Limits To Growth: Mining Asteroids

New York

In The Wall Street Journal, there is a new techno-utopian article about mining asteroids as a solution to resource scarcity:

“Is the earth running out of minerals?

A recent and widely publicized proposal to mine asteroids for nickel, platinum and other key ingredients for metals is based in part on the notion that we face scarcity in the not-too-distant future.

How much is a matter of debate, as is the capacity of sonar, radar and drilling technology to find new resources—which may not match civilization’s ever-growing appetite for metal-based products from replacement knee joints and oil pipes to catalytic converters and iPads.

Investors led by Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page and film director James Cameron in April launched Planetary Resources Inc., based in Bellevue, Wash., with a message that the Earth’s resources could soon fail to meet the technological needs of a population spiraling toward 10 billion.

Caterpillar Inc., one of the world’s largest makers of mining equipment, has already joined with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design space-mining gear.”

Wouldn’t you have to get to space first?

I suppose you could reach the asteroid belt beyond Mars if you first had a means of getting into orbit, which we don’t have anymore, or more plausibly to Newt Gingrich’s lunar colony, although we haven’t been to the moon in 40 years.

About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

50 Comments

  1. Wouldn’t having a viable Space Program be
    necessary?

    Oh wait, subsidizing a sub-species in our midst is infinitely more important.

  2. It’s such a shame Future Astronaut Trayvon was killed. If he’d only been allowed to fulfil his destiny of captaining Nickel Mining Ship “FiddyCent”

  3. They would have to construct a processing infrastructure in space unless they are just going to shoot asteroids at Earth to be prospected on the ground or in the sea. How would it be viable to deliver so much mineral and metal mass, enough to meet demand, from deep space to Earth surface? The project sounds less likely to happen than the oil shale fantasy at this point. They can’t even storm proof some public infrastructure.

    Maybe instead of investing in failed wars for world democracy and feeding, thus overpopulating the world we should have thought beyond mere humanitarian social standing.

  4. I believe they are also involved with Spacex who will be developing launch vehicles.

    Drifter, and others, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey, viability doesn’t really matter; The technology developed, the software developed, the new manufacturing techniques learned, etc, would all be monetized as the project is going on, so it would be a success, make a profit, and contribute to science even if they never made it to an astroid.

  5. Drifter,

    tut tut. Space is the only way to escape the savages. They will not be on crews. Not even in the galley.

  6. I heard the same thing about ocean mining when I was a kid. Did anyone ever give that a try?

    seems a lot cheaper/ easier to just take what we want from the third world

  7. HW they are actually looking at asteroids closer to earth to mine, rather than going out to the belt, but even still, the cost of just going to orbit is killer.

  8. SpaceX isn’t just developing launch vehicles. They have fully functional launch vehicles (the Falcon series of boosters) for sale to commercial customers, and used one to put their own Dragon spacecraft in orbit a few weeks back. The Dragon docked with the Space Station, returned safely to Earth, and is being refurbished for later re-use. This spacecraft will be capable of carrying seven paying customers to orbit, and, later, beyond.

    Commercial space travel is one of the few bright spots in our increasingly dark world.

  9. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/wheres-charlemagne-when-we-need-him.html?ref=opinion

    Then, perhaps, Europeans will also understand that despite all their hardships, they are still among the richest and most privileged people in the world. They might even decide that they can afford to have a few children.

    A new imperial construct embracing all nations, religions and non-totalitarian ideologies might well be the only alternative to the revival of tribalism with all its tragic consequences. And it will be the sacred task of leaders to make the rest of society see this as an exalted, almost religious goal: a new European faith that belongs to no church.

  10. Deak, sounds awefully Jewish to me.

    I think that it probably was a good thing that the 25,000 odd Austrian Jewush officers lost everything. What of them? They lorded it over peasants for far too long.

    More “tribalism” please.

    Tribalism is the new in word with lefty academics.

    Describing the English at Hastings or at Waterloo or Agincourt is to me a blasphemy.

  11. As an exercise in speculation along these lines: imagine a global Holy Roman Empire, a federation of independent ethno-states, a concert of nations, each free to rule itself, worship, trade, and organize itself as it wills under its own flag. Imagine a global Christian hegemony where the Faith is given official sanction but imposed upon no one, a world where Buddhist, Hindu, and idol-worshiper may pray as they please in their own nations, but where Christianity is de jure the basis of Imperial law and society. A world order in which the Empire unites all mankind under Cross and Crown but has practically no role in the lives of everyday people.

    In orbit: the Imperial Fleet, the only possessor of weapons of mass destruction, the holder of the Imperial monopoly on space travel. Its sustenance comes not from taxation but from the sale of asteroidal metals and other goods on the open market. Its role: to enforce the Imperial Peace.

    The Imperial Peace: “Do as thou wilt within thine own borders, but thou shalt not export war.”

    The Empire does not interfere in internal conflicts. Each nation is free to make war upon itself, upon its own people, to oppress, exterminate, and mistreat its own citizens — but not those of its neighbors. Any breach of the Peace, any act of aggressive war by any ethno-state, any attempt to launch a space vehicle or create a strategic weapon, and down come the lightnings from Heaven.

    I’m sure such a world would be far from perfect. After all, any attempt to create a perfect global order is doomed to fail. Still, it’s a world I might like to live in.

  12. Like the Austria-Hungary Empire then?

    In some ways Occulus, you are describing Europe post ww2. A peace imposed by American aliens.

  13. I’m thinking more along the lines of 13th Century Europe writ large.

    The Imperial Service (of which the Fleet would be part) would be drawn from all nations, by the way. Each ethnic nation would be the personal demesne of a Prince of the realm, who could nominate subjects from his or her nation to the Imperial Service. Imperial Servants would receive Imperial Citizenship in addition to their own citizenships in their respective ethno-states. Those honorably serving their term on His Imperial Majesty’s Service would upon retirement receive a peerage and a holding of land on the Moon or an asteroid or some other planet.

    Obviously, this is an off-the-cuff idea. I haven’t given it any great thought, although it might be fun to do so when I have time.

  14. Wouldn’t you have to get to space first?

    Not only you get there, but get mining gear there with you. It tends to be tremendously heavy stuff.

  15. The peace of God. No warring Monday Thru-Wednesday. Sunday half a day. No fighting during lent.

  16. Bring on some tribalism, just not tribal warfare please. The problem facing much of the Western world is that its polities are too big. and are set around industrial society instead of human needs. Smaller states mean more homogeneity and better mental health

    An arch example, Belgium. Granted that the nation is stable and works OK, the reason it has no government and its essentially being governed by a junta of bureaucrats is that neither the Flemish not the Walloon really belong in the same country.

    They’d be happier with their own lands and probably more productive and fertile and can live in peace.

    This applies to everybody. Let BRA have its own lands sink or swim and if some snowball survives in hell and they do OK, great. If not, not my people, not my problem.

  17. Reading that link Hunter, I didn’t know that there were in 1914 25,000 Jewish officers in the Austrian army. That’s an astonishing number. At that time Great Britain’s Army was only 150,000 men.

    Makes the Serbian nationalists look better and better. And possibly the Imperial Russian response to Austrian mobilization wasn’t as reactive as is now claimed.

  18. On topic, getting into space is certainly technically possible but mining like any colonial activity it is a money sink and will be for many years. Eventuality it could succeed but it would cost trillions.

    Elon Musk, the main money behind this is a smart and wealthy guy but not that wealthy.

    Also making less stuff, recycling what we do make and living carefully is more efficient than mining anyway. No need for a new phone every year or a new car or any of that if we reuse what we have.

    The only hitch of course is energy, that is going to be tricky. However unless we develop Helium 3 Fusion or some political system that allows for beamed solar (which is futile given the solar area of the Earth) space won’t help us.

  19. A new imperial construct embracing all nations, religions and non-totalitarian ideologies might well be the only alternative to the revival of tribalism with all its tragic consequences.

    As an exercise in speculation along these lines: imagine a global Holy Roman Empire, a federation of independent ethno-states, a concert of nations, each free to rule itself, worship, trade, and organize itself as it wills under its own flag.

    I don’t see how any form of globalism can benefit white people, since we’re only about 15% of the world’s population. We’d simply be outvoted by our black, brown and yellow rivals.

    I think there’s a decent halfway house between nationalism and globalism: call it civilizationism. Our civilization, commonly known as the West, is the unique expression of European Christian people throughout history, and exists wherever they politically and demographically dominate today.

    We don’t need to invent a new “Holy Roman Empire” to unite the West, but rather we should work through existing institutions, infiltrate them and re-purpose them to our own ends. The end result should be a powerful federation of, by and for European Christian people worldwide.

  20. Digging around a bit I found this about Serbia in WW1.

    Incited by anti-Serbian propaganda and ordered by the command of the Austro-Hungarian Army, soldiers committed numerous atrocities against the Serbian people on the territory of Serbia and Austria-Hungary. According to the German criminologist and observer R.A. Reiss, it was a “system of extermination”. In addition to executions of prisoners of war, civilian populations were subjected to mass murder and rape. Villages and towns were burned and looted. Fruit trees were cut down and water wells were poisoned in an effort on the Austro-Hungarian part to get the Serb inhabitants to not return.[42][43][44] Also, the invading Bulgarian Army committed numerous atrocities, particularly in Niš and the town of Surdulica.

    Not surprising to see that these people are jaded and a bit suspicious of the Germans to the north.

    Arguably their government brought some of this on themselves
    but this benignant Austrian Empire (staffed with 25,000 Jewish officers no less)
    killed one in four Serbs and killed half their men of military age.

  21. To expand on that idea, this is a comment I left at another site on an article titled “The ‘West’ should be forgotten”:

    What we need is a new, post-Cold War definition of “The West” that includes all of Europe and the European diaspora. “The West” is a highly useful shorthand term, a codeword even, meaning White Christian civilization worldwide, and “Westerners” are White Christians wherever they might live. “The West” should definitely *not* be forgotten.

    The core of the West is Europe, 40 nations excluding 5 microstates and Turkey (of course), and the rest of the West includes all other nations with White European majorities: Russia, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Uruguay. However, the latter two, even though by most accounts both have large White majorities, are probably better classified as Latin American rather than Western nations, with Latin America being a European/African/Amerindian hybrid civilization, as opposed to the purely European character of the West. So the West includes 45 nations.

    Though the West is undoubtedly a Christian civilization, “Christian” in this sense doesn’t just mean practising or believing Christians, but as an exclusionary term which doesn’t include Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists or any other non-European religions. Even though Christianity is central to the West’s identity today, the West as a unique civilization predates Constantine’s imposition of Christianity on the Roman Empire by more than 800 years, dating back to the Greco-Persian wars of the early 5th Century BC.

    The ultimate Greek victory in those wars preserved the political independence of Greece, and first established the civilizational division between the West (Europe) and the East (Asia). An ideological divide between West and East (the rudimentary democracy of Greece vs the despotism of Persia) has also more-or-less persisted to the present day as well.

    But it’s the racial, religious and linguistic unity and distinctiveness of Europe and the West that has primarily differentiated it from the rest. Europeans are Caucasians, generally with light-coloured skin, eyes and hair, aka White people, as opposed to their darker neighbours. Europeans are Christians, as opposed to their mainly Muslim neighbours. And Europeans are mostly speakers of Indo-European languages, as opposed to their mainly Turkic and Semitic neighbours.

    The survival of Western civilization going forward is dependent on two main imperatives: Preservation and unity. To preserve the West, first and foremost, Third World immigration must be ended completely and permanently. Non-Whites and non-Christians living in the West should be encouraged to leave, or at the very least made to understand their subordinate status in our White Christian civilization. The racial and religious nature of our society must be preserved at all cost.

    The unity of the West must be achieved as well, lest our constituent parts be swallowed by rival civilizations: Europe by the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, Russia by Muslim Central Asia, North America by Mestizo/Mullato Latin America, and Australasia by Muslim/Buddhist Southeast Asia.

    By my count there are 4 major, and primarily Western, transnational organizations that can be used to further the project of Western unity: the OECD, NATO, the EU and the G8. The OECD is the West’s economic arm, with 28 of its 34 nations being Western. Russia, the last major White nation not yet a member, is negotiating to join the OECD, and eventually all 45 Western nations should join.

    NATO is the West’s military arm, with 27 out of its 28 members being Western (the exception being Turkey). NATO should continue to expand eastward and eventually include Russia. The inclusion of Russia will shift NATO’s centre of gravity from the North Atlantic to the European continent, and weaken American dominance of the alliance, both good things IMO. A future expanded NATO, synonymous with the Greater West, will use the militaristic flank states (the US and Russia) to defend the European core and project European power around the world in the interests of White people everywhere.

    The EU is the only one of these 4 organizations that is exclusively Western, all 27 of its members have overwhelming White Christian majorities. The EU should continue to expand eastward to the borders of Russia and Turkey, but no further, eventually including all 40 European nations. Needless to say, the Turkish application for membership should be rejected out of hand. A powerful and united EU is needed to succeed American leadership of the West, and the euro should replace the US dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency. Leadership within the EU should naturally fall to Germany and its Northern European neighbours.

    The G8 is the West’s equivalent of a board of directors, including the 7 major White Christian nations plus Japan (honourary Whites). No further expansion is needed. The G8 is notable for the nations it *doesn’t* include, namely China and India, nor any country from Latin America, Africa or the Muslim world.

    Three of these four organizations include non-Western nations, but they can still advance White interests implicitly while using the non-White nations as “beards” to disguise their true intentions. In short, I envision a German-dominated Europe within a Europe-dominated West within a Western-dominated world. But all this will be for nought if Third World immigration to the West isn’t stopped once and for all. Job number one is preserving the unique racial, religious and cultural character of the West.

  22. The fly in the ointment of the Catholic Empire is the fact that most Catholics are non-White and the Vatican will be increasingly catering to that constituency by supporting things like open borders.

  23. Open borders would contradict the Catholic nature of the Empire as a subsidiary entity. Remember, subsidiarity is the explicit social teaching of the Church (see Rerum Novarum [1891] of Leo XIII); any Holy Roman Empire of the future would by nature be a state in which political power was devolved to the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. All political decisions of the several ethno-states (e.g., immigration) would therefore be taken at a local level rather than by a central authority. The Empire as such would only perform those tasks (e.g., global peacekeeping, asteroid mining, interplanetary colonization, etc.) which could not be performed effectively by individuals or private groups acting independently.

    I would guess that a truly Catholic global order would be much like the Confederate States of America – a confederacy of sovereign states, each free to determine its own social and political order, all united under a single banner for the protection of their common interests. In the case of the future HRE, the States would be united by fealty (to Altar and Throne) rather than by proposition (a written constitution) as were the states of the CSA. Unlike the CSA, however, there would be no hostile power, no “Union”, to create the need for centralized government by war. Without a “USA” to threaten it, I can’t see how anything might turn the freely-federated ethno-states of the Empire into a centralized, unitary Global Superstate.

    Until the aliens arrive, that is. Then it’s Interstellar Crusade time. Deus Vult!

  24. Hunter is right.

    Catholicism at least in its Vatican form is going to be an African and maybe Filipino thing. Even South and Central Americans are increasingly moving to Evangelicalism.

    Also the West does not need more religion, on the whole our societies minus immigration and natalist issues are doing fine. Whats lacking is societies getting the fact that having good citizens in a highly technological society is expensive and must be paid for through there heads.

    Far too many of them are used to having lack of birth control and religious memes driving a higher reproduction rate and essentially getting decent poor people to pop out the kids for the benefit of the upper classes.

    well people wisely do not want to raise kids in crowded tenements and struggle and now that birth control is there, they don’t have to. They can see that there are better ways to live and if they are decent and can’t have them, well they have no need to subject their kids to a life of poverty, so they have less.

    This will increase as male options will be here soon and this means the illegitimate hellspawn will be reduced too.

    The way to fix this is fairly simple, kick out all the foreigners , put in more productive labor and move to work sharing to compensate for automation. Get that 50% youth underemployment down and the locals will have at least a couple of kids at least after some population decline and land/housing goes down.

    If this fails, well dealing with the feminists and corruption while tricky is a doable solution as well.

    However trying to reimpose Christianity, aka Universalistic Judaism with all its

  25. Sorry, I got cut off and I can’t edit, Stupid hotkeys

    However trying to reimpose Christianity, aka Universalistic Judaism with all its Jewish memes is a bad idea. I’ll grant you we in the West have put our stamp on it and it has had some value over the years its still fundamentally an alien ideology. We don’t have much of our traditions left but if we are going to try for a faith revival and that Old Time Religion we ought to look into what remains of the pre Christian teachings.

    These are at least ours and unlike the locust eating taboo ridden hippie mystics of the Bible, the indigenous Western religions encourage kinship , honor and conquests and glory and wealth .

  26. Re: “(I)magine a global Holy Roman Empire”: Do you mean like the one that kept Germans divided for centuries, and built the monuments and wealthy of the Papacy on “the guilt of the Germans”?

  27. “However trying to reimpose Christianity, aka Universalistic Judaism with all its Jewish memes is a bad idea. I’ll grant you we in the West have put our stamp on it and it has had some value over the years its still fundamentally an alien ideology.”

    Imagine a New South that is pagan.

  28. “built the monuments and wealthy of the Papacy” should have been: “built the monuments and wealth of the Papacy”

  29. A world government could theoretically be white supremacist. Obviously the people arguing for it in this era are overwhelmingly anti-whites and if they have the interests of a certain people in mind it is a Levantine people and not an Indo-European one.

    Hypothetically though, if the world were unified it could be a sort of United States of Earth. Each member state could have its own language, state laws, and internal entrance and residency (as well as voting) requirements. Each era could be divided into states, territories, protectorates, colonies, and districts. States could have full governance and full rights and consist of White nations. Protectorates could be non-white nations like Japan, China, or Brazil and have internal control but not the same rights as states. Territories could be like Antarctica and Greenland. Colonies could be places like Congo and Ghana and have governor-generals administering them for the general good.

    Well, its just an idea of course. Given our current circumstances it is a pipe dream but I am pointing out with this mental exercise that a world government doesn’t have to necessarily be anti-white. Those who push it in this era though definitely are.

  30. Orthodox Christianity is not universalistic Judaism, nor any other kind of Judaism, but is in fact ANTI-Judaistic just as Talmudic Judaism is anti-Christian.

  31. How many people in America practice Orthodox Christianity?

    How many people in America practice Mainstream Christianity?

    What are the odds of converting a high percentage of the latter to the former?

    What are the odds of converting regular whites who are neither, but are pro white, to the former?

  32. A pagan South would no longer be the South.

    Even as a Papist I can see that a predominantly Protestant South is the proper South. Betrayed by our religious leaders the way we are now, I’m not sure what the right answer is.

    Being a believer, there is one aspect of Christianity that I think most people miss.
    I’ll try to explain.

    Knowing them for the most subversive of peoples, in becoming incarnate as one of them, He revealed his power in what was the ultimate subversion.

    Thus paying them in their own coin, he then gave their birthright to the gentiles (whites), forever marking them as perfidious reprobates.

    They killed him, but of course they could not conquer him. This is their everlasting shame.

    There are many stories in the Bible where God favors the second son, an allusion to or foreshadowing of the fate of the Jews. For example, Esau the reprobate was rejected by his father in favor of Jacob the second born son. Who became Israel.

    The destruction of Christianity through subversion pleases only the Jews. Therefore, I am compelled to stand with my Christian forebearers.

    Call it spite if you will. But I cannot help but find something lovable about a God who would be able to undermine those who constantly seek to undermine others.

    Deo Vindice

  33. Christianity is played out. Its puerile, irrational, and unaesthetic. It’s turned out to be a disaster for the white race. Christianity was imposed on the peoples of Europe through the force of emperors and generals and sheer force of power from the ruling class.
    The popes historically made banking illegal for catholics — it was some kind of sin*. But they gave the power to print money and control the economy to the jews. So of course the jews now own all the banks– and through their power to print money and control the economy– the jews decide all government polices.
    The catholic leaders–and then later, the protestant leaders– gave the jews all the power in the first place. What a disaster Chrictianity has been for the white race.
    * Yes. I know that usury is immoral– I agree with that. Still, one can have banking without usury. But no, christians were not to get involved in banking at all–as per Europe’s christian leaders. What assholes.

  34. Having your own business was considered a sin. Trying to get an education, a sin (unless one was from the ruling class). Everything was a sin– except hard labor in the fields with hardly any food or, dare I say, art or any beauty. If you want some relief from your hard labor– go to church peasant . Find some relief from the hard labor and the usury that the church always allowed the jews to indulge in– in spite of official “anti-semitic” papal bulls and pronouncements — that was for show, and for show only. Shut up. Go to church. Pay your taxes. Get on your knees and confess your unworthiness. Work. Work some more. No food– no problem. God provides. Everything will turn okay when you drop dead.
    What a sick religion.

  35. Now we have preachermen who tell us about all the old testament tribes– no one truly connects to this nonsense. Hittittes, babylonites, and shemites and jordanites,etc. No one really gives a shit about any of this. It’s all forced down our throats. It doesn’t speak to our hearts, our minds, our souls, our rationality, our sense of aesthetics. It certainly doesn’t speak of love for the world of nature or the animal kingdom. Just constant stories about some desert tribes constantly at war with one another. No one really gives a shit about any of this. It’s putrid.

  36. Jews become apoplectic at the mere mention of his name. And so do militant atheists, but they are only Jew stooges.

    “Separation of church and state,” not found in the constitution, was used by Justice Felix Frankfurter to support removal of Christian prayer in schools. Why was it so important for them to have the Easter prayer for the “perfidious Jews” removed from the Catholic liturgy at Vatican II?

    Jews helped found the ACLU and NAACP at the turn of the 20th century. Not to mention the SPLC. Not to mention the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration Act of 1965. Who provided the largest contingent of “Freedom Riders,” aside from negroes.

    Who is the driving force behind the much ballyhooed “War on Christmas?” Why is it they escape mention? It ain’t the Judaizing New England Puritans, although their atheistic descendents certainly enjoy joining the fight.

    Why is Mel Gibson a constant target for Jewish media detraction and slander, ever since he made a pro-Christian “anti-Semitic” movie, the Jews warned him not to make?

    Why is it negro-worshipping Jewish sportscasters have such an animus against Tim Tebow whose only “vice” is that of praying to Jesus Christ in public? Why do they heap such contempt upon evangelical Protestants who believe literally that the Jews have maintained their status as the “chosen people?”

    Who is behind the federal government’s attempted prohibition of the name “Jesus Christ” at military funerals, including Christian funerals? Military chaplains have been sanctioned for uttering this name.

    Palestinian Christians attempted to have the UN place the Church of the Nativity on the list of historically significant preservation sites. There were only two votes against this, Israel and the US.

    Don’t bemoan the cultural rot in this formerly Christian nation and fail to notice why.

    An anti-Christian atheist know-it-all or artificial pagan is merely a Jew tool, regardless of how smart he may think he is and despite what else he may wish to be. They may choose to keep believing the anti-Christian propaganda. I wish them well, anyway.

    The mere mention of His name in public enrages them.

    Robert, was it not Flannery O’Connor who called the South a “Christ-haunted land?” It doesn’t sound to me like a pagan characterization. What do you think she meant?

    Deo Vindice

  37. Jesus was alright. I also wonder about the Galilean slur the Judeans heaped on him. Was he seen as not of their blood? I also tend to find they resent the fellow’s heroic poetic conquest of death. Very European like.

    He worked with his hands afterall. for Jews Carpentry is like Garlic for Vampires.

  38. “How many people in America practice Orthodox Christianity? How many people in America practice Mainstream Christianity? What are the odds of converting a high percentage of the latter to the former? What are the odds of converting regular whites who are neither, but are pro white, to the former?”

    What were the odds of the Welsh Revival?

  39. “Deos enim religous accepimus, Caesares dedimus”
    The gods were handed down to us, but we created the Caesars (The Rulers) ourselves.

  40. Re: “the South going Pagan…would be glorious.” But isn’t that what HAS been happening in the urbanising, multiculturalising “NEW South” — going PAGAN?

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