The 1981 film "Outland" stars a post-Bond, pre-Highlander Sean Connery as a federal marshal who uncovers a nefarious plot and fights the bad guys before he can return home to his family. It's a Western, all right, and even drew comparisons to "High Noon."
But this showdown takes place a little further out than New Mexico Territory. Here, the protagonist of the not-too-distant future is charged with keeping the peace at a titanium-ore mining facility on the Jovian moon of Io.
That Western themes are so easily adapted to sci-fi should come as no surprise--the final frontier and all.
And that not-too-distant future is getting closer. Though we still don't have the flying cars depicted by "The Jetsons"--we do have Elon Musk--mankind is a step closer to another of science fiction's great promises, one that drives the premise of "Outland": the mining of resources on extraterrestrial bodies.
Bloomberg reports that asteroid-mining startup AstroForge will launch two missions into space this year as part of its plan to scout a previously identified and mineral-rich asteroid, send a small craft there to collect minerals, and finally, to refine them in orbit.
Step one, scheduled for April, includes sending a small satellite into low Earth orbit where it will test the in-orbit refining of platinum metals. Step two, scheduled for October, will send a small craft of roughly 220 pounds to the targeted "near Earth" rock.
Books and films have long imagined mankind's mining of other heavenly bodies, and asteroid-mining companies have been launched before. But they never had the thrust to lift off.
But now we have AstroForge, based in Huntington Beach, California. It came out of "stealth mode" last spring, Bloomberg reports, when the company announced $13 million in seed funding.
AstroForge's refining satellite will be one of multiple payloads on SpaceX's Transporter "ridesharing" mission this spring. The craft bound for the asteroid will be lifted into orbit by a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. rocket, sharing the ride with a lunar lander from another space startup, Intuitive Machines.
Once in orbit, it will bid the lunar lander farewell and head to the target asteroid.
First steps almost always are small. By necessity. But regardless of who does it first--public/private/NASA/China--this small step promises so much more. The process of reaching an asteroid, mining and refining its resources and delivering them back to Earth represents another giant step for mankind.
We trust the resident marshal at the first permanent mining facility, wherever it may float in the heavens, will have the same stuff as Sean Connery or Gary Cooper. He or she will need it.