We often heard that Jeff Bezos could reach this unbelievable step in 2042. You maybe also heard that Satoshi Nakamoto could become the richest man on Earth. Maybe .... BUT have you heard that all of this can be disrupted by some future space explorers ?
We are not talking about ONE trillion dollars but HUNDREDS of TRILLIONS of dollars waiting to be cashed in space. Asteroid mining could definitely make some people insanely wealthy. It will without any doubts represent a milestone for humanity, indeed there is many rare and expensive minerals on asteroid which can be mined. A small asteroid of 1km ( 1.2 miles ) can be estimated at 20 Trillions of dollars. What a number !! Minerals and metals exist in infinite quantities in space, once we got there it will thrive innovation through those new materials.
You can have a look about the near future space economy and opportunity it can provide to mankind :
(Image courtesy of Planetary Resources. https://www.planetaryresources.com/)
But, is all of this just a pipe dream ?
Sure, it looks like a dream taken from Avatar Movie where the mineral company is mining precious unobtamium on the planet of Pandora. There is a lot of challenges to achieve the trillion dollars as economic and technological issues. Firstly, space remains very expensive for every nations and company in the world even if some actors are trying to cut off the cost to launch rockets. An other milestone remains on building infrastructure and mining solutions to mine and carry minerals, to transfer them back on Earth without damaging and losing everything on the process. To sum up, according to a study, from the building of the infrastructure to thinking about the mining program, this kind of mission could represent more than 100B dollars : current wealth of Jeff Bezos ….
Nevertheless, we might see a development of those technology mostly because asteroids represent also a huge danger for humanity. NASA and space companies are thinking about ways to protect mankind from Asteroid Extinction by building those kind of technology and in the process thinking about mining solutions. This is why the question still remains : Will the first trillionaire of the world be a great and successful space explorer ? What do you think ?