This week, host Daniel Raimi learns more about space mining with Alex Gilbert, a fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines. In their discussion of the fundamentals of space mining, Gilbert and Raimi address key questions like the following: What resources are people interested in mining? What technologies are necessary to extract resources? How is the ownership of space resources governed? What environmental risks might we encounter—or create—in outer space?

References and recommendations:

“Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its Clouds” by Shannon Stirone, Kenneth Chang, and Dennis Overbye; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/science/venus-life-clouds.html

“Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus” by Jane S. Greaves , Anita M. S. Richards , William Bains, Paul B. Rimmer, Hideo Sagawa , David L. Clements, Sara Seager, Janusz J. Petkowski, Clara Sousa-Silva, Sukrit Ranjan, Emily Drabek-Maunder, Helen J. Fraser, Annabel Cartwright, Ingo Mueller-Wodarg , Zhuchang Zhan, Per Friberg , Iain Coulson, E’lisa Lee, and Jim Hoge; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4.pdf

“The Space Force has a horse, for some reason” by Kathryn Krawczyk; https://theweek.com/speedreads/927152/space-force-horse-some-reason