Because South Korea lacks sufficient metal and min-eral resources, government and business representa-tives seek agreements with North Korean officials to extract and use resources fro
Trang 2South Korea
Categories: Countries; government and resources
Beginning in the late twentieth century, South Korea’s
economy rapidly expanded, ranking second
interna-tionally in growth, because of industrial development
and income from such resources as semiconductors.
Because South Korea lacks sufficient metal and
min-eral resources, government and business
representa-tives seek agreements with North Korean officials to
extract and use resources from that country’s
abun-dant deposits.
The Country
South Korea, an East Asian country, is located on a
peninsula divided by the Korean Demilitarized Zone
(DMZ) that separates South Korea from North Korea
As of 2004, South Korea’s economy had attained a
value of $1 trillion In 2007, South Korea’s economy
was the third largest in Asia and the thirteenth largest
globally
South Korea’s landscape is characterized mostly by
mountains, plains, and valleys, with the Han, Nakdong,
Yeongsan, and Geum rivers representing main interior
water resources South Korea includes approximately
three thousand islands of varying sizes and distances
from the peninsula Pusan, the country’s biggest port,
accesses the Korea Strait on South Korea’s southern
coast, and the port at Inch’on on South Korea’s
west-ern coast is next to the Yellow Sea The country is
di-vided into nine provinces and seven metropolitan
cit-ies The DMZ contains diverse natural resources, which
are protected from human appropriation
Coal
South Korean government officials encourage
extrac-tion of indigenous coal resources in an attempt to
decrease imports of oil and other fuels to generate
energy Among the world’s top-five oil importers,
South Korea relied on oil for 50 percent of its energy
needs in the early twenty-first century and also
pur-chased large amounts of natural gas Coal provides
almost one-fourth of South Korea’s energy resources
South Korean coal deposits, mostly in the form of
anthracite, consist of 1.4 billion metric tons, with less
than one-third of that reserve considered accessible
for extraction Korean coalfields occur in provinces
stretching from the southwestern to the northeastern
regions of the country Sites that produced signifi-cant amounts of coal include fields at Mungyeong, Danyang, Samcheok, Honam, Boeun, and Yeong-weol Additional places with coal deposits are Gimpo, Yeoncheon, and Chungnam
South Korea’s coal industry has functioned since the 1920’s, with elevated oil prices in the 1970’s result-ing in its highest production rates in the twentieth century Approximately 350 mines produced 24 mil-lion tons annually until the late 1980’s, when lower oil prices, higher incomes, and consumers’ preferences for natural gas and clean energy sources resulted in the South Korean government’s demanding the closure of most mines The field at Samcheok continued to sup-ply coal in the 1990’s despite economic fluctuations
In the early twenty-first century, South Korean offi-cials emphasized that coal was an abundant native re-source that could reinforce that country’s security
by providing energy that could not be accessed or controlled by foreign nations They prioritized this resource instead of focusing on developing renew-able solar, hydropower, and wind energies The gov-ernment’s Korea Mining Promotion Corporation (KMPC) improved mines with technology and ma-chinery near coal-rich fields Investors also established private mines at Dongwon and Samchuk in Kangwon Province
Despite these efforts, South Korean industrializa-tion dramatically increased energy needs and resulted
in South Korean power companies importing coal from China, Australia, and the United States Korean coal supplied merely 3.2 million metric tons in 2004, approximately 4 percent of the 82.2 million metric tons of coal-generated energy in South Korea that year Tungsten
The South Korean tungsten deposit at Sangdong in Kangwon Province provided approximately 90 per-cent of the country’s tungsten for domestic and ex-port uses Tungsten is a useful industrial metal, and aerospace technology often incorporates tungsten because it is not altered in extreme heat situations Tungsten is found in deposits of several compounds such as wolframite and scheelite, located in the moun-tainous regions of South Korea
Operating since 1947, the Sangdong mine has sup-plied a large percentage of tungsten available to inter-national markets The Chongyang mine is another source of South Korean tungsten Both mines also ex-tract molybdenum South Korean manufacturers use
Trang 3South Korea: Resources at a Glance
Official name: Republic of Korea Government: Republic
Capital city: Seoul Area: 38,505 mi2; 98,720 km2
Population (2009 est.): 48,508,972 Language: Korean
Monetary unit: South Korean won (KRW)
Economic summary:
GDP composition by sector (2008 est.): agriculture, 3%; industry, 39.5%; services, 57.6%
Natural resources: coal, tungsten, graphite, molybdenum, lead, hydropower potential
Land use (2005): arable land, 16.58%; permanent crops, 2.01%; other, 81.41%
Industries: electronics, telecommunications, automobile production, chemicals, shipbuilding, steel
Agricultural products: rice, root crops, barley, vegetables, fruit, cattle, pigs, chickens, milk, eggs, fish
Exports (2008 est.): $433.5 billion
Commodities exported: semiconductors, wireless telecommunications equipment, motor vehicles, computers, steel,
ships, petrochemicals
Imports (2008 est.): $427.4 billion
Commodities imported: machinery, electronics and electronic equipment, oil, steel, transport equipment, organic
chemicals, plastics
Labor force (2008 est.): 24.35 million
Labor force by occupation (2007): agriculture, 7.2%; industry, 25.1%; services, 67.7%
Energy resources:
Electricity production (2008 est.): 440 billion kWh
Electricity consumption (2008 est.): 385.1 billion kWh
Electricity exports (2008 est.): 0 kWh
Electricity imports (2008 est.): 0 kWh
Natural gas production (2007 est.): 640 million m3
Natural gas consumption (2007 est.): 37 billion m3
Natural gas exports (2007 est.): 0 m3
Natural gas imports (2007 est.): 34.4 billion m3
Natural gas proved reserves ( Jan 2008 est.): 50 billion m3
Oil production (2007 est.): 20,970 bbl/day Oil imports (2008): 2.37 million bbl/day Oil proved reserves: N/A
Source: Data from The World Factbook 2009 Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2009.
Notes: Data are the most recent tracked by the CIA Values are given in U.S dollars Abbreviations: bbl/day = barrels per day;
GDP = gross domestic product; km 2 = square kilometers; kWh = kilowatt-hours; m 3 = cubic meters; mi 2 = square miles.
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Korea
North Korea
Japan
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Trang 4tungsten for electronic components such as lightbulb
filaments, wires, and tubes in appliances and
ma-chines and mix tungsten with carbide to create
effec-tive cutting devices and industrial tools Jewelry,
par-ticularly wedding bands, is often crafted from tungsten
because of the metal’s durability
South Korea led world exports of tungsten until
China began exporting large quantities of that metal
in 1993, resulting in prices dropping Unable to profit
from tungsten, South Korea ceased extracting ore
containing tungsten in the early 1990’s In 2006, the
Sangdong mine resumed operations when it was
bought by the Canadian company Oriental Minerals
The government’s Korea Resources Corporation
(KORES) estimated reserves totaled 85,700 metric
tons of tungsten trioxide and 63,500 metric tons of
molybdenum
Molybdenum
Molybdenum is a crucial resource incorporated in
stainless steel manufacture at steel mills South Korea,
ranking fifth in global steel production in 2007, sought
to extract indigenous sources of molybdenum in an
attempt to stop importing that resource from rival
molybdenum producers Chile and China, which have
the largest molybdenum deposits internationally
China stated it would limit exports and licenses
regu-lating that market, intensifying South Korean efforts
to mine molybdenum domestically
South Korean government officials
also envisioned exporting surplus
molybdenum to steel mills in
Tai-wan, Japan, and other countries to
generate income as the value of that
resource rose
In 2006, KORES and KTC Korea
Company, which trades metals,
co-operated to finance and build South
Korea’s initial smelter for
molybde-num at Yeosu That facility, which
be-gan operating the following year, was
capable of processing 6,000 metric
tons of molybdenum annually At
that time, South Korea’s
molybde-num smelter was the seventh biggest
internationally The Yeosu smelter
provided 35 percent of molybdenum
needed by South Korean steel mills
South Korea’s molybdenum mine
at Uljin, containing approximately
3.7 million metric tons of molybdenum, shipped 670 tons of that resource yearly to the Yeosu smelter with plans to increase the amount of ore extracted so pro-duction could double KORES stated that representa-tives would seek additional molybdenum deposits in South Korea, and build mines, in addition to those at Sangdong and Chongyang, to extract that resource
In 2007, Metal Bulletin reported international prices
for molybdenum had risen 25 percent from the previ-ous year and expected global demand to increase 5.2 percent annually, offering South Korea a lucrative ex-port opex-portunity
Minerals South Korea lost direct access to approximately 90 percent of the peninsula’s mineral resources when the 1953 armistice divided the peninsula at the 38th Parallel after the Korean War Prior to division, most mining and industrial activity had occurred in the northern half of the peninsula, where the majority of Korean natural resources were located Geologists have stated that there are approximately 220 mineral types in North Korea, ranging from coal to uranium, which have reserves worth $2 trillion North Korean mineral resources included 2.7 billion metric tons of iron ore, 1.08 million metric tons of nickel, and 907 metric tons of gold, almost twenty-five times greater than South Korean mineral resources South Korea
South Korean workers unload blocks of zinc from a North Korean cargo ship North Korea has more natural resources than South Korea, but the latter has better processing facilities.
(Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters/Landov)
Trang 5spent $13 billion in 2006 importing minerals to fulfill
manufacturers’ needs
Despite political differences, officials from North
and South Korea discussed the possibility of South
Ko-rea providing North KoKo-rea with money if South
Kore-ans could invest in North Korean mines to acquire
magnesite, zinc, and other specified mineral deposits
North Korea did not have sufficient mining expertise
and technological devices to extract those resources
In the early twenty-first century, the Kaesong
Indus-trial Park was built north of the DMZ South Korean
businesses invested in manufacturing at that facility’s
factories Industrial representatives from both
coun-tries met several times at P’yongyang, North Korea,
re-garding South Korea’s desire to receive northern
nat-ural resources
In 2007, Han-ho Lee, representing KORES, and
Un-up Chung, director of the North Korean
Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Association,
dis-cussed an agreement involving the North Korean
South Hwanghae Province lead mine The two Koreas
arranged to extract black lead resources, of which
725.6 to 907 metric tons would be shipped to South
Korea and distributed to buyers by Wonjin
Corpora-tion The representatives approved another
lead-min-ing collaboration to acquire that mineral resource
lo-cated in Pungcheon They also discussed a mutual
project in South Hwanghae Province at Shinwon to
start extracting limestone from a mine located there
By December, 2007, the South Korean Ministry of
Commerce, Industry and Energy had requested
sur-veys of North Korea’s geological resources to aid
South Korean investors interested in northern
miner-als South Korean officials noted that mines in western
North Korea in the Haeju-Nampo area had
phos-phate, limestone, and graphite deposits In the
east-ern part of North Korea, South Hamgyeong
Prov-ince’s Dancheon mines and power plants interested
South Korean companies North Korea sent 500
met-ric tons of zinc to the Inch’on port in 2007, and
an-other shipment of the same amount in 2008, for a
total of $2.4 million worth of the north’s minerals to
compensate South Korea for its economic assistance
Graphite
South Korean miners extract approximately 2 million
metric tons annually from graphite deposits south of
the DMZ, including seams in the Kyongsang district
This resource enables South Korea to be the top
producer of graphite in the world Because this
graph-ite has minimal carbon, South Korea sells most of
it to Japanese foundries instead of supplying it to do-mestic manufacturers Seeking better-quality graph-ite sources, South Korean representatives secured agreements with North Korean officials regarding graphite deposits above the 38th parallel
In 2003, KORES contracted for a 50 percent share with the North Korean Kwangmyung Trading Com-pany, investing $5.77 million and supplying equip-ment to operate a $10.2 million graphite-processing plant near the Jeongchon mine in South Hwanghae Province, which held 5.67 million metric tons of graph-ite ore and could produce 2,721 metric tons yearly South Korea’s half of that amount would fulfill 20 per-cent of the country’s domestic needs for graphite over
a fifteen-year period
The South Hwanghae factory started producing graphite in 2007 In November, 2007, North Korean representatives shipped approximately 180 metric tons
of graphite from the North Korean port at Nampo to Inch’on The joint graphite-mining effort stalled the next year for several reasons, including stricter poli-cies regarding North Korea enacted by South Korean president Myung-bak Lee in 2008 Insufficient elec-tricity in North Korea to power graphite mining, the north’s restrictions involving transporting goods across the border, and their nuclear missile tests dis-rupted resource-mining agreements
Semiconductors South Korea expands its economy with technology and electronics exports and has consistently been a global leader in the production of semiconductor resources Semiconductors are South Korea’s most valuable export; the country ships more semiconduc-tors internationally than televisions and automobiles Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Electronics Industrial Company, and GoldStar (now LG Electronics) domi-nated semiconductor manufacturing in the late 1980’s Those manufacturers worked with the govern-ment’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute to create a semiconductor with a four-megabit random access memory (RAM) chip, enabling stor-age of four million binary units, revolutionary at that time, matching semiconductor achievements in the United States and Japan In 1996, South Korean semi-conductor companies manufactured 17 percent of dynamic RAM semiconductors in the world South Korea’s semiconductor resources generated more than $10 billion annually during the 1990’s
Trang 6By the early twenty-first century, South Korea
was producing the greatest quantity of
semicon-ductors globally, with Samsung’s semiconductor
plant at Kiheung and Hynix Semiconductor
man-ufacturing most of the world’s memory chips
South Korean engineers seek to improve
semi-conductor design, speed, and capacity to
com-pete with regional rivals Japan, China, and India
and secure electronics markets worldwide Since
2004, the Consortium of Advanced
Semiconduc-tor Research has focused on enhancing this
tech-nology in South Korea and expanding
produc-tion of semiconductors designed specifically for
vehicles South Korean semiconductors earned
$17.34 billion during the first eight months of
2004 The next year, Samsung Electronics was
credited with producing 20 percent of South
Ko-rean exports
The economic recession of 2008 and 2009
im-pacted South Korea’s semiconductor industry
Starting in July, 2008, South Korean exports of
semiconductors decreased as the result of several
factors, including a surplus of semiconductors
and economic problems in the United States and
Europe, which are both major markets for South
Korean computer products South Korean
offi-cials suggested the country could regain its
in-ternational status for exporting semiconductors
within two years by improving the quality and
ca-pabilities of South Korean semiconductors In
2009, Samsung Electronics represented 30.3
per-cent of semiconductors produced, ranking first
internationally; Hynix, ranked second globally,
manufactured 19.1 percent of semiconductors
Other Resources
South Korean gold and silver deposits and mines are
located on Muguk and Gasado Island Several
hun-dred thousand metric tons of copper are refined
an-nually at Onsan and Changhang smelters Fisheries
had represented 1 percent of South Korean exports
until a shift in focus to technology exports occurred,
resulting in less commercial fishing In 2009, South
Korea invested $17.8 billion in a river restoration
project to improve water resources Programs to
re-plenish forests damaged in twentieth century wars
contributed to increased timber resources for
eco-nomic gains
Because South Korea’s native resources for energy
are limited, the country relies on nuclear and thermal
plants to produce power In 2006, nuclear power plants produced 36.6 percent of electricity, representing 379.73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity generated South Korea used the fifth most nuclear energy inter-nationally in 2007 A tidal power plant built in 2009 at the lake near Sihwa produced the same amount of power annually as obtained from 862,000 barrels of oil, and a bigger tidal power plant, designed to be the largest in the world, was planned for construction on Ganghwa Island South Korean officials encourage photovoltaic cell manufacturing and power plants to supplement energy resources and export for profit
By 2008, South Korea was ranked fourth globally in photovoltaic technology In the early twenty-first cen-tury, South Korea produced the second most power in Asia and was ranked sixth in global power production
Elizabeth D Schafer
Hana Micron employees develop semiconductors used mainly by Sam-sung Electronics South Korea is a leading producer of semiconductors.
(Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trang 7Further Reading
Fackler, Martin “Big Dreams for North Korean
Indus-trial Park.” The New York Times, August 21, 2008,
p C3
“In the Global War for Resources, Korea Could Be
Left Behind.” Business Korea 26, no 297 (March,
2009): 16-17
Kim, Sang-Wan, et al “Analysis of Ground Subsidence
in Coal Mining Area Using SAR Interferometry.”
Geosciences Journal 12, no 3 (September, 2008):
277-284
Mathews, John A., and Dong-Sung Cho Tiger
Technol-ogy: The Creation of a Semiconductor Industry in East
Asia New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Web Site
Republic of Korea (official Web site)
http://www.korea.net
See also: Coal; Hydroenergy; Resources as a source
of international conflict; Semiconductors; Silicon
Space resources
Categories: Ecological resources; obtaining and
using resources; social, economic, and political
issues
The vastness beyond Earth’s thin atmosphere is rich
in extraterrestrial resources Microgravity technologies
have been developed to take advantage of those
re-sources Solar energy captured on Earth or in space
is used to generate electrical power Applications in
communications, global monitoring, and the Global
Positioning System have been developed to improve the
quality of human life Satellites document planetary
biosphere changes that occur naturally or from human
activity.
Background
Launching Sputnik 1 in 1957, the Soviet Union began
a race to develop technology that provided routine
ac-cess to space The region from low Earth orbit (LEO)
outward to geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) is
con-centrated with satellites that peer regularly at Earth or
with telescopes looking outward The region between
LEO and GEO is the most utilized with regard to
space resources There, some resources have present
commercial profitability Space beyond GEO remains largely for scientific exploration and resource specu-lation
Communication Satellites
An object in GEO revolves about Earth’s center in ex-actly one day This means that as Earth rotates on its axis, a GEO object appears to hang directly overhead Geostationary position is 35,800 kilometers above Earth’s surface
Early communications satellites were only put in LEO The next push was to install operational systems
in GEO to relay television images, data, and tele-phone signals around the world LEO satellites have regained a share of communications traffic These cross an observer’s sky in ten to twenty minutes, so a constellation of satellites is required for continuous reception Because LEO satellites are only 500 to 1,400 kilometers above Earth’s surface, they can be reached with a signal much less powerful than one re-quired for a geostationary satellite Consequently, ground stations that provide uplinks and downlinks for LEO satellites can be modest Thus, LEO satellites can provide portable telephone service and data links
to underdeveloped areas
Weather and Climate Observing Satellites Geostationary weather satellites provide images in vis-ible and infrared light Polar-orbiting weather satel-lites survey virtually the whole Earth Satellite instru-ments monitor stratospheric ozone concentrations, atmospheric particulates, temperature profiles as a function of atmospheric altitude, and pollutant levels (such as chlorofluorocarbons) Some measure sur-face, lower atmospheric, and ocean temperature vari-ations to monitor suspected global warming A great advantage of global weather systems has been ad-vanced warning of hurricanes, tornadoes, and other destructive systems, resulting in tremendous savings
of human life
Navigation Satellites The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of twenty-four Navstar satellites maintained by the U.S Department of Defense A person using a special re-ceiver and security codes can determine a location to fewer than 18 meters Without those security codes, accuracy is limited to around 100 meters This is suffi-cient for civilians to drive to a location in a strange city
or to navigate a ship The military uses GPS not only
Trang 8for navigation but also to provide flight-path
correc-tions to deployed smart weapons GPS was
incorpo-rated into guidance and navigation systems aboard
the space shuttle GPS became a staple for
search-and-rescue services and provides a means for detailed
documentation of surface locations for commercial
and scientific purposes
In 2009, a GPS satellite launched by a Delta II
booster lifted off from Cape Canaveral At that point,
the Delta II rocket had launched forty-seven GPS
sat-ellites in twenty years with only one failure Since
ini-tial GPS deployment, various generations of GPS have
been launched by Delta II, Atlas II, and Titan IV
rock-ets With this 2009 launch, there were thirty
opera-tional satellites, well beyond the minimum of
twenty-four needed for the orbital constellation
Reconnaissance, Remote Sensing, and
High-Resolution Imaging Satellites
In 1960, the Russians shot down an American U-2 spy
plane flying over Soviet territory This incident
under-scored the military’s desire to obtain high-resolution
images in a less vulnerable manner Soon, spy
satel-lites, from the original Corona (cover name
Discov-erer) reconnaissance satellites that proved the utility
of military intelligence gathering from orbit to
mod-ern classified electronic listening and imaging
plat-forms took over from spy planes Afterward, relying
on assets from orbit became a major part of American military space programs Resolution and other capa-bilities of military systems, naturally, remain secret The orbital vantage point not only is useful for re-connaissance and intelligence gathering but also pro-vides a platform from which to perform Earth re-sources investigations The story has been told of a Gulf of Mexico fisherman who, when shown an image taken from NASA’s Skylab Earth Resources Experi-ment Package (EREP), stated that he had learned more about where to find rich schools of fish and where currents and abundant nutrients flowed within his patrol area than he had during a lifetime of work-ing on the sea Multispectral imagwork-ing could be used to conduct environmental studies as well as uncover a wide range of natural resources From early astro-nauts using simple cameras to the Skylab EREP pack-age, the concept of remote sensing was proven quickly Public access to satellite images began in 1972 with the Landsat satellite series A similar program to ob-serve the oceans, called Seasat, was developed with less success than Landsat Early Landsat images had a resolution of 80 meters During the Carter adminis-tration, NASA transferred Landsat operations to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Adminis-tration (NOAA) NOAA funding ran low during the
first Bush administration, and NASA again entered the picture By 1995, images with high resolution were available for commercial uses rang-ing from land management to insur-ance claims adjustment Landsat 7 was launched in 1999 Commercial satellites followed The IKONOS and the French Système Pour l’Observa-tion de la Terre (SPOT) systems have resolutions closer to claimed Ameri-can militar y capabilities Google Earth uses satellite images to provide incredibly detailed views of Earth’s human infrastructure
As for U.S assets, after the turn of the century, only Landsat 5 and 7 re-mained available In August, 2007, Landsat 5 unexpectedly tumbled out
of its working orbit Several days later, that satellite was recertified for con-tinued operations; some believed Landsat 5 had been hit by debris
A rendering of an orbiting Block II-F (GPS) satellite (NASA)
Trang 9from the Perseid meteor shower This anomalous
or-bit incident, however, illustrated another aspect of
us-ing the resources of space: the expandus-ing danger of
micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) Both
LEO and GEO have become filled with operational
satellites, space junk, spent booster parts, and other
debris Quite often the International Space Station
(ISS) has to execute collision-avoidance maneuvers to
miss orbital debris
In 2009, an investigation of joint management
NASA and the Department of the Interior U.S
Geolog-ical Survey indicated that Landsat was not meeting
re-quirements of the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy
Act This investigation called for greater thermal
im-aging capability and urged an expanded Landsat Data
Continuity Mission to maintain Landsat legacy data
Astronomical Satellites
Atmospheric density fluctuations cause starlight to
twinkle Without adaptive optics built into land-based
telescope facilities, optical images smear out and
ob-scure detail Placing the Hubble Space Telescope
above the atmosphere in LEO (in 1990) enabled
as-tronomers to begin resolving individual stars and
dis-tant galaxies much farther away than ever before This
provided a better measurement of the size of the
ob-servable universe and a more accurate value for the
rate at which the universe is expanding, the so-called
Hubble constant Other astronomical satellites have
detected radiation that is partially or completely
blocked by Earth’s atmosphere: infrared, ultraviolet,
X-ray, and gamma-ray radiation The Cosmic
Back-ground Explorer (COBE) measured diffuse infrared
and microwave radiation thought to be remnants of
the big bang and revealed tiny fluctuations that may
have led to galaxy formation
Vela satellites, launched in 1969 to monitor the
Nu-clear Test Ban Treaty, discovered unexpected celestial
gamma-ray emissions The utilization of Earth-orbiting
and solar-orbiting positions for astrophysical studies of
the cosmos at wavelengths not available to Earth-based
observatories was quickly realized by such early
space-craft as the Orbiting Astronomical Observatories, the
Orbiting Solar Observatories, and the High Energy
As-tronomical Observatories The aforementioned
Hub-ble Space Telescope became but one of a collection of
Great Observatories that NASA launched into space
Others were the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory,
the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space
Telescope The latter was an infrared observatory
These Great Observatories permitted coordinated studies in several ranges of the electromagnetic spec-trum, greatly expanding the understanding of high-energy astrophysics and cosmological issues
NASA and other international space agencies also developed smaller space-based observatories designed for more specific investigations Fermi and Swift ex-tended gamma-ray studies by Compton and some Russian spacecraft The French launched the Convec-tion RotaConvec-tion and Planetary Transits (COROT) tele-scope to look for transits of extrasolar planets across their star NASA’s Kepler spacecraft greatly exceeded COROT in capability and began looking for Earth-class planets in extrasolar systems in 2009
Manufacturing in Microgravity Any object in a circular orbit about Earth is in a state
of free fall, having just enough speed (hence the right total mechanical energy) to fall around Earth instead
of getting radially closer to its surface This condition
is weightlessness, a state wherein gravitational influ-ence is balanced by centripetal motion This descrip-tion applies equally to elliptical orbits in which the or-biting object’s speed varies as it undergoes periodic orbital motion Effects such as the gravitational attrac-tion of other bodies on an object may give that object
a weight many orders of magnitude smaller than its normal “Earth” weight, a situation referred to as “mi-crogravity.”
When crystals are formed out of solution on Earth, they often develop imperfections because of convec-tive flow within the solution More nearly perfect crys-tals can be formed in microgravity, because there are
no gravitationally induced convection currents Mi-crogravity materials processing has proven to be use-ful, but it has yet to become cost-effective As of 2009,
it cost roughly $22,000 per kilogram to deliver a pay-load to orbit
Research opportunities on the ISS in 2009 began
to expand greatly under a plan to operate ISS as a na-tional laboratory with internana-tional partners As a re-sult of ISS research, a salmonella vaccine developed in space was put into clinical trials on Earth Other phar-maceutical projects on ISS held the potential for bil-lions of dollars in profits in addition to lessening human suffering
Solar Satellite Power Stations Some have proposed using solar satellite power sta-tions (SSPS’s) to generate electrical energy Ideas
Trang 10such as these go back as far as the late 1960’s A large
SSPS in geostationary orbit might require 50 square
kilometers or more of solar collectors Electricity from
those solar collectors could be converted into
micro-waves and be beamed down to a ground-based antenna
array, where it could be converted into normal
alter-nating electric current In order to maintain a safe
mi-crowave beam intensity, the antenna array would need
to cover many square kilometers Some have suggested
that one or two hundred of these stations could supply
all electrical needs of the United States
The idea has certain attractions, especially if the
ceiving arrays could be situated in unpopulated
re-gions Solar power would generate no carbon dioxide
emissions to aggravate global warming On the other
hand, there would be huge amounts of mining and
manufacturing wastes associated with acquiring
mate-rials for constructing the receiving arrays and
satel-lites Lifting the satellite materials into orbit might
re-quire 30,000 to 60,000 space shuttle-class launches,
which, beyond the idea’s impracticality, would be an
environmental disaster in and of itself This idea
re-mains popular among certain commercial space and
public space advocacy groups but has generated little
government support
Mining the Moon and Mars
In 1969, Gerard K O’Neill of Princeton University
set up his freshman physics course as a seminar geared
toward exploring whether a planetary surface was
re-ally the right place for an expanding technological
civilization; the students returned a negative answer
However, consensus grew that colonies in space were
feasible and could provide access to abundant energy,
raw materials, freedom, and frontiers beyond Earth
O’Neill’s disciples and successors have a remarkable
idealism and a zeal about humankind’s place in space
They organized as the Space Studies Institute (SSI)
and the Space Frontier Foundation Other advocacy
groups arose, such as the 15 Society, named after a
concept to place a huge human space colony at a
spe-cific Lagrange point in the Earth-Moon system
Using solar energy and appropriate industrial
chemical processes, extracting oxygen, silicon, iron,
calcium, aluminum, magnesium, and titanium from
lunar rocks and soil should be possible Oxygen and
powdered aluminum could be used as rocket fuel
Mass drivers, devices designed with tracks and
sequen-tially activated magnetic coils to propel buckets of
ma-terial to launch speeds, could launch supplies from
the lunar surface Space tugs could catch these sup-plies and transport them to a space colony It would cost much less energy to bring material from the Moon
to build an SSPS than it would to provide it from Earth Even so, it is doubtful that the SSPS would pay for itself unless the space colony were already in place The Martian surface or perhaps Phobos, one of Mars’s two small irregular moons, could become a spacecraft fueling station Water could be mined from polar ice or from permafrost and be converted into high-grade rocket fuel based on hydrogen and oxy-gen Carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere could be processed into a rocket-fuel combination of oxygen and carbon monoxide The ability to refuel would make access to Mars and the asteroid belt eas-ier Aggressive exploration and exploitation of Mars have been advocated by Robert Zubrin and the Mars Society Mars remains a long-range, albeit unfunded, goal of NASA manned spaceflight
In the aftermath of the Columbia accident in 2003,
the second Bush administration advanced the Vision for Space Exploration with the motto: “The Moon, Mars, and Beyond.” The primary charge to NASA was
to return to the Moon to stay, with initial lunar opera-tions to begin by 2020 A goal of steadily building up a lunar base at the Moon’s south pole, using as many in situ resources as possible, became NASA’s Project Constellation Other nations, including China, Rus-sia, India, and Japan, developed interests in exploring lunar space as well An implied Chinese manned spaceflight goal was to reach the Moon before NASA’s return Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt de-veloped an economically sustainable plan to mine lunar soil for helium 3 to be used on Earth in fusion-based power generation systems As of 2010, Ameri-can plans for a return to the Moon were under review Mining Asteroids
Some asteroids are excellent sources of nickel and iron Others contain a great deal of carbon and water There are an estimated two thousand asteroids 1 kilo-meter in diakilo-meter or larger that cross Earth’s orbit These asteroids are more accessible than those within the main asteroid belt It is at least theoretically possi-ble to adjust the orbits of smaller asteroids using mass drivers or gravity tractors, but it might take years or decades to achieve the desired orbit It is believed that
a single nickel-iron asteroid 1 kilometer in diameter would contain nearly seven times the estimated earthly nickel reserves