Mars highly likely, but also continues an unblemished threeyear safety record for SpaceX, the company which built it. The private space industry, for so long reliant on government contracts and the deep pockets of a few industrialists, is no longer science fiction. Soon rockets, just like this one, will be as familiar as a Boeing 737.
After watching the landing streamed on Twitter, Blumenthal – an early stage investor in an asteroid mining company – shares it with a WhatsApp group of like-minded individuals. Among them are a highly paid NBA coach and a Hollywood director. To the link Blumenthal adds – only half-ironically – ‘SHOW ME THE MONEY’.
A response pops up straight away. Blumenthal doesn’t know the person intimately but presumes they watched the same stream, ‘There ain’t enough \$ in the world where this is going.’ Blumenthal doesn’t know it, but every other member of the group will watch the landing just like he did, although not all in real time. Some will be at home, others eating dinner with clients, friends and family. One will be lying in bed with her lover. Wherever they are, all of them will watch history unfold on the same OLED display in the palm of their hand. The technological trend allowing them to do so, ever-cheaper cameras with constantly improving resolution, ensured the rocket’s pilotless landing was entirely automated.
As Blumenthal goes to check the basketball scores, Sandra – an old friend and Manhattan lawyer – chimes in: ‘Our problem is there is too much of the stuf, it’s going to be so easy everyone will be putting a rocket up their ass to get there next.’
Nobody responds, although the others are all aware that a sudden oversupply of minerals will mean plummeting prices. For now, that doesn’t matter, and it won’t for another decade at least. That’s because this small group of people will be at the front of the queue when asteroid mining becomes the fastest-growing industry in history. It won’t last, of course, but not much does these days.
Introduction
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