, inadequate health care and barriers to lifelong learning, culture, sport and recreation. They are often excluded and marginalised from participating in activities (economic, social and cultural) that are the norm for other people and their access to fundamental rights may be restricted,” according to the “European Union definition of poverty” by Jaroslav Dvorak, 2016.

So, poverty has different definitions and is gauged by different measures. One thing is for sure though: there are poor people all over the world with the exception of Monaco, who reports no poverty. For instance, in 2020 in countries like Bulgaria, Egypt or Ukraine, between 2.5% to 5% of population are still are suffering from chronic hunger, and in countries like India, Mexico, South Africa, between 5% to 14.9% of population are suffering from the same. The situation is much worse in countries from Africa, Asia and South America.

Taking into account that in the next decade we plan to obtain direct revenues of $1 billion from asteroid mining operations (sale of minerals extracted from the asteroids), and that our plan is to give back 10% (around $100,000,000) to tackle poverty-related problems, it means that we expect to help 136,986 people live above the poverty line for one year, at a cost of about $2/day per person. With funds from asteroid-mining operations, we will prevent poverty for one year in the population of a country the size of Bahamas. For the first time in the history of mankind, money will be made in space and brought down to Earth to solve the planet’s problems. Of course, those funds can be handed out as cash, but they might be more wisely spent on building hospitals, schools and farms, or on awarding non-refundable grants to stimulate the local economy. The possibilities are endless.

Climate change

Besides tackling the poverty problem, ARCA is committed to spend money to counter the effects of climate change. It is in our power to alter the way the space industry operates, and we are doing this through EcoRocket, but there are also other sources of pollution, besides rockets. For instance, Dr. Jordan Peterson considers that “the richer [poor people] get, the more they will care about environment, and that pattern is clear in China and India, which have greened substantially in the last twenty years. And these countries have greened an area the size of the Amazon in the last twenty years.” So, apparently there’s a direct correlation between solving poverty and environmental protection.

New clean resources

Another problem that the AMi Exploration Program will solve is related to the fact that AMi will become a precedent in developing a major space program with minimum impact on the environment. This can open the way for future green-space initiatives from other companies or state agencies. For now, although we find commendable the dedication of the people that are working hard to develop space programs based on the pure desire for exploration, or by the desire for scientific knowledge, or by political and personal ambition, we think that a more mature approach driven by economic rationale is more beneficial, as it has the potential to make the space exploration a healthy, self-sustainable process.

Nothing is more appealing to the human race than the opportunities to find new resources. Let’s face the truth, wars started because of resources, unbelievable moral compromises were made because of resources, and when you combine the human (we dare say irrational) obsession with finding new resources with the noble desire for exploration, then you get an unbeatable recipe to surpass all challenges that may lie ahead. This is exactly what the AMi Exploration Program is proposing: a combination of the two, and this is the reason for which we strongly believe that it become the engine for human expansion in the outer space, a vital condition for human race further development.

Sustainable spaceflight

By executing the AMi Exploration Program, we will be able to say, for the first time in human history, that the road to space is forever open through the use of EcoRocket Heavy, an unprecedentedly cost-effective and clean technology for space flight, and space mining.

When the EcoRocket project was first presented to the public, it received criticism from various supporters of other space companies and government agencies from around the world. This affected us emotionally, because in most cases it was blind criticism, it was people reacting instinctively as they felt that the ecology narrative is a direct attack against other space companies and the polluting rockets that they build and launch. They were right in a way, but the aggressiveness that we encountered was unexpectedly high. Our focus on the environment obviously made a lot of people feel uncomfortable. It was so uncomfortable, than even a few major internet personalities and journalists wrote articles dealing with this matter. Surprisingly enough, their conclusion was that “yes, rockets do pollute”, but the amount of polluting and toxic gases are small compared to other industries and we shouldn’t care too much about the subject. Finally, the entire program leads to space technology democratisation. ARCA will thus empower organisations and individuals from around the world by sharing the knowledge to easily fabricate and launch their own space vehicles, expanding the launch industry to an unprecedented level, creating new jobs, and starting new businesses.

The AMi development program is financed through ARCA’s AMiE Crypto.