What if the key to protecting our planet … was leaving it? Well, in part, at least. As worries about climate change mount, and the race to obtain resources from space heats up, some experts and über-rich CEOs are seriously considering moving our industry off-planet. That means using robots to build satellites and space stations by mining asteroids, the moon and other planets. A plot ripped from science fiction? Most definitely. But much of the technology to build this off-earth infrastructure already exists.
This contingency plan — known as in situ resource utilization — is not only necessary to reduce global warming, but could even be key to our continued growth as a species, according to Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. Before that, Metzger spent 30 years at NASA where he cofounded Swamp Works, a lab that develops tech for space mining and interplanetary living.
“The solar system can support a billion times greater industry than we have on Earth,” Metzger says. “When you go to vastly larger scales of civilization, beyond the scale that a planet can support, then the types of things that civilization can do are incomprehensible to us … We would be able to promote healthy societies all over the world at the same time that we would be reducing the environmental burden on the Earth.”
Unless there are breakthroughs in quantum computing, Earth won’t be able to produce enough energy to power the world’s computers by 2040, according to a 2015 report from the Semiconductor Industry Association. The raw materials for solar panels and wind turbines could also dry up as our supplies of rare earth metals dwindles.
