The Final Frontier: Emerging Tech and Space Economy for Sustainable Earth

Expert panel discusses the trajectory and impact of the sustainable space economy at ITU forum

An expert panel at the International Telecommunication Union engaged in a comprehensive discussion on the future of the sustainable space economy, examining its projected growth and the potential impact on terrestrial industries. The panel featured diverse viewpoints, including those of an optimist, a realist, and a pessimist, each offering unique insights into the applications and implications of space activities.

The moderator opened the session by highlighting the International Telecommunication Union’s pivotal role in maintaining the safety and order of space activities, particularly in preventing satellite collisions. Despite the ITU’s critical work being relatively unknown outside expert circles, its contribution to space governance was acknowledged as essential.

A significant focus of the discussion was on the growth trajectory of the space economy. Projections suggest that the market could experience substantial growth, potentially tripling from approximately $630 billion in 2023 to over $1.8 trillion by 2035. This growth is primarily driven by advancements in Earth observation technologies and global positioning systems, which are increasingly influencing various industries on Earth. The World Economic Forum’s space economy report, authored by panelist Nikolai Khlystov, was highlighted for its insights into the economic aspects of space activities, such as the possibility of space inflation and unemployment.

Practical applications of space technologies were also discussed, with panelist Murat Seitnepesov sharing examples from the Greater Caspian region. He detailed how space technologies are being utilized to address environmental issues like methane leakage, which has a significant climate impact, and to improve logistics in areas with limited GSM coverage, such as Central Asia.

Jim Keravala, CEO of Offworld, spoke about the disruptive potential of space technologies in the mining industry. He described the development of robotic technologies for mining on Earth and the potential for expanding these operations into space. Keravala emphasized the need for careful consideration of sustainability in space mining and the environmental and economic implications.

The panel addressed concerns about equity and inclusivity in the space economy, noting the challenges faced by smaller countries in developing their own space programs. It was suggested that international cooperation and alliances are necessary to ensure that the benefits of space technologies are accessible to all. Questions were raised about the moral and ethical considerations of transferring Earth’s environmental problems to space, with a call for frameworks and risk assessments to guide space mining activities.

Keravala shared a vision for space exploration that includes the development of space-based solar power to address Earth’s energy needs and environmental challenges. He suggested that by the end of the century, we could build 100 terawatts of power-generating capacity using space-based solar power, which could have a transformative impact on Earth’s energy markets and environment.

The discussion concluded with a call for disruptive thinking about the role of space in humanity’s future, emphasizing the need for a balance between human development and environmental sustainability. The panel recognized the significant impact the space industry could have on various Earth-based industries, but also the responsibility to manage this expansion to avoid creating new problems in space.

Noteworthy observations included the potential for African countries to lead significant space programs in the 2030s with off-world robots, the establishment of collaborative educational programs for teaching new technologies related to space robots, and the importance of inspiring global youth for the future of the space industry. The panellists also highlighted the need for more investment from both the public and private sectors to accelerate the development of space technologies and their applications.

Overall, the panel underscored the exciting opportunities presented by the space economy while also acknowledging the significant challenges and responsibilities that come with expanding human activities into space.

Moderator:
you you you a very good morning once again you will have to bear with me which just for another 40 minutes I promise this will be even more entertaining in the previous one please as I mentioned the first row has massage chairs so whoever sits in the first row will have a wonderful experience but if you you’re welcome to pick sit anywhere this panel will address the issue of sustainable space in the future of space as you know the International Telecommunication Union is one of the organizations that really sets up the international governance of this space with through many different mechanisms they do a tremendous job very often on the background without many people well it’s it’s widely known in a narrow circles let’s put it this way. But the reason why there are satellites not bumping into each other on the orbits is because of the work of this great organization. Today, we have again, yet once again, a fantastic panel. We have an optimist, a realist, a pessimist of the space applications. And they will talk about, or we can, an optimist, a realist, and a pessimist. You will see as it goes. But it’s a fantastic panel. We have a private sector. We have international public sector. We have a civil society and the business community that is actually doing something today in terms of making our space life more sustainable. With this, I perhaps will turn first to Nikolai. Because Nikolai was a lead author of a very influential report, which I strongly recommend everybody to pick up. It came up last month, I believe. It’s a World Economic Forum space economy report. He will give us a quick key findings, speak a little bit about, because every single one of us is very excited about space economy. But what does it mean if we talk about space economy? Will there be space inflation, space unemployment, and all those wonderful things that the economy also means here on Earth? Nikolai, over to you. Please introduce yourself, perhaps, in 30 seconds in one minute.

Mr. Nikolai Khlystov:
Thank you, Daniel. So my name is Nikolai Khrustov. I lead space and global space efforts at the World Economic Forum just across the lake. We are at a really exciting moment as humanity when it comes to space. There’s a lot of things that are happening in this decade. The shift probably really started over the last 10 years. And so at the forum, we are really ramping up and increasing our efforts on space. So the paper that was kindly mentioned by Daniel was done by us in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, important. to know that, and we really wanted to look at where space is going as a sector, as an economy, as some folks look at it as a market over the coming decade. Probably a couple years out we can sort of estimate, but when you start going beyond 2030, there’s some interesting things that we thought will open up. And so the key finding from the paper was that, by our projection, the growth rate over overall market will be about 9%, and from about 630 billion 2023, the economy will actually triple in size of that growth rate to just over 1.8 trillion. Now, we also had a couple scenarios in that paper that looked at a little bit more pessimistic approach that lands us in about 1.4 trillion, and a more optimistic approach that we can also discuss that surpasses significantly the two trillion mark. Now, the key element that I think we need to kind of address here, and you can look at the document, you can look at all the methodology and the numbers, and it’s all very transparent, and this is what we really wanted to bring because some of the other publications that came before that, a lot of times it was difficult to understand how we actually, authors arrived at those numbers. But the key, I think, aspect here is that space is not really out there yet, right? It’s really about what’s happening on the ground. Most of that number, 1.8 trillion by 2035, will be figures that are impacting all of us in different industries here on Earth. So space is really, for now still, and we can touch on that a little bit more in the discussion, very much what’s happening on Earth. So the core part, the backbone that we call, this is rockets and satellites, the manufacturing, the value of data that goes between satellites and ground stations, that’s actually a smaller part, so it’s still gonna be growing in our estimates. but growing a little bit more modestly at about 6, 7%. What’s actually growing fast and really pushing those numbers and pushing the space economy, as we call it, is what space is enabling directly. What is space responsible for? And so when you look at things like Earth observation technologies, which are getting ever better by the year, if not by the month. Activity, obviously very relevant to this conference. And the data, and what it directly enables. But also important positioning, navigation, and timing. So global positioning systems. Those actually enable quite a lot of business models on the ground. And without those, these models would not function. And so actually that is what’s driving the slightly higher growth rates. And actually that will be a bigger part, more than half of that 1.8 trillion towards 2035. So that’s a little bit of an introduction. We can dive a little bit into some of the exciting things. But we took a little bit more probably, as was introduced, realistic approach. But there are some really exciting shifts that are happening right now. And that will happen throughout this decade, which will probably be on 2035, will really set us on a much bigger trajectory and take us physically much more into space than we’ve been up to now.

Moderator:
Thank you very much, Nikolai. And indeed, I’m really looking forward to diving deeper into the report and finding something perhaps that you did not expect yourself as you embarked on this journey. Murat, let me jump to you. Please introduce yourself, but also speak a little bit about the region. Very often when we talk about space, everybody thinks it’s a domain of the global north, of developed nations. But it really belongs to everyone, that’s one. And two, you also run very practical business applications with the full utilization of space resources. Please, Murat. Thank you, Daniel.

Mr. Murat Seitnepesov:
I’m Murat Sidnipesov. I’m the president of the Greater Caspian Association. We are doing promotion and development of the Greater Caspian region. It’s 18 countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, South Caucasus, and the Black Sea countries. And between our members, we have various initiatives. That’s why I would like to share some ideas how we can use space for sustainable development, space technologies. And we have several projects. I think the biggest one, the elephant in the room, is the methane leakage. Because these, for example, only one country, a small country like Turkmenistan, where I’m originally from, there is a detected methane leakage of 5 billion cubic meter per annum. The climate change impact on this is equal to the whole carbon emission of the United Kingdom. Because normally the ratio is 1 by 80, somebody is saying 1.1 by 30. How to find this? Because there is a half a million square kilometer, the fourth biggest in the world natural gas reserves. How to find these leakages, the point of emissions? And then we are getting the space technologies where we can track it and understand. And then we can try to do some actions in order to reduce and then to prevent that this leakage will not happen again. And if you are interested in actually seeing physically what it looks like, you should Google in your pictures of doorway to hell. It’s a real place. If you are ever interested how not to get to hell, please Google it. You will see how the methane leakage actually looks on earth and how it will look from space. This is a famous story. It started in 1972, as I remember, when the Soviet Union geologists, they started to drill and try to find the natural gas. And then the whole drilling rig went down with all the equipment. And then they burned it because otherwise methane is also poisoning. And then now it’s already 50 years. 22 years, it’s still in the fire, so you can imagine how much methane, the natural gas, was burned. But this is the one practical idea for the space technologies. The second one, which also we are developing, some of our members together with the leader in Geneva, the company called Wise Key and the digital technologies, track and trace for containers. Imagine the Central Asia, there is no GSM coverage there. Like 80% of the territory. And then there is a big problem for the container lines, because they are sending their containers, but then they don’t know what is happening with their containers. It’s like a black hole. Containers are going, never coming back, sometimes after one year coming from a completely different side of the world. And then it’s very disturbing, and of course it’s reducing a lot the container flow. But on top of this, that container lines started actually to sell their freight together with the container boxes, like $2,000 for 20 feet and $4,000, $3,500 for 40 feet. And then these containers go in there. The consignees are paying for the freight and for the containers together, and then containers are disappearing somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, somewhere in Central Asia. And now how to find these container boxes, first of all, and second is how to try to give the comfort for the container lines, that they have instant online control of the movements of their containers. And here we again come into the space. There are two, actually, applications. And one is that where there is no GSM coverage, we can install on each container a small device like sensor. And then the company Weiske here in Geneva, they are now sending satellites to the space. I think they have a plan during the next two years to have almost 100 small satellites, very small like this. Nothing special. I was actually surprised. I would think it’s much more complicated. And then we can trace all these containers live, no matter what is the place, no matter how many containers, and then we’re expecting that because of the traceability, that banks will start financing, insurance companies will start giving better insurance rates, and then finally container lines will be happy to send their containers, not to sell containers, but just to send and get them back. And another option is what to do with the abandoned containers, which are already 30 years or more being collected in the region, various places. I can say, let’s say for example in Afghanistan, there is I think a million plus container boxes, idle, abandoned, available. If we are going to countries like Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, let’s say only one market in Kyrgyzstan, in Bishkek, in the capital, there is 40,000 abandoned container boxes. They’re used to being like shops, but container boxes are not shops. You should move cargo inside them. And again, here we are coming to the satellite, to the space technologies through the satellites, we can do the good resolution photos of the surface, and then we can try using the artificial intelligence, machine learning, we can try to identify where exactly these containers are abandoned, and then we can send people, and then they can start to collect these containers. This project already started. We already started from Turkmenistan, and then during three years, there are no more abandoned containers in Turkmenistan, half a million square kilometer. And now we are going to Uzbekistan, then we are going to Tajikistan, and also all other countries of Central Asia. Those are just three examples how we can use space technologies for sustainable development. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thanks very much, Murat. Thank you. So we’ve heard a very broad and max picture from Nikolai. We’ve heard a very micro and narrow picture from Murat. Now let’s shift the dimensions. Now we will look into the future a little bit. it. And Jim, please start the presentation. Jim will take us over. Please introduce yourself and then over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you for the great examples, Murat, and the analysis,

Mr. Jim Keravala:
Nikolai. So I’m Jim Karavala, CEO of Offworld. We’re building swarms of machine intelligent robots to build civilization out into the solar system so that we can lay the foundations for expansion to the next nearest star before the end of the century and move on from there throughout the galaxy. So no small objectives here this morning. We really do need to… You get the free ticket on the next starship. We really do need to disrupt our thinking when it comes to understanding what our generation’s place is in the evolution of humanity. I believe we are at the most critical generation, the generation that has the power to determine the directions of the next dozens of generations to come. We’re that generation that crosses the transition between an earth-faring civilization and a solar system-based civilization. The challenges across multiple fronts, our demographics, society, the application of new energy technologies, the application of new intelligence technologies, and the pressures that that growth in civilization entails. The economic impacts, the increasing divergence between prosperity and resource distribution. The economic and the environmental impacts. and the geopolitical tensions that are then arising. All of these are combining in a perfect storm of risks and opportunities. So I recommend that we think not in evolutionary terms but in disruptive leaps. The biggest leap that is emerging right now is for the first time in human history, the prospect of the reduction of price to low Earth orbit, the first port of call in space from the ground. Typically, every kilogram throughout most of the space era has cost something like $10,000 to put in low Earth orbit, just a few hundred kilometers up. In recent years, that price is just over 2,500 kilograms. By 2030, that price per kilogram could be a few hundred dollars or even less. This opens up extraordinary new business models and opportunities and accesses to low Earth orbit. A lot of new economics then really work in a disruptive way. So we need to think about moving out into the solar system, to the moon, to near Earth space, and to consider what are the tools and technologies that we can develop that primarily improve life on Earth. And what we’re doing at Offworld is building these swarms of robots whose first objective is to do end-to-end mining here on Earth for critical minerals without people present in the mine. We can go into the mines where conventional mining cannot reach. We have robots to excavate, to transport, to characterize, to see the mineral and to optimize the mine development. Our principles of development are to embody intelligence into a robotics platform and use that intelligent robotics to deliver energy to the rock face. Not dynamite, not undercutting tools, but just energy. Intelligently applied so that we put the energy inside the rock, breaking the grain boundary bonds and turning hard rock into soft rock. Rock is ten times weaker in tension than it is in compression. So we can use our intelligence to create intelligent tools that open up a new era of robotic, touchless mining. Imagine mining for critical minerals without actually touching the rock. And then we only move the mineral or the metal or the concentrate. Combining all of these technologies using energy processing and energy excavation, we can reduce the cost and the environmental impact of mining by between one and two orders of magnitude. It is the biggest revolution in mining since we picked up rocks. And this will be our baseline of mining on Earth and into the solar system as we build our modular robotic systems that allow us to operate in mines on different surfaces. All of our robots are employing autonomy, decision-making, closed-loop sensing, energy swaps, end-to-end maintenance, and robot-to-robot recovery. Operating and working in extreme conditions. environments across many different terrains, both in overground and underground mines. This is the baseline of building a system of autonomous species of robots that can operate on multiple planets and around asteroids. And the ability to interact in unstructured environments, such as mines and construction sites, are the hardest problems that machine intelligence and robot autonomy has to address and solve. These robots are only going to get cheaper. They’re going to get better and better. The cost of operations is going to reduce, and the interoperability is going to increase. This is a revolution that is happening now, and it is a way that we can displace millions of jobs. We can disrupt millions of jobs of people around the world, and then replace those jobs with fulfilling careers in robotics, autonomy, entrepreneurship, robotic implementations of new projects. In fact, our deployments of these robots in our first mines will create new jobs, because we’ll need new robot workers, programmers, and operators, because the first mines that we’ll be entering for many, many years will be end-of-life mines. So in fact, Offworld is one of the few companies in the world that is employing robotics and autonomy that will have a net creation of jobs, and especially around those local communities where the mines were the critical glue that held the growth of those communities for many years and decades. And now those end-of-life mines have led a lot of these communities across Africa, South America, and many other countries and continents. in despair and without income or prosperity. Now we can truly integrate the social contract with the robotic revolution. And as we’ve been developing these new technologies and tools, the integration of machine intelligence, sensing, autonomy and robotics, applied for energy mining and dispersing the energy directly into the rock and other materials, is the way we manipulate materials for the future. And we are deploying these technologies here on earth and we are now developing systems for our first lunar robots. We have our first customers for our lunar prospectors which we’re launching in 2008. The prospectors is the first species of robot that will operate on the moon. And there will be multiple species of these robots. Again, based on the same system of our terrestrial swarm robotic mining architecture, that will allow this, excuse me, utilization of multiple species of robots to extract water ice which can be then used for liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, which is rocket propellant, the highest efficiency chemical rocket propellant that we know. And this will be basically the new oil industry of the space era in the inner solar system. And these robots will create strategic reserves of this new propellant from 2029 onwards that will allow us to then create operational transport systems that can transport up and down from the lunar surface in cislunar space and support the new industries that will emerge with this change of launch price. And then as we expand from those robotic colonies of systems into then fixed infrastructure and processing plants from the mid 2030s, this is then the onset of when we start building communities in space. towns and cities, and allow people to travel up, explore the moon, explore the solar system, and to get to the stars. Thank you.

Moderator:
Thanks very, very, very much, Jim. Wow, what a vision. Now, as you’ve heard, today already space is disrupting real industries here back on Earth, from transportation to mining. So this is not something that we can no longer ignore. The numbers are out there. Even the most realistic scenario is a tremendous opportunity. But even more than opportunities, perhaps, I would like for us to focus on issues of sustainability, the sustainability back on Earth, but also sustainability of space. Another project that Nikolai has led has been Sustainable Index. Maybe you are in the best position to describe that.

Mr. Nikolai Khlystov:
Thanks. Thanks, Daniel. So, yeah, great points all around and exciting vision overall. I think together, you get a bit of a picture of where space is going. I love all the things that Jim is presenting. Probably, in just very practical terms, we see this probably picking up in the coming decades. The question is that timeline, right? And I think this is where the interesting discussion happens. If you have a little bit more investment now, how much can you accelerate some of that transition? And this is really what could make some of these things possible. As we base our work on a lot of industry discussions, there is still a little bit of, yeah, I would say realism in terms of immediate years. But certainly, a lot of the things that you see here are enabled by this much lower cost of launch. And this is really the bigger revolution that’s happening right now. Coming back a little bit to the topic of sustainability, and that’s something that Murat, you addressed, This is obviously a huge, huge area for where space really plays a role. So, as I said before, space is really today and for the foreseeable future, and even in the long term is going to be about making life on Earth better, even though as we expand different types of activities. So, the Earth observation aspect and particularly monitoring methane leaks, for example, is a huge opportunity. And there’s a lot of activity right now with different satellite companies, data companies, trying to understand, find those leaks, work with industry, oil and gas industry, that are actually interested in finding those, right? And because otherwise they are themselves losing that energy, right? Which otherwise, if it’s properly capped, could be sold on. That’s obviously, you know, beyond methane, there’s also carbon dioxide and there are other gases that satellites can see. Every year, as I said before, there are better and better resolution. There are multispectral satellites that are online and coming online that are doing kind of overpasses over the same place on Earth more frequently than before. So, you can see changes, you can see more smaller, minute disruptions, whether it’s looking at traffic patterns, whether it’s helping optimize shipping and maritime industry or aviation industry for that matter, or helping them optimize their routes, monitoring, again, emissions and things like that. But combining that with positioning navigation signals, and again, something that Murat gave a very terrific example of, you really start to be able to, and combined with technology, right? And artificial intelligence, machine learning, you really start to be able to optimize a lot of systems. Supply chain transport is a huge sector that can really benefit and companies are starting to look at that, not just energy. On the sustainability topic in space, this is perhaps one of the key big risks that can really slow us down in evolution of space economy. This is probably the one kind of urgent area we really need to address, because there is a there is a lot of debris out in low Earth orbit, particularly across all orbits, but the currently the risky. Most experts agree that the riskiest areas, Leo, right, low Earth orbit, where incidentally we have the International Space Station, we have the Tiangong Space Station, the Chinese Space Station, and a number of commercial space stations are planned to be launched in, you know, the 400, 500 kilometer altitude. above our planet. You have a lot of the satellite constellations, Starlink is just in that in that band as well. You have a lot of old debris, which is out there, right? So we really haven’t been very smart about how we use that space, right? So in the past, there were only a few objects. And so primarily nation states, we just launch things, leave their old satellites there, spend all the fuel on board. And then there was no way to do orbit them, or the old rocket bodies. And more frequently, now we see very close misses of an old piece of debris, a big, maybe a school bus satellite or a rocket body with perhaps an active satellite that didn’t have enough warning time to get out of the way, or old two pieces of debris. There was so far only, we’ve been lucky one major collision like that, about 17, 18 years ago, but chances are we’re going to have another one. So there’s one question of dealing with old debris there that endangering all our investments and different constellations that are providing not just connectivity, critical connectivity, but also Earth observation, weather, disaster response services, things like that. But also all our human plans to actually start building and expanding into space, right? But there’s also then the issue of managing all our existing constellations, making sure that now we’re numbering in the 1000s. And that number will go up, I think we’re probably going to, I think, hit 10,000 active satellites this year. A lot of them are starlings. But how do these different systems talk to each other, and making sure that all these systems are connected? function and there are no collisions between active satellites. So that’s a big issue, that’s a big area of concern. And then as we look forward, and there are a number of efforts over the last 12 months, actually as we look to the moon, how do we ensure that lunar activity is sustainable? And we deal with lunar orbits responsibly, right, but also activity on the lunar surface is done sustainably, and any activities are kind of thought through before we actually jump in and start all these activities and exploration. That’s an excellent point, Nikolai, thank you very much. Ever since I was a kid, I always looked up to the stars at night. And in the past, I remember when I was a kid, you would have to look very hard until you see the moving star, because that’s exactly what the satellite used to be, right? It doesn’t really, it’s not all that different from a star unless you see that it’s moving. And today, you don’t have to spend 10 minutes, you have to spend 30 seconds, there is a moving star all the time, just because there’s so much more activity out there.

Moderator:
Now, Morad, in terms of the, WSIS is attended for by countries and representatives from all over the world. Again, how do you take this, the notion that space is out here and bring it to all the countries in the world? How do they, can they build their business capacity in space, their national capacity in space? How they pragmatically can engage into something that is so fantastically looking, but perhaps is not yet available to many?

Mr. Murat Seitnepesov:
Yes, it’s a very interesting question, because there are a majority of the countries in this world, they’re small countries. And for them, it’s very difficult to launch on a space program. That’s why, of course, they should join the efforts, they should create alliances. And for example, maybe on a regional approach, regional base, for example, for the, again, for example, the Great Caspian region, the Caspian region, Central Asia, because if we take the region, for example… But take, for example, Central Asia. Let’s do like this. All these countries are interconnected. All problems and benefits which we have, they’re also interconnected, and that’s why you cannot just develop something which is touching the whole region only on your own. And then, because I’m normally giving the very simple example, the logistics corridors, for example. Central Asia is a landlocked region. To move cargo from, for example, Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan to the deep sea port somewhere in Georgia or in Mediterranean Sea, you need to cross five or six borders. And what countries are normally doing, they’re trying to develop own logistics infrastructure. The problem is they’re developing developing particular country, but if neighboring countries are not developed well, then the whole corridor is not working well. It means that the weakest point in this, it’s creating problems. Here, the same could be applied for the space, development of the space. And if we take methane leakage, this problem is applicable for Turkmenistan, for Iran, for Kazakhstan, for Uzbekistan. I’m not talking even about Russia, United States, and so on. But in our, in the Caspian region, there are several countries which have been suffered. And then, this is creating negative impact for the whole world. That’s why to develop the project for monitoring and detection of methane leakage, it should be a joint approach from the several countries. Now, we are going, again, for the logistics. The same. To build logistics corridors, we should have input from all countries involved. And here, again, if we are involving space technologies, like, and which could lead for logistics optimization, you cannot do logistics optimization without proper data in hands. And how to collect data, there are different regimes, for example, in the different countries. And then, we need. We need joint efforts from the countries of the region to develop also how to apply space technologies in the logistics. But in very short, the summary is we need joint cooperation, country by country. This approach will not fly, especially for the small countries. And then we need to find the application for the space technologies and jointly develop this. Great.

Moderator:
Thanks very much, Morat. Very briefly, because I do want to open it up to the speakers, to the audience and for them to ask questions. But you also had, you already described how this can disrupt our mining industry here on Earth and potentially expand it there. But also you had some really interesting ideas about geoengineering, space energy beaming and so on, which would be disruptive to many, many of the countries in a positive and negative way.

Mr. Jim Keravala:
Well, hopefully net positive. So one of the biggest challenges that we face today is how we’re generating our energy. As a civilization, we’re using about 17 terawatts of power currently. The majority of that still generated by fossil fuels. The IEA, the International Energy Agency and many other bodies have predicted growth curves of energy requirements and the expectations of how we convert that fossil fuel sourcing to renewable sources. In my view, the mining, the engineering, the processing, the manufacturing that we would require to build that new infrastructure of thousands of power generating facilities around the world and the new transmission lines infrastructure necessary to transport that power is an extraordinary undertaking that I’m not sure we fully appreciate how we will execute that. And in my view, we shouldn’t just try to build using our terrestrial capabilities and technologies and mining that infrastructure to try and meet the challenges of 2050, net zero by 2050. What I’m focusing on is, in some ways, my view is if we wanted to solve for 2050, we should have started this in 1980. So if we’re going to really try to address this over the next 70 to 75 years, what can we do for the generations to come that will leave Earth in the right stewardship and the right condition for the populations of the 22nd century? We can build 100 terawatts of power generating capacity by the end of the century using space-based solar power. Basically, solar farms in space rather than on the ground. They’re more efficient, there’s extraordinary advantages, there’s challenges to that, extraordinary challenges, but we know that the energy markets exist and we know that we have to solve for the environmental challenges here on Earth. So mobilizing that infrastructure now, we can start building the first gigawatt plants in space by 2035 with a success-oriented schedule, by 2040 with a highly expectant schedule. And from that point on, it’s just simply scaling. And this is the one energy source that we can develop 99% of the mass. off earth using lunar mining and other extraterrestrial materials so that we can re-green and rebalance the earth’s environment by managing the thermodynamics of the earth as a closed system but now opening up to space. This is the true calling of the space industry. The space industry is in fact the energy industry for earth with this context if you take that mindset into approach and I think Nikolai, you know, with the work that the World Economic Forum and other organizations have done on analyzing the baseline of our expectations for the space economy, we have a very good reference model of how we can proceed with what we know. If we adapt our paradigms and our thinking to utilize space as the energy source for earth, we can accelerate that baseline by a thousand times and the earth becomes a trillion dollar, a multi-trillion dollar industry. The space industry becomes a multi-trillion dollar industry serving existing markets, allowing the environment to rebalance, allowing the atmospheric temperatures to stabilize and I think our goal, as well as solving for net zero today, our goal should also be for at least a few of us working to figure out how do we hand over to the next century and leave the earth in pristine condition with green, clean power in abundance that will allow excess water desalinization across the world which results in extra irrigation, new crops and fertilization and the ability to then undertake the circular economy with the cost of recycling. recycling all of these goods, the billions of tons of plastic, the atmospheric and thermodynamic waste in our atmosphere and oceans, all of that cleanup costs energy. We probably have a quadrillion dollars of waste material that we’ve just poured into our atmosphere and our oceans and our land since 1945, just as a guess. We need to at least have a quadrillion dollar mechanism to turn that around and build a new capability for our civilization. What I’ve just described is a far-reaching vision. There are higher risks. It’s a lower probability of success than the baselines that we can treat as reference models in these analyses. But we do need to think in this way. We do need to think disruptively about the changes that are being forced upon us by our growth in civilization and then act accordingly to manage those changes to the end of the century.

Moderator:
I’ll let Nikolai to come back, but I also wanted to open up right after Nikolai. Please, if you have a question, raise your hand and introduce yourself. Nikolai, over to you.

Mr. Nikolai Khlystov:
Just to maybe add a couple of comments. I think one of the issues that we see right now in terms of institutional investment side is there’s just not enough of big traditional institutional investment in the space sector. To really get onto that next level and perhaps start to tackle some of the things that Jim’s been talking about, you really need big private and public investors to really come in. You need the different industries, whether it’s an energy sector, resources sector, to come in. Right now, I think the number I’ve seen is there are only about 30 billion in terms of public market trading. This is just too small for these institutional investments. investors to come in. So I think as we see over the next coming years, some of the space activity pick up. And some of these technologies start to pull themselves launch, starting to deliver. Some of these things become a little bit more, I think, easier to understand for folks who are not in the space sector. And then we really start to get to a different place. The only other thing I would just add is, maybe relevant to this conversation and to the audience, is that we’re launching a new effort this year to look at supporting countries that are just starting to have their own space programs, or perhaps have their own space programs, but they’re small. And so the idea is, how do we help countries be more strategic with their space investments, leveraging space technologies for perhaps, again, smaller budgets, not the traditional big space-faring nation budgets, and using that investment more smartly to benefit their societies, whether it’s through data, disaster response data, connecting remote locations, et cetera. And so, again, if this is something relevant to anybody in the room, or has any proposals, ideas, I’m very open to that afterwards.

Moderator:
Thanks, Nicolai. Questions? This is your opportunity. Yes, please. There’s a mic. Introduce yourself, please, and then state your question. You can ask any panelist, or you can just ask a general, and we’ll see who picks it up. Thanks.

Audience:
This is Amrita. I’m with the Center for Internet and Society in India. Very provocative conversation. Thank you for this discussion. So I am not an expert in space economy, but what I understood was that we have finite resources on Earth. Those resources are getting over, so now we’re kind of moving on to space to see if we can extract mine, et cetera, for the resources that we need for sustainability on Earth. So I guess I have a moral provocation, is that we’re saying that essentially, because our finite resources are getting over and we don’t have enough, we are going into. to mining in space, and then we’re going to get resources there. So one is that, what are the assessments of risks to ecosystem that have been developed? What are the frameworks that are used for this kind of space mining? And the second question is, of course, yes, is the response to the issues of energy, global warming, emissions, to actually just move that problem to space? Or are there other ways to think about this? So basically, the question is, we had the picnic on a beautiful beach, let it completely full of bottles and cigarette butts, and now we’re moving to the next one. How do we make sure that next one will be cleaner?

Moderator:
Maybe I’ll just jump in maybe briefly.

Mr. Nikolai Khlystov:
So excellent question, right? And I think I’m not sure there is any answers right now clearly. There are still a lot of gaps in governance frameworks, right? There are a lot of discussions which have started, but which are probably in the beginning stages about how to, if you’re going to exploit some of these resources, how to do it sustainably. There are different viewpoints. So that path is still to be really properly taken and all those issues understood. But it’s a very valid point. There are risks, right? How do you feel if you were to mine an asteroid in the future, how do you do it safely? How do you ensure international kind of alignment? And there are all sorts of discussions on that front. And then I think maybe I’ll leave the second question to Jim. How do we do that? How do we do that? He set you up. Now, how do you do that? So I think the first point is we’re not running out of resources on Earth.

Mr. Jim Keravala:
The challenges are the economic viability of the reserves that we have as the first issue. The second big issue is the environmental impact of continuing to do this at scale over the next two to three generations. So I think that’s the question we try to address when we’re thinking about expanding off Earth. And the second point is… is that all material in space is extremely abrasive. There’s no atmosphere. There’s no weathering. So the particles don’t get smoothed out. So it in fact makes common sense to be very, very careful about how you undertake your operations so that you don’t have this sharp regolith dust flying around your spacecraft or your systems, and they’re usually electrostatically charged. So it makes sense to think in an environmental benign way. But I think the principle that we need to consider, and we need to consider it very carefully before we address these issues, is where do we place our importance? Do we place our importance on the principle of sustainability or on the growth of humanity, on the growth of children, on prosperity and health and safety, and enabling the rights of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for every man, woman, and child on Earth? Now, that challenge we need to take hand-in-hand with the environmental balance. Thank you.

Moderator:
We are running out of time. So if you have a very quick question, super quick, and then we’ll combine the answer to that question with the concluding thoughts.

Audience:
I’m sorry, I just can’t help but ask the question because, Jim, you just said it. One of the, as we’re sitting here from the south, and we’re looking at you from the north, we’re trying to understand the equity, and you’re talking about saving the planet and you’re talking about children. And we just have to look at television and see the value of the children in Gaza, Palestine, actually don’t matter at all. So how are we gonna know equity and equality and inclusion for everybody when we talk about the future? Or do we leave the south on here, and off we trot to space? Thank you.

Moderator:
Good. Again, we’re answering with the combining thoughts. So let’s start with Mourad, and then we’ll move on. Nikolai, and I’ll let you answer the question.

Mr. Murat Seitnepesov:
I would like to comment actually on both questions, the previous one and this one. First of all, we should not move our problems to the space. We have problems already on this planet. We need to sort out them here. And we are starting from emission and carbon dioxide, methane leakage, global warming, and so on. And moving things, even moving the production of minerals to the space, we will not sort out our problems here. And with regards to the quality, okay, it’s difficult to comment, but I think all new technologies, they are bringing opportunities for all people in this world. For example, if we take for digital technologies or even internet, if we take 30, 40 years ago, there was a very big difference between the developed world and the developing countries, and not developed countries. Now, this difference is slowly, slowly disappearing. Why? Because everybody could have access to the digital technologies. Everybody should have access to the space. And here, how to give access to the small countries and poor countries to the space and space technologies, this is a task of the international organizations. Thank you.

Moderator:
Nikolai?

Mr. Nikolai Khlystov:
So, yeah, I think from our perspective, making sure that space economy and all the activities that happen in space and that benefit us on Earth tremendously, and which will increase, those benefits will increase, are done sustainably, right? So when we talk about orbital debris, for example, but also done inclusively, right? And I think this is an important element that’s been just brought up. And this is why we’re also looking to see how do we make sure that it’s not just the countries with large, significant space budgets that can launch rockets and can start doing all these things that benefit directly, but that greater part of the world population is able to actually participate as much as possible. this is the point of capacity building, ensuring that there is data, there’s activity, and that those populations, whether it’s young children in those countries, actually see what’s going on and it can expire to some of these things and not just watch astronauts from a select few countries land on the moon. So I think that’s an important point and absolutely a fair one.

Moderator:
Thanks, Nikolai.

Mr. Jim Keravala:
Jim, 30 seconds, bring us back to earth. So we’re building factories initially in South Africa for the manufacture of our mining robots and then across several countries across the African continent. The biggest space programs in the world will be coming from African countries in the 2030s with off-world robots deploying on earth and in space. And we’re already working with government officials in South Africa to establish cooperative teaching programs for young children and adults in these new technologies which will expand for our space robots as well. So the equanimity is going to be huge and it’s gonna be a revolution.

Moderator:
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for being fantastic audience. The next panel is already here. I urge you to stay if you can and thank you again, enjoy your day.