The future is coming. Recently, I saw one of those crazy news headlines that make you do a double-take. The headline read, “Luxembourg Wants to Be a Global Leader in Asteroid Mining." I promptly asked myself, "How can you be a global leader in something that doesn’t exist?" As it turns out, while there isn’t any actual asteroid mining taking place as of yet, it is still a multi-billion dollar industry, due to the research and development that is taking place. Luxembourg is a small, landlocked country, sandwiched between Belgium, Germany, and France. It is just less than 1000 square miles in size, has a population of 524,853, and has the highest per capita GDP in the world. It has always been a rich country, due to its location, and today acts as a major financial center in Europe. The country is already headquarters of SES, the world’s largest commercial satellite company.

The government of Luxembourg wants to be the center for the future asteroid mining industry, with the hope that the actual mining process turns out to be a profitable industry in the future. It is well worth it for Luxembourg to go through with the risk, in order to stay competitive with private US companies with similar aspirations. The two leading asteroid mining companies, Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, are located in California and receive funding not only from private investment but also from NASA.

Many of these frontier-pushing space movements including asteroid mining, exploring Mars, and using satellites to explore the solar system face a lot of flak from mainstream society because of the billions of dollars that are “wasted” on space technology. In the U.S. alone, an estimated two billion dollars are invested per year into asteroid mining development. Now, we all know that that money could be spent on much more earthly matters, pun intended, like education, alleviating poverty, infrastructure, clean energy, etc. and I definitely think governments misuse their funding. But private enterprise should certainly be supported in finding industries in space. Just before the end of 2015, the U.S. passed the “U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act,” which gives U.S. companies the right to extract resources from space. This is in contention with the UN’s Outer Space Treaty (which I cannot believe exists), which prevents any one country from laying claims or appropriation to space. It’s a tricky legal situation.

I truly believe that the next step in the advancement of space exploration must be commercial. NASA and other national space programs have paved the way just as the Spanish crown and Columbus paved the way for the East India Company. The next step is for commercial industry to step in and prove that space is economically viable, which will, in turn, provide a reason for NASA to push exploration even further, to more dizzying heights.