This one fascinated me because it contains so much fertile ground for some really high octane speculation about a possible pattern that might be revealing itself(and I want to thank Mr. M.H. and many others for bringing this significant story to my attention)
Luxembourg Aims to Jump-Start Asteroid Mining
For me, the hints of a possible "future pattern" for space commercialization are to be found in the first five paragraphs:
The Luxembourg government on Feb. 3 announced it would seek to jump-start an industrial sector to mine asteroid resources in space by creating regulatory and financial incentives.
The incentives include co-investment in research and development and, eventually, direct capital investment in space resource-mining companies setting up shop in Luxembourg.
Announced by Vice Prime Minister Etienne Schneider, who is also the nation's economics minister, the initiative has already lured U.S.-based Deep Space Industries of Mountain View, California, to create a Luxembourg subsidiary. Schneider said other U.S. companies, including SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, and Planetary Resources of Redmond, Washington, are in talks with Luxembourg authorities regarding the Spaceresources.lu venture.
Luxembourg is home to satellite fleet operator SES, whose ascension from outsider-startup status in the 1980s to today's place as one of the two largest commercial fleet operators by revenue Schneider cited an example of what is possible when Luxembourg sets its mind to something.
SES in the past three years has been the biggest commercial backer of SpaceX, whose stated corporate mission is the establishment of a human colony on Mars. Schneider said extracting water from asteroids to create fuel for deep-space missions is one application of space mining.
Luxembourg has long been one of those centers of banking that is, well, "lax," and has been one of those centers for corporations to go where the regulatory oversight by government is minimal, and this is at the center of my high octane speculations today.
Over the past few years, as we have been tracking this asteroid mining/space commercialization meme on this site, and as other sites have been following the same story, a number of points have emerged: (1) the USA has been driving this move toward space commercialization, and with its typical "unipolar" attitude, as the American Congress just recently passed a space mining and commercialization bill, without any regard for existing international treaty stipulations. If one reads through the maze of academic articles trying to spin this away, what the American act essentially did was to define away the spirit of those treaties while adhering ostensibly to their letter. Other nations, of course, have also indicated their intentions to join the new "space race." Additionally, (2) this website has maintained consistently the idea that Mr. Richard Dolan's idea of a "breakaway civilization" is probably true, i.e., a deep infrastructure of a black projects world which through the decades of enormous financing, may have perfected technologies well in advance, perhaps even by a century, of the technologies publicly available. This deep state structure, let it be noted, is largely composed of very large corporations with international extent.
Enter Luxembourg, with its new drive to offer its unique banking and investment environment to the endeavor.
I suspect that what we are looking at is the beginning of a pattern, or at least, the first announcement of something probably well underway, namely, that the coming space commercial age will have its financial hubs located precisely in such countries and tax havens, Luzembourg, Jersey, and so on. All one really needs is a public hub for an interface between that black projects corporate world and the emerging world of space commercialization. But to continue the cloak of secrecy surrounding both, one needs places like Luxembourg. International cooperation will emerge in the form of corporate agreements, and here too, Luxembourg seems intent to light the way.
If this high octane speculation is true, then we can expect that similar centers of space-finance activity will emerge in other similar countries and sites, Taiwan, the channel islands, Andorra! The regulatory climate, and the traditions of discretion and secrecy almost assure it.
Why am I emphasizing this so much? Because as I've also pointed out many times, the commercialization of space almost completely guarantees its weaponization to secure the "shipping lanes" from potential enemies - whoever those may be and wherever they may be from. One convenient way to minimize potential conflicts on earth being extended into space, is to create an international "security force" from private contributing corporate interests.
That, I think, is what makes this story so very signigicant: we are being given a glimpse into the pattern of the future.
Expect more of the same to come, if this reading is anywhere close to the truth.
See you on the flip side...
Rockwell Institute Integrated space plan from 1989 sure looking like its following the time table accordingly.
I blew it up and found an interesting section regarding a moon port, and self supporting lunar base. time range was estimated 2013-2018.
Maybe as the race for commercialization becomes more solidified these military establishments will be handed over to corporations to maintain at a costly price only the corporate world could afford and bring into the public eye.
zika, ebola, banker bail ins, negative interest on deposits, positive interest on loans, high unemployment, low education, gmo factory farmed non food, chronic degenerative disease,…
when do things get bad enough that folk in quarantined countries are literally dying to get out and more than willing to take any route possible? is this how merchant marines filled ships over the last 1000 years? is this how empires hollowed out conquered lands?
One of my ‘hmmm’ experiences growing-up was while a biology lab assistant. We would fill-up petri dishes with agar (a custard-consistency growth-medium), swab them with a bacteria colony we wanted to investigate, and cover them. One colony was just left untouched, as a control.
Well, that control colony went through an exponential growth period, filled the dish surface, and then went ‘extinct’ in-toto, probably because it had exhausted available nutrients. Even as a youngster, that had a profound influence on me.
Now, scale that up to planet Earth size. There is a certain ‘elephant in the room’ that no one wants to talk about. The elites would like to ‘solve’ it in a certain-way to benefit them. But nevertheless, it does need to be resolved. SF writers over the years have envisioned everything from expanding into the galaxy to nightmarish dystopias and extinctions. Interesting times…
I think if the human race worked together under one common goal there would be no such thing as scarcity, however becouse of multinational corporations and governments there will always be scarcity by design, it fits their agenda of enslaving and conquering and owning everything
All of these ‘space mining’ stories make me think of just more kabuki scenes for the masses, and it would be like the USA to pass a space law without taking into account any other country, but I still think it’s disinfo
I have this nightmare that all these aliens and craft we see are ours and out there is nothing but artifacts of previously inhabited worlds wiped out by some widespread cosmic event. What if we are alone? A plague species perfectly suited to repopulate space and equiped with the necessarily faulty moral compass of the colonist/invader.
In my nightmare we are lonely and have nothing left but a tenuous faith in humanity. No big friendly aliens and gods to step in when it’s finally too much and no evil aliens and demons to blame for it all going astray, just us and a galaxy of dusty bones to remind us of everything we are not.
What if we live in the only library left in a last attemp to conserve something of what was before? Lonely orphans, refugee remnants all alone with no family left alive to return to.
Wake up sweating
I also wonder about: One Is The Loneliest Number scenario.
Odds are against it.
But, as Einstein says/God does NOT play dice with the universe.
Or a twisted version, where the Gods make a bet.
If a mortal player is caught in worlds between evil and good; will his inhumanity win in spirit, and/or in form?
Or, will humanity triumph; both in spirit and form?
One is given the dice that one gets to throw, then something unknown determines the outcome.
If that thing that “sustains” us is always there, what role does chance get to play in it? Maybe there’s chance, freewill, and something else that’s independent from both but that something has its hand in both..?
Free will?
Good question. Many scientist/scholars are probing that ? in light of recent experiments indicating the decisions are made elsewhere from the conscious. The conscious simply justifies the decision made elsewhere.
Of course, that is what some interpret theses experiment mean.
In either case, there is that so-called roll-of-the-dice. Yet, even there the outcomes are predetermined in precise measurements over large numbers of possible outcomes – fated odds that make casinos very rich worldwide.
Moxie,
My reply to you was scrubbed.
Apparently, the censor AI-bot
has no conscious
what-so-ever.
Dan, I can recommend the ‘Foundation’ series by Isaac Asimov as an example of a humans-only universe (falling and rising) and the ‘Berserker’ series by Fred Saberhagen as to why there might be lots of previously-inhabited worlds out there. Sleep well…
The Foundation series is amazing but I’d be very surprised if the “Dan” hasn’t read them….
for me goshawks, the works of Alistair Reynolds and perhaps China Mieville are currently the most fascinating so far, fictional works, out there…
ps….Frank Herberts “Dune” has resonated with me for years though
Evermore, Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series has been important for me, also, with ‘tidbits’ like the Bene Gesserit ‘indoctrination campaigns’ for long-range assimilation of planets, precognition benefits & dangers, muscle-memory fighting techniques, etc. However, a little too dystopian of a future for my tastes, overall…
I haven’t read Alastair Reynolds or China Miéville (yet), as they were born about a generation behind me. By that time, I was too busy with investigating real-life strangeness (grin)…
May the Force Be With You.
Because if you don’t have force backing up your claim, you got a proverbial bag of you know what.
Not only will those claiming ownership need force in space; they’ll need it on Earth. And they’ll need in in multiples, commonly referred as Force-Multipliers.
So is it the digital multipliers of fraud that buys The FORCE?
Or, are there players outside the box, running this game?
Seems kind of arrogant to assume you own space, or the galaxy; and only need to officially stamp an authenticity of ownership certificate to strip it, and eventually leave it floating as waste.
Joseph, as I read your article, I had the strongest ‘déjà vu’ of your financial books around Venice. That city effectively did not exist before powerful ‘Babylon Banksters’ (my spelling) decided to move their financial dealings to that area. With absolutely nothing in the way of local resources, Venice rose to a dominant position. (And declined when said Players moved shop, much later.) Ah, Luxembourg…
Another ‘déjà vu’ issue from your books was the ‘financial warfare’ between Venice, Florence, Genoa, etc. Each striving for dominance, while not doing something stupid because of the Ottoman Turks just over the horizon. ‘Taiwan, the channel islands, Andorra!’ Hmmm…
I actually think that Elon Musk and SpaceX will be looked-back-on as the ‘kick-off-nudge’ for Solar System exploration. If no ‘breakaway civilization’ exists, he broke the ‘cartel’ for space access consisting of the intelligence agencies and the mega-corporations. Before that, they had held the dollars-per-pound-to-orbit as high as OPEC held the price of oil. Now, all kinds of ‘riff-raff’ will make it to orbit. For the moment, TPTB are in disarray. (A Göbekli Tepe moment!)
If a ‘breakaway civilization’ does exist, Musk has made concealment of it much harder. Aforementioned ‘riff-raff’ could be observant, and even assemble proof (hence, spacecraft accidents). To his credit, Musk might have unwittingly (hmmm) forced a strategic re-assessment around Disclosure…
Hence, as you said, Luxembourg…
You should do some research on Elon Musk. Far too many red flags on him to suit me. It is more likely that he is an intelligence construct than what he is claimed to be.
In one way, I agree with you. With all the big corporations and alphabet-agencies which he has p-o’ed by cheap access to space, he should have had an airplane accident or a heart attack, in an ‘X-Files’ sense, by now. The fact that he has not means either he is a Player or he is Protected in some other way.
I still kind of see him as an embodiment of the dreams of the 1960s-70s moon-race/SF people who are still wondering ‘What Happened?’ He may be a shrewd businessman, but he also seems to have – at root – a true desire to expand into space. For the right reasons.
Perhaps the collective ‘We’ have generated a chi-field to keep him alive…
I’m not sure piracy would be a problem and the need for space based weapons. But if some group claims ownership of all the most valuable asteroids before they can actually take possession of them then they would have to have a means of guarding their claims from others who would rightfully refuse to recognize their greed and arrogance. I suspect they may be attempting to figure out which asteroids and areas are the richest and laying claim to them by merit of recognizing their full value first rather than gaining access to them first. Mining the Moon in my opinion is a very dangerous plan that could cause us to loose it. Venus may very well be the actual Earth in the future, or what is left of it after fracking weakened the crust and loseing the Moon to over mining of the wrong ratio of charged elements that keep it captured by Earth’s balance ratio of oppositely charged outer elements. The true nature of any given observable reference in space may be more entangled with the future or past reference of ones own current position in time than many realize.
My guess is they’ll use the Inertia-less drive units to do the mining and transport and put up the facade chemical rockets and claim those are the workhorses.
This event has serious under currents and needs to be watched.
The present Grand Duke of Luxembourg has a complex web of dynastic connections, from the House of Nassau to the House of Bourbon, and is a grandson of the controversial Leopold III of Belgium. Connections that might come into play as the dynastic oligarchies seek to hold their ground. And as Catholics, with the benefit of a Vatican alliance.
If popes can advance claims to Mars and perhaps beyond, a Terrestrial Grand Duke can at least aspire to a few choice asteroids…
It’s back to the good old days of Plunder, Slavery, Feudalism in other words business as usual. The more things change the more things stay the same We Don’t Need No Badges We Don’t Need No Laws except against the poor and powerless. Just wondering if they will leave us proles to escape by voting with our feet or will they offer us for sale to the highest bidder to who ever is out there.