Missing Mary Road

Instead of sending people to the Moon, the US space program is sending robots to the Asteroid Belt. When these robots discover metals in the Belt, how will it affect the economy of Earth?

Discovery’s Robert Lamb reports on a lecture given by Vatican astronomer Guy J. Consolmagno, which was in part about the ethics of asteroid mining. Lamb writes:

Can you put a price tag on an asteroid? Sure you can. We know of roughly 750 S-class asteroids with a diameter of at least 1 kilometer. Many of these pass as near to the Earth as our own moon ? close enough to reach via spacecraft. As a typical asteroid is 10 percent metal, Brother Consolmango estimates that such an asteroid would contain 1 billion metric tons of iron. That’s as much as we mine out of the globe every year, a supply worth trillions and trillions of dollars. Subtract the tens of billions it would cost to exploit such a rock, and you still have a serious profit on your hands.

But is this ethical? Brother Consolmango asked us to ponder whether such an asteroid harvest would drastically disrupt the economies of resource-exporting nations. What would happen to most of Africa? What would it do to the cost of iron ore? And what about refining and manufacturing? If we spend the money to harvest iron in space, why not outsource the other related processes as well? Imagine a future in which solar-powered robots toil in lunar or orbital factories.

“On the one hand, it’s great,” Brother Consolmango said. “You’ve now taken all of this dirty industry off the surface of the Earth. On the other hand, you’ve put a whole lot of people out of work. If you’ve got a robot doing the mining, why not another robot doing the manufacturing? And now you’ve just put all of China out of work. What are the ethical implications of this kind of major shift?”

The question is interesting. A number of authors, including Ken MacLeod and Paul McAuley, have suggested that Earth’s future economy may become rigidly environmentalist to preserve the planet’s habitability. Development planetside will grind to a halt, but old-fashioned dirty industry will thrive in space. So you could wind up with two human economies: A controlled, stable-state one on Earth, and a crazily free market one offworld.

A Swiss freediver held his breath underwater for 19 minutes and 21 seconds, according to news reports this week. The gasp-inducing feat beat the previous world record by 19 seconds, and blew away the record of 17 minutes and four seconds that magician David Blaine set on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2008.

For most ordinary humans, all that breath-holding can be hard to fathom. The feat might also bring up some basic questions about biology. For example: Is it really possible to survive without inhaling for that long? And is it healthy?

“It is, as a matter of fact, possible — with certain tricks,” explained Claes Lundgren, a physiologist at the University of Buffalo School of Medicine in New York.

It is probably not, however, good for you, and consequences can be deadly.

Prana has released a movie trailer for the upcoming animated Bollywood feature film Koochie Koochie Hota Hai, directed by Tarun Mansukhani (Dostana). The film is a quasi-animated take on Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and marks the 12 year anniversary of its release. Shahrukh Khan and Kajol reprise their roles, alongside other voice cast such as Rani Mukherji, Sanjay Dutt, Riteish Deshmukh, Anupam Kher, Uday Chopra and Simi Garewal. The core of the film is a love story between three dogs, and the supporting cast is made up of other animals, roosters, bears, pigs, cats, “and many others from the barn”. The movie is India’s largest animated production of all time.