One Giant Leap
We know how to be more resource efficient and productive. Now we have to do something about it ...
On July 20th 1969, the American astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and declared Apollo 11’s landing as ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. Last month, on 22nd February, Odysseus became the first American spacecraft to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Its manufacturer and operator, Intuitive Machines, became the first private company to achieve a landing on the moon in one piece. The spacecraft was lifted successfully by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida a week before, on February 15th. Using updated, politically aware language, NASA’s administrator declared the moon landing ‘a giant leap forward for all of humanity’.
However, this time, nearly 55 years later in 2024, fittingly a leap year, no one was on the spacecraft and the machine was not in a position to take even one small step.
Descending too fast, the 14-foot lander tipped over on its side, broke a leg and came to rest with its antennae pointed away from the Earth, slowing the rate at which any data can be sent back. Nights on the moon are 2 weeks long and severely cold (-200 degrees Fahrenheit), which will be long enough to starve its solar panels of sunlight and drain its batteries. Intuitive Machines says that Odysseus is likely to perish by Tuesday. Odysseus will accompany the Japanese space agency’s Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, or SLIM, which landed on the moon in January, and then tipped over, landing upside down with its solar panels in the shadows. It woke up briefly in the sunlight on Monday but fell asleep again as night fell.
The 1969 moon landing was a landmark achievement of the 20th century, and the Apollo 11 mission was a culmination of the space race between the United States and Russia (then the Soviet Union) during the heights of the Cold War. It was driven and inspired by scientific curiosity and the desire to expand human knowledge and horizons but was fuelled and funded by the broader objective of demonstrating the superiority of the United States in the field of space technology and exploration.
Although the 2024 moon landings have taken place during a renewed period of peaking geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia, the purpose and destination of the landings are very different. This time, it’s another leap altogether.
Apollo 11 landed in a region called the ‘Sea of Tranquility’, a dark area south of the lunar equator, which is rich in metal and mineral resources. The moon is not, as it turns out, made of cheese. Quite to the contrary, it is a rich target for mining. Up to 20% of moon ‘dirt’ is silicon, used for semi-conductors and solar panels. So called rare-earth elements that are scarce on earth, including scandium and yttrium, but needed for batteries, phones and other electronic devices, radar systems, superconductors and more could be mined in areas of the moon rich in potassium and phosphorous. Aluminium, which is used for buildings, aircraft, and medical devices, makes up around 10-18% of lighter areas of the moon. Up to 8% of moon dirt is estimated to be strong, lightweight, temperature and corrosion-resistant titanium, found in mineral ilmenite, which also contains iron and oxygen. It could be used to build engines, medical implants, and structural frames. The Sea of Tranquillity also hosts Helium-3, a gas that could be used as a clean and powerful fuel for nuclear fusion reactors.
But this time, Odysseus and its peers are landing in the lunar south pole, searching, amongst other things, for water resources. Water was first definitively discovered by the Indian space agency’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, equipped with NASA instrumentation in 2008. In the south, ice is preserved in shadowed craters. Water deposits there could be used as drinking water, breathable oxygen, and even transformed into industrial propellant and rocket fuel. NASA wants to establish a physical and ‘sustainable’ presence on the moon, a south pole habitat serviced by an orbiting space station known as Gateway (a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency) from which crews could travel to and from the lunar surface. The moon could serve as a source of resources for consumption back on Earth and a jumping off point for travel to Mars.
As I discuss in Chapter 10 of my book, ‘The Edge: How competition for resources is pushing the world, and its climate, to the brink – and what we can do about it’, the moon is one of the next frontiers in a competition for resources that rages back on Earth. In Chapter 2 of the book, ‘Testing the Limits of the World’s Resources’, I place resource scarcity, particularly as pertains to the increasing demand for metals, critical minerals and ‘rare earths’ required for a lower carbon ‘mineral intensive’ (transitioning from a ‘fuel intensive’) economy, in the context of the geopolitical reality that most of them are sourced from a small number of countries, namely Africa and Russia, and that most in turn are processed in China. I draw parallels between Russia’s interest in Ukrainian resources to China’s interest in Taiwan (the source of most of the world’s computer chips) and the South China Sea, a conduit for, as well as vast source of, resources.
International relations in space are not necessarily any more cordial than they are on Earth. China, which has entered the space race with both astronauts and a space station, is excluded from the International Space Station because US law bans NASA from sharing data with China without explicit Congressional approval, mainly due to concerns about the ties between China’s space agency and its military. In July 2022, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia announced its withdrawal from the International Space Station and stopped sending its Soyuz spacecraft from a European Space Agency launch site in French Guiana. On 27 April 2023 it agreed to continue participation until at least 2028.
More broadly, time will tell if and how global governance and international order holds. A cornerstone of international space law, the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967, has so far been widely adhered to and emphasises the peaceful use of outer space, non-militarisation, and non-appropriation, in that it states that nowhere in space can be claimed by any one nation. However, the Moon Agreement of 1979 called for an international regime governing resource exploitation and failed to secure much ratification. Nor have the US’s Artemis Accords (named after NASA’s Artemis lunar program) since 2020. We’ll see how all of that goes as China, India and others join the competition for access to low earth orbits, or LEO (used for weather, navigation, and internet satellites), and access to spectrum. Beyond LEO, there is cislunar space, where geostationary orbit accommodates national security satellites. Tens of thousands more satellite launches are expected this decade. Concerns about Russia testing anti-satellite missiles rose in November 2021, when it conducted a test destroying one of its own satellites, shattering and widely dispersing dangerous shrapnel at the same time. In February this year, the US warned Congress and its European allies that Russia could use space-based nuclear weapons against the West’s satellites. Whatever the feasibility or intent, they are worried about it.
At the same time as we are witnessing geopolitical brinks, we are surrounded by environmental ones on Earth. Resource demand, according to the International Resource Panel hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme, is on the edge. It is projected to double by 2050. We have seen this coming. In 2017, the World Bank released a report that modelled the mineral extraction and use of copper, lead, zinc, aluminium, and iron required to generate about half of the world’s electricity with solar and wind by 2050. Over 100 billion tonnes all in. At the same time, for solar panels, extraction of neodymium was projected to rise nearly 35%, silver by 38-105% and indium by more than 300%. By mid 2022, the European Commission was drawing up plans to boost the mining and production of critical materials such as lithium, cobalt, and graphite. It projected that demand for rare earths for wind turbines would grow by 5 times by 2030, and that by 2025 demand for cobalt and graphite would grow by 15 times and demand for lithium would grow by 60 times. This would require extraction and mining with environmental and social consequences and it will take time – new mines can take 15 years to open. Meanwhile, accelerating demand for resources has already breached four of nine ‘planetary boundaries’, destroying biodiversity and increasing the chances of irreversibly changing major Earth systems, including the climate.
Even in space, environmental issues are ramping up. Space junk has almost doubled in the last two decades to more than 34,000 pieces that are larger than 10 centimetres, and millions of smaller pieces.
Steps can be taken to do something about resource efficiency in space. SpaceX is a pioneer. Its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are both partially reusable, as the first stage is designed to return to Earth and land vertically. Its Starship launch system is intended to be fully re-usable. Meanwhile Blue Origin is developing New Glenn and others will continue to follow. Companies like KME Aerospace, which stands to be acquired by cunova as part of its planned merger with New York Stock Exchange listed SDCL Edge Acquisition Corporation, announced in February, supplies high tolerance copper alloy engine components to major players in the aerospace industry, which are critical to re-usability. Compared to expendable rockets, re-usable ones could reduce launch costs by 50-65% plus, allow faster turnaround times increasing revenue potential, and substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, given greater fuel efficiency and that they don’t need to carry the weight of the stage conventionally designed to burn up in the atmosphere, thereby also minimising space debris.
The theme of resource efficiency to reduce carbon and costs, to improve resilience and security and to deal with competition for resources runs throughout my book and the investment thesis for all of our funds at SDCL - including the London Stock Exchange listed SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust plc - which focus on investing in efficient and decentralised generation of energy, or EDGE, projects and the companies that develop, supply and enable them. This is because they can deliver the largest, fastest, cheapest, and cleanest source of greenhouse gas emission and cost reductions, economic productivity and competitiveness, and resource security.
In a world on Planet Earth that wastes three quarters of its energy, half of its food and a third of its water, we have a lot to do before we reach anything like our potential to make the most of the existing resources that we use, let alone more or new ones. In the world of mineral security, less than a third of existing metals have a recycling rate above 50% and most specialty metals have a recycling rate of less than 1%. Demand on Planet Earth is not even nearly balanced with efficiency or productivity. We can address all – and solve most – of these problems by being more resource efficient. In doing so, we can learn and apply a lot of lessons for this world, as well as the next.
That really would be one giant leap …
Picture credit: ChatGPT 4, Charles Maxwell
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