We Need Space’s Endless Resources to Expand as a Species

In an interview at Singularity University’s Global Summit in San Francisco, space entrepreneur Bob Richards gave us a rundown of current efforts to explore, mine, and even settle the moon.

Richards is co-founder, president, and CEO of Moon Express, a space transportation and lunar resources company at Cape Canaveral. Moon Express is a finalist in the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition to land on the moon, and maker of a robotic lander they hope to launch later this year or next.

“We as a species…are emerging from the surface of the Earth into the ocean of space,” Richards said. “If you imagine the planet Earth on an island floating in space, and you look...to the horizon, where do you paddle? Well, if you see another island on the horizon, that's where you go. That's what the moon is to planet Earth. It's a sister world within reach.”

Once the sole domain of superpowers, space exploration is now possible for small teams of private entrepreneurs and engineers, he said. The political drivers of the first moonshot got us there but ultimately proved an unsustainable motivator. Now, he said, the motives are economic. We know the moon is chock-full of resources, even precious water.

“It's transformational because the moon becomes a gas station in the sky, right? Water is like the oil of the solar system,” Richards said. “So, that is the game changer. Not just for the economics of all the resources of the moon, but the economics of getting anywhere else in the solar system.”

The ultimate goal, he said, is to liberate humans from Earth’s limited resources.