Space Mining and Manufacturing

Off-World Resources and Revolutionary Engineering Techniques

• Written at an accessible level for the lay reader
• Offers a feasible strategy for a self-sustaining, space-based infrastructure for the exploitation of space resources
• Provides a road map of technologies that can be used to establish such a large-scale space economy

This book produces convincing evidence that exploiting the potential of space could help solve many environmental and social issues affecting our planet, such as pollution, overcrowding, resource depletion and conflicts, economic inequality, social unrest, economic instability and unemployment. It also touches on the legal problems that will be encountered with the implementation of the new technologies and new laws that will need to be enacted and new organizations that will need to be formed to deal with these changes.

This proposition for a space economy is not science fiction, but well within the remit of current or under development technologies. Numerous technologies are described and put together to form a coherent and feasible road map that, if implemented, could lead humankind towards a brighter future.

The author Davide Sivolella is an aerospace engineer living and working in the UK as a specialist in the design of aircraft structural repairs of civil airliners.