The Disruption of Africa by Space Mining Technologies
yesterday I feared for the future of Africa because of this belief that space mining is disruptive to the supply of precious materials from earth mining when most of these materials come from Africa and elsewhere than where space mining is getting off the ground to reach the industrial space stations from where precious materials are extracted, processed and containerized for shipment to earth. A new road like the Silk Road is emerging and drawn not on the sand but on the air to link the earth to its range of brother and sister planets and what’s between them.
I imagined the Airbnb of space both given the view of consumer exploration of space and the view of its industrial exploitation and saw spaceX as the Uber of this space-open world where we are heading in which consumers and enterprises will travel to space for work and leisure enabling a new space economy whose part of outputs will be disruptive to some earth outputs like some mining materials like platinum. How spaceless entities like many countries in Africa could thrive in this new space economy when most of the materials that make their economic power come from elsewhere is the question I asked myself after seeing the scroll of future imaginative events that may happen because of the trend of technological progress that increases the probability and believability of the eventuality of a world where many materials for manufacturing goods for earth could come from extra earth industrial activities made of factories deployed on to space and even fully automated and unmanned.
How a continent like Africa and its host of countries could thrive in this space industrial economy in which precious materials used for manufacturing electronic parts, components, and whole devices are gathered from passing by meteorites? Once the economic scale of space mining is profitable most African countries that are relying on the mining of precious materials to sustain their economic development will start to experience trouble as the developed countries that were purchasing these materials from them would want to get a supply of material that is free from geopolitical dependencies. I may have feared too soon because one could say that this time that I am describing is not coming soon but tomorrow will be 2024 and another reminder of how fast time is elapsing when what I see could happen in 2044 and beyond.
Before that, it‘s critical for any country to start thinking about space and to start working its way through the stars as if Joseph’s dream was a visionary dream not only for pharao but for decision makers of our time like for telling them to look at the stars if they want to avoid the hard economic times coming by. if we study further the act of the creation we may see how elements of our galaxy interacted to produce the living earth in which we live then it might not be foolish to think of a human society completely conquering space and extracting from it materials that benefit our life in earth. Think about this because years ago Artificial intelligence was seen by many as an unreasonable idea.
PS: Happy New Year 2024 if you don’t hear from me before 00:00 and beyond.
