🌌 A Quick Q&A with ... lunar geologist Kevin Cannon on building and working in space
'People think the resources themselves are weird exotic things like unobtanium, and the applications are boring because you just bring them back to Earth and sell them. This is totally backwards.'
✈ A quick note: I will be traveling over the next couple of weeks and will be posting a bit less than usual and perhaps a bit shorter than usual.
When envisioning the future, space mining and extraterrestrial colonies often come to the imagination, but usually for the wrong reasons. Popular images of mining and construction in space usually involve elaborate lunar colonies or transporting resources back to earth for a profit. I asked Kevin Cannon five quick questions about why that’s wrong and what the true significance of a human presence in space might be.
Cannon is the senior lunar geologist at Ethos Space, an energy and construction company with its sights set on the moon. He recently transitioned from his role as assistant research professor of geology and geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. (I also podcast chatted with Cannon back in January 2023.)
1/ To build most of the infrastructure on the moon or Mars, will we need humanoid robots?
It’s a nonstarter to have astronauts doing menial construction tasks on the Moon. Mars is a bit different because you’re sending people who stay for a long time and help build a new civilization. But either way, the more work we can offload on robots the better.
The argument for making robots humanoid on Earth is that we’ve built up a world made for humans, so it’s the best form for robots operating within that world. On the Moon and Mars there is no built environment, and maybe we can be more creative with forms initially. Right now people are imagining rovers doing a lot of tasks, probably because almost every robot we’ve put on the surface of another planetary body is a rover. But you’d never go to a construction site on Earth and see them using rovers to build anything.
So, I think humanoid robots do make a lot of sense if we want to make environments that humans will eventually inhabit. For certain tasks, there might be better options, though.Â
2/ What is the case for space mining (especially for critical minerals) and what are the cases that seem utterly uneconomical? When does space mining make sense?
There’s a fundamental difference between returning space materials to Earth versus using them in space. The economic case for space mining is almost entirely based on using locally sourced materials in space instead of launching everything from Earth. Refueling Starship with lunar-sourced propellant. Building landing pads out of the surrounding regolith. And so on.Â
There isn’t a single material that’s cheaper to mine in space than it is to mine or produce on Earth. If there were, it would be an enormous arbitrage and people with enough capital would take advantage of it. But we never hear Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos talking about bringing platinum back to Earth or mining helium-3. Why is that? It’s not because it’s too hard for them. It’s because the economics make no sense.Â
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