Plus: why 'lunar gold rush' talk could be dangerous
By Dan Robitzski
Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.
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As the global climate crisis and other human activity continue to threaten Earth's biodiversity, it may be time to build backups for our backup vaults storing repositories of seeds and plant life. That's according to U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. David Stuckenberg, who wrote an article calling for a lunar seed vault that can store seeds and other important biological artifacts far away from Earth.
He noted in the article that melting permafrost and war have already threatened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, often called the "Doomsday Vault," long considered to be the ultimate backup for Earth's seed banks.
The moon's "extreme conditions could naturally support cryogenic storage of seeds, spores and even animal gametes for thousands of years. Additionally, the moon's lava tubes — vast underground chambers — provide natural radiation shielding and stable environments, almost perfectly suited for long-term preservation," Stuckenberg wrote.
You can see the rest of his article here.
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 | The entrance to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Credit: Svalbard Global Seed Vault
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The idea of a sustained human presence on the moon, where deposits of helium-3 and water ice fuel humanity's expansion deeper into the cosmos, is among one of the most fascinating science-fiction-come-to-life concepts. But calls for a lunar "gold rush" are premature — and potentially dangerous — argued Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Ultimately, there's no economic case for rushing to gather up moon resources, Crawford wrote.
As he put it, "There is a danger that a gold rush frenzy may result in an unsustainable speculative bubble which, if it collapses, might actually harm the prospects for future lunar exploration. The analogy isn't exact, but just as the failure of the Viking missions to find life on Mars in the 1970s arguably set back Mars exploration for decades, it would be unfortunate if the failure to turn a quick profit on the moon had a similar negative effect on lunar exploration."
You can read his full argument here. | | |
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This week, we also have a renewed call for military readiness against "space stalkers," or spacecraft capable of approaching and disabling critical satellites in orbit. Framed around the Trump administration's 200th executive order, which called on the Department of Defense to be renamed the Department of War in a bid to promote military readiness, independent policy analyst Brian G. Chow published an article saying that military readiness would more likely stem from unifying divided political parties around an unresolved threat than swapping around titles.
In this case, Chow argued that the greatest threat that needs managing, and therefore "the perfect vehicle" for the aministration's first readiness project, is Chinese dual-use spacecraft's potential ability to disable American infrastructure.
You can see the full article here.
SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these opinion articles are solely those of the authors. |
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