By 
August 29th, 2021
Asteroids: How Love, Fear, and Greed Will Determine Our Future in Space by Martin Elvis; Yale University Press; 312 pages; Hardcover; Publish date, June 8, 2021; $30.00.
This is a timely book…about the future of exploiting asteroids and our future in space.
Martin Elvis is an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and serves up a unique perspective about purported “trillionaires” making their heavenly fortune mining asteroids.
“By starting from the basic motivations that make asteroids appealing to those who would exploit them – love, fear, and greed – my hope is to give the reader a fuller perspective of the whole issue,” Elvis explains in the book’s preface.
Divided into 10 sections, the author sets the scene, dives into motive and means and concludes with the opportunity, taking a long look at making space safe for capitalism. The book includes an impressive notes section, guiding the reader to further investigate a wide-range of topics.
A valuable starting-gun, and a well written read, is an opening primer on asteroids. There’s also attention paid to the pros and cons of the UN Outer Space Treaty as Elvis asks: “Is the mining of space resources creating property, or is it theft?” Eventually, the author adds, he is confident that asteroid mining will start to pay off. “We should think about what kind of future we want as we craft laws and build the governance structures that will guide our expansion into the Solar System.”
Martin Elvis has provided an important framework for assessing how humankind should look at the vast riches likely available via asteroids – and how these resources can utilized in the near-term for wealth creation in our Solar System.
This book offers priceless insights that are needed as multiple nations – the U.S., China, Japan in particular – have begun, or soon will be, making up-close investigations of various breeds of space rocks, for immediate scientific gain and perhaps future profit motive.
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Posted in Space News
