Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello Votonomics listeners. It's Alegristratton and it is time for
Speaker 2: another edition of our Summer Reading special. While Adrian, Stephanie
Speaker 2: and I are off for a portion of the next month,
Speaker 2: we thought it'd be good to offer up a useful
Speaker 2: summer reading list. We each selected an author whose nonfiction
Speaker 2: work we felt was relevant and informative on the state
Speaker 2: of politics and economics right now. Last week Adrian spoke
Speaker 2: with Varied Zakaria about his latest release, The Age of Revolutions.
Speaker 2: It is a great listen, of course, so please check
Speaker 2: it out if you haven't already. But this week I'm
Speaker 2: bringing you a conversation with Tim Marshall. He is the
Speaker 2: author of Prisoners of Geography The Power of Geography. You've
Speaker 2: probably read those on previous summer holidays, but now more
Speaker 2: recently The Future of Geography. Now this is the addition
Speaker 2: where Votonomics goes astronomic. When I'm not at Bloomberg, I
Speaker 2: helped run the UK's first spaceport, sax of Ord, which
Speaker 2: is based in the Shetland Islands. What has been striking
Speaker 2: to me week after week of recording Voteronomics with Stephanie
Speaker 2: and Adrian is that all the dynamics of diplomacy that
Speaker 2: we discuss can also be seen in the space domain.
Speaker 2: Space has the capacity to impact voters' lives and boardrooms too,
Speaker 2: but despite the best efforts of Elon Musk etal, it
Speaker 2: still remains a weirdly liminal area, very far away from
Speaker 2: mainstream discourse. So to help bring space into votonomics, I
Speaker 2: wanted to bring in author and geographer broadcaster Tim Marshall,
Speaker 2: who wrote the best selling Prisoners of Geography and a
Speaker 2: number of other best sellers, and has now applied or
Speaker 2: rather published a book last year applying his signature erudition
Speaker 2: and wit to space. Welcome Tim, very kind of you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan, always have been when you were
Speaker 2: Sky News diplomatic editor.
Speaker 3: When I was at Newsnight that sort of thing. Yes,
Speaker 3: it does feel because you did the big brain stuff
Speaker 3: they did.
Speaker 2: They did cross though I was trying to remember there
Speaker 2: was a summit, wasn't there where I think we both
Speaker 2: almos raised eyebrows and had our head in our hands
Speaker 2: at some point. Look, Tim, in your book, you are
Speaker 2: clear that we are now to quote you we're now
Speaker 2: in the era of astropolitics. Tell us what that means.
Speaker 3: Astropolitics is when geopolitics moves out into space. Geopolitics is
Speaker 3: where you look at resources, populations, people, well everything really
Speaker 3: and there is a geography to space which is not
Speaker 3: properly explained usually, and that geography does inform part of
Speaker 3: the decision making that the big countries and indeed companies make.
Speaker 3: And so we're now deep, I would say, into the
Speaker 3: era of astropolitics and also what I would call space
Speaker 3: race two point zero, because there are many similarities with
Speaker 3: the sixties and seventies, but there are also major differences.
Speaker 3: They are well, in those days, there were no such
Speaker 3: things as lasers. There were no commercial companies in space.
Speaker 3: We weren't shooting basically things of the size of fridge
Speaker 3: freezers asteroids to see if we can deflect them. We
Speaker 3: never dreamt of mining the Moon, and the commercial aspects
Speaker 3: of it were I wouldn't say peripheral. I mean, you
Speaker 3: know Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Of course they always had
Speaker 3: a relationship with NASA. But one of the biggest differences
Speaker 3: in space race two point now is just how front
Speaker 3: and center commercial companies are and I don't just mean
Speaker 3: elon musk. You know, there's a raft of companies who
Speaker 3: are pumping billions of you know, it's a billion more
Speaker 3: than billions of dollars industry, and it's growing rapidly, very
Speaker 3: high risk industry in many ways. So you know, it
Speaker 3: is different to the first iteration.
Speaker 2: So, Tim, let's talk about low Earth orbit, which people
Speaker 2: call LEO for short. There's lots of definitions for it,
Speaker 2: aren't there, But essentially it's anything under one thousand kilometers up.
Speaker 3: This is another problem. You know I mentioned earlier about
Speaker 3: the differences between space race and space rates two point oh.
Speaker 3: Another problem is we don't have the legislation or even
Speaker 3: the guidelines for space rates two point oh because the
Speaker 3: space regulations and guidelines are written in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: Out of Space Treaty is nineteen sixty seven, and we
Speaker 3: can't even agree exactly where space starts. But you asked
Speaker 3: me about LEO. It's very worrying talking to someone who
Speaker 3: really knows more than you do about this. I had
Speaker 3: no idea.
Speaker 2: The Scottish the same, Tim.
Speaker 3: The Scottish version of Cape Canaveral low Earth orbit is
Speaker 3: where a vast majority of the satellites are. There are
Speaker 3: about eight and a half thousand working satellites, about three
Speaker 3: thousand defunct satellites, which is a lot. And you know,
Speaker 3: my generation grown up in the sixties and seventies, there
Speaker 3: were only really two space powers at two people who
Speaker 3: really had a presence in space that we were all
Speaker 3: aware of. There's eighty countries in space now, and I
Speaker 3: know there's a lot of space up there, but it
Speaker 3: is getting crowded. And the conservative estimates are that there
Speaker 3: will be at least thirty thousand satellites by the end
Speaker 3: of this decade. That's a conservative estimate. The Chinese will
Speaker 3: probably put up twenty thousand, musc will put up ten thousand,
Speaker 3: and that's just two examples. And although the satellites are
Speaker 3: getting smaller and smaller, some of them the size of
Speaker 3: a Rubik's cube CubeSats as they're known, it's getting crowded,
Speaker 3: it's getting competitive. He said in the introduction about how
Speaker 3: you know it's pretty sort of out there and not
Speaker 3: part of our lives. And it's true we don't think
Speaker 3: about them, but it's absolutely integral to all of our lives.
Speaker 3: Every time you put petrol in a car, every time
Speaker 3: you get on a plane, every time you do a
Speaker 3: bank transaction, and thousands of other examples. They are connected
Speaker 3: to space, and it's a growing industry.
Speaker 2: You've summarized the companies and the money to be made,
Speaker 2: the big business that is being made out of satellites
Speaker 2: up up in space right now. But you also alluded
Speaker 2: to if we've got thirty thousand satellites going up in
Speaker 2: the near future, twenty thousand of those will be Chinese,
Speaker 2: and then some of those will be Musk and American.
Speaker 2: Right there in that sentence, you've given us the kind
Speaker 2: of great Game of Earth transposed to space. Just talk
Speaker 2: us through and this is I think probably what your
Speaker 2: astropolitics is all about. Us talk us through how geopolitics
Speaker 2: is playing out right now.
Speaker 3: Go back to the beginning of the last century when
Speaker 3: everyone realized that oil was going to replace coal in
Speaker 3: the military terms, economic terms. You would not find a
Speaker 3: major company or country that, when a massive oil discovery
Speaker 3: was made, said you know what, we won't bother. We're
Speaker 3: not sure about this one. They had to go, They
Speaker 3: had to compete, and it's the same and so you
Speaker 3: cannot leave this newish domain to your rivals, whether it's
Speaker 3: the satellite industry, whether it's experiments scientific experiments in space
Speaker 3: or the big one and the most difficult at the moment,
Speaker 3: mining space for the very minerals that we need for
Speaker 3: renewable energy here on Earth, which of course is a
Speaker 3: very finite resource. And so the great powers and the
Speaker 3: big companies are competing against each other. Now, obviously the
Speaker 3: American companies are in bed with the American space companies,
Speaker 3: and ditto the other side of the Chinese and the Russians.
Speaker 3: But if you look in broadbrush terms, there is a
Speaker 3: block going up led by the Americans via the Artemisa courts.
Speaker 3: Forty two countries have signed on. And then there is
Speaker 3: a block going up led by China, which is the
Speaker 3: senior partner, with Russia as its dune a partner played
Speaker 3: Iran and North Korea clutching onto their coattails. And that
Speaker 3: is exactly the two blocks that we see dominating the
Speaker 3: global picture on Earth. It is absolutely mirrored with what's
Speaker 3: going on in space.
Speaker 2: And then there was great excitement because the Europeans put
Speaker 2: up Arian six listeners can't see, but has just smiled
Speaker 2: on the camera that I'm talking to him on. So
Speaker 2: what's the impact going to be of for the first
Speaker 2: time in a wild Europeans returning to be able to launch.
Speaker 3: It's positive if you believe that this a is our
Speaker 3: future and B on balance or adventures in space are
Speaker 3: a good thing, and I do fall down on that
Speaker 3: side of the argument. The Europeans in the shape of
Speaker 3: the ESA European Space Agency, but also in the individual countries.
Speaker 3: The UK is a major space player in the second tier,
Speaker 3: the EU in the second tier, which is folded into
Speaker 3: the ESA. Germany I think you could argue was the
Speaker 3: second tier of space power of France, definitely, Italy definitely,
Speaker 3: along with people like the UAE, Japan and Israel. So
Speaker 3: these second tier companies they can't do what the Americans
Speaker 3: and the Chinese do, mostly because of budget constraints. But
Speaker 3: the French, by by launching out of French Guiana that rocket,
Speaker 3: have sort of nailed their colors to the mass that
Speaker 3: you know, we're not going to get left behind. I mean,
Speaker 3: the Europeans accept they can't match the Big two or
Speaker 3: the Big three actually because Russia's in the top tier
Speaker 3: as well. But it is a statement of intent and
Speaker 3: the Europeans really are a player.
Speaker 2: But this matters, doesn't it. It's not just sort of
Speaker 2: the Europeans showing that they have the toys too, it
Speaker 2: is the Europeans showing that they have the access the
Speaker 2: ability to get to space. So that means that they
Speaker 2: can access their lucrative, important, vital infrastructure relying on satellite systems.
Speaker 2: So in the event that they cannot at some point
Speaker 2: ask the Americans.
Speaker 3: To do it. Yeah, I mean, there's many historical echoes
Speaker 3: there because one of the reasons the French really ventured
Speaker 3: out on their own, I mean, there's a whole bunch,
Speaker 3: including the Forster Frapp. Then their independent nuclear capabilities is that.
Speaker 3: And this goes all the way back to the seventies
Speaker 3: when there was a coup in one of the North
Speaker 3: African countries that France takes a great interest in still
Speaker 3: and they were invited to intervene on the basis of
Speaker 3: some American satellite information and they just didn't trust it.
Speaker 3: And it is murky whether the Americans sort of fed
Speaker 3: them the best bits of the satellite information to try
Speaker 3: to drag them into taking some action in the African country.
Speaker 3: And this was one of the triggers France thought we
Speaker 3: need our own independent eyes on via the satellite. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is the military aspect of it, and off they
Speaker 3: went with you know, as well as their independent nuclear force.
Speaker 3: They needed their independent satellites because they do not wish
Speaker 3: to be reliant upon the United States, as so many
Speaker 3: Western countries are. So that's the sort of genesis of that,
Speaker 3: and it continues to this day. And of course there's
Speaker 3: the commercial aspects to that. You don't want to be
Speaker 3: reliant upon American technology when your own industry you will
Speaker 3: be harmed by that. I mean we're seeing a little
Speaker 3: bit of this at the moment in the defense industry.
Speaker 3: The new Labor government is very keen to forge links
Speaker 3: back with the EU countries and actually get a place
Speaker 3: around the table and talking about the European defense industry.
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about you know, how many soldiers you
Speaker 3: have armaments. And it's the French that is leading the
Speaker 3: fight back within the EU saying hang on a minute,
Speaker 3: do we want to let Britain into the decision making
Speaker 3: process when it's not in the EU of the European
Speaker 3: defense arms industry. Sorry, I've gone off at a bit
Speaker 3: of a tangent, but it is related back to why
Speaker 3: the French insist.
Speaker 2: On that but it's central to what we're looking at
Speaker 2: right here, which is that these are terrestrial geopolitical tussles
Speaker 2: and relationships that are sort of having an amplified or
Speaker 2: expression in the space domain.
Speaker 3: Of your sovereignty in a way. And that will go
Speaker 3: even further on the moon. About sovereignty on the moon,
Speaker 3: I mean, nobody's going to use that word and say
Speaker 3: we have sovereign rights, but they will certainly stake their claims,
Speaker 3: they just won't use the word sovereignty.
Speaker 2: Let's come on to the moon in a second, which
Speaker 2: is a sentence you don't often.
Speaker 3: Utter, well, not for about about fifty years in fact.
Speaker 2: A the suggestion we could saunter onto the moon, but
Speaker 2: b just the sentence let's move on to the subject
Speaker 2: that is the moon. That's not something I have said
Speaker 2: often in my journalistic career. But before we do, just
Speaker 2: switching focus slightly, which is Elon Musk Starlink was critical
Speaker 2: in supporting Ukraine and giving it access to the Internet
Speaker 2: and the rest during the Russia's invasion. Clearly that was
Speaker 2: benign and something to be celebrated. But is there any
Speaker 2: queasiness around the idea that it is a private company
Speaker 2: that has that kind of power, and you know, at
Speaker 2: some point which is not yet on the horizon, but
Speaker 2: at some point is they can turn it on and
Speaker 2: they can turn it off.
Speaker 3: I'll accept your use of the word benign. In the
Speaker 3: original effort by Musk he sent the Starlink terminals into
Speaker 3: the urban region, thousands of thousands of them to link
Speaker 3: to his Starlight satellite system to deliver the Internet to them,
Speaker 3: and that was benign. Then it was good. But of
Speaker 3: course the Ukrainian military jumped on it and used it
Speaker 3: to target Russian soldiers and kill them. It was inevitable.
Speaker 3: So I put it to you, members of the jury,
Speaker 3: does that make Starlink a legitimate military target for Russians
Speaker 3: to fire upon? Discuss because I referred earlier to the
Speaker 3: the treaties of the sixties. Are they out of space
Speaker 3: treat in nineteen sixty seven? It doesn't cover this because
Speaker 3: you couldn't do anything in those days, whereas now you
Speaker 3: can fire a ballistic missile from the surface of the
Speaker 3: Earth and you can hit a satellite and knock it out.
Speaker 3: That has been done to test by four countries Russia, USA, India, China.
Speaker 3: They haven't done that this time. You can spoof the satellites.
Speaker 3: You send up packets of information which can fuse the chipboard,
Speaker 3: put them out of action perhaps, and you can dazzle them.
Speaker 3: You send up direct energy beam so much light floods
Speaker 3: into it it blinds the camera. And those last two
Speaker 3: the Russians have been doing. They have been taking military
Speaker 3: action against an American company in space because it has
Speaker 3: been used by their Ukrainian foes on the ground. This
Speaker 3: is new territory and we don't have the rules and
Speaker 3: regulations required because it's hardly going to stop there. We
Speaker 3: now have weapon direct energy weapons that cannot drones out
Speaker 3: at a range of about seven kilometers. The Americans have
Speaker 3: perfected them, the Brits have got them, so you can
Speaker 3: find it fired a laser beam at a drone several
Speaker 3: kilometers away, knocking out the sky. What happens if somebody
Speaker 3: sticks one of those on a satellite in order to
Speaker 3: target other satellites. The moment one country does, every country
Speaker 3: will have them. So we urgently need I hesitate to
Speaker 3: say laws because international law is an oxymoron sometimes, but
Speaker 3: we definitely need guidelines.
Speaker 2: Any prospects of those coming no, everyone.
Speaker 3: Knows we need them. Everyone suspects they will eventually come.
Speaker 3: Go back to the early days of the nuclear race,
Speaker 3: when the Americans had the bomb, the Russians got the bomb,
Speaker 3: and the immediate response was both sides built more and
Speaker 3: more and more of them until they had tens of
Speaker 3: thousands of warheads. And then at that point they thought,
Speaker 3: we really need to talk to each other about this.
Speaker 3: And I think that will be the case in space.
Speaker 3: There is an arms race going on in space. Many
Speaker 3: countries now have space commands. China got the first, Trump
Speaker 3: introduced the second. UK has won, France, Germany, India, et cetera.
Speaker 3: These space forces, and so it is inevitable. But I
Speaker 3: think we're going to go through this period of x
Speaker 3: years before we realize how dangerous it's got because and
Speaker 3: then we realize, hang on minute, all these satellites are
Speaker 3: integral to the world economy.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The last thing we need is people knocking into them
Speaker 3: or firing at them. And then we will have treaties.
Speaker 3: And the people are working on the texts already, but
Speaker 3: hasn't percolated to the senior levels of industry and politics.
Speaker 3: The urgency of it.
Speaker 2: You just mentioned Donald Trump yourself. What does President Trump
Speaker 2: two point zero mean for the space race.
Speaker 3: It's difficult, isn't it, Because it all comes down to budgets.
Speaker 3: The budgets are actually smaller than they used to be.
Speaker 3: People think you must spend, spend. These countries are spending
Speaker 3: more in real terms. They're not the USA for the
Speaker 3: space race, which was part of a war, the Cold War.
Speaker 3: You know, they had to win that as part of
Speaker 3: winning the Cold War. I think it was zero point
Speaker 3: five percent of GDP well, and I think the budget
Speaker 3: now at state level is zero point three percent roughly
Speaker 3: of GDP. So it was Trump that introduced space force
Speaker 3: amid much mirth, which you know, for me, I'm not
Speaker 3: a supporter of him, but when when you use something
Speaker 3: like that to make fun of him, it betrays that
Speaker 3: you're not understanding him. He too bously trying to laugh
Speaker 3: at him, and it's an issue that has been gone
Speaker 3: on for years now. So he realized space force good
Speaker 3: idea in the context of China's got one. Everyone's going
Speaker 3: to have them. We need to up the game. Trump
Speaker 3: is aware of how much the Chinese are spending on
Speaker 3: space and doesn't want to get left behind.
Speaker 2: But Musk helps him. I mean, Musk has helped him
Speaker 2: in the number of ways. In the last in the last,
Speaker 2: he'll make the case. Yeah, indeed, but Musk helps him
Speaker 2: in that his company space X is doing a lot
Speaker 2: of the heavy lifting and they've got billions and billions
Speaker 2: of pounds of US funding. So it's a kind of
Speaker 2: you know, an ecosystem where the one is scratching the
Speaker 2: back of the other and assisting the space effort.
Speaker 3: It is and just as you'll know the I think
Speaker 3: it's something like ninety percent of the US budget that
Speaker 3: goes on armaments for Ukraine is spent in the United
Speaker 3: States first building them. You know, it is very beneficial
Speaker 3: to American industry. But it's a similar argument when it
Speaker 3: comes to space. And yes, Musk has his ear because
Speaker 3: he's such a big player in the space industry. But
Speaker 3: also a lot of the things we've been talking about
Speaker 3: come together here space Marase two point zero, and the
Speaker 3: centrality of private enterprise because, as I said, Boeing, lockeed Martin,
Speaker 3: many other companies, yet NASA went to them and said
Speaker 3: can you build me that widget or that, But it
Speaker 3: was very much a government driven It's now a rough
Speaker 3: percentage fifty percent is private enterprise and that's the same
Speaker 3: in China, although all companies are controlled by the CCP,
Speaker 3: but there's a lot of startups there. So private enterprise
Speaker 3: in America is a major, major part of this. Private
Speaker 3: enterprise across the world is a major part of this.
Speaker 2: I just wonder whether governments have had the conversation with
Speaker 2: the electorate about everything we've just been discussing, the role
Speaker 2: that it plays in people's lives. The centrality the you
Speaker 2: know it is, if any of these satellites were taken down,
Speaker 2: it's many billions of pounds of economic damage per day, right,
Speaker 2: and so in order to make sure that they are
Speaker 2: safe and protected and so on, there probably will in
Speaker 2: these years ahead need to be greater money spent on them.
Speaker 2: So I wonder, given we'd never have that conversation whether
Speaker 2: it's a sort of going to be a shock to
Speaker 2: prime ministers and their you know chances and so on
Speaker 2: when the economic impact of them being vulnerable is fully understood.
Speaker 2: It's very striking in your book that passage where you
Speaker 2: talk about how once America had put a man on
Speaker 2: the moon, not long after they can the funding for it.
Speaker 2: Because once you've done the kind of TV gold and
Speaker 2: the historic moment. You know, we're we're in a different
Speaker 2: area now, and so there is there is plenty more
Speaker 2: to do. But at the time they made a different decision.
Speaker 2: They made a decision that there were there were you know,
Speaker 2: terrestrial policy programs they wanted to put that money into.
Speaker 3: That I think would be relatively easy if you came
Speaker 3: to the military side of it, people kind of understand
Speaker 3: that protecting satellites from debris by cleaning up space, which
Speaker 3: is a huge, huge issue. I thought war was going
Speaker 3: to be the biggest issue, and then the experts explained
Speaker 3: to me that what keeps them awake at night is
Speaker 3: debris because in case the systems go down and as
Speaker 3: you said, cost economy is billion.
Speaker 2: Well this is just to explain, this is just all
Speaker 2: bits of old satellite and junk from stations and so
Speaker 2: on flying through space and knocking out satellite.
Speaker 3: Which then knocks out of satellite, which then knocks out
Speaker 3: of satellite, et cetera. So yeah, it's in the film gravity,
Speaker 3: which they nicked off the Kesseler syndrome, which was the
Speaker 3: sort of worst case scenario where they all crash into
Speaker 3: each other in the world, economy collapses and goes dark.
Speaker 3: So I think you can make those cases. It gets
Speaker 3: harder when you just talk about exploration. You know why
Speaker 3: you cutting budgets here so we can go and explore there.
Speaker 3: That's much harder. But I think as we gradually become
Speaker 3: more and more aware of how important space is to
Speaker 3: our economic livelihoods, and also if you can make the
Speaker 3: very contentious case that it is worth burning all that
Speaker 3: fuel and taking all those risks to go and mine
Speaker 3: for and despoil the Moon. Yes, for the metals we
Speaker 3: need for renewable energy. That's a hard sell as well.
Speaker 3: But no, we're not really having these arguments. But I
Speaker 3: think we'd be having more of them if it wasn't
Speaker 3: private enterprise making so much of the running.
Speaker 2: Just to explain to the listeners, I mean there's a
Speaker 2: lot of the scientific exploration on the Moon that is.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think it's pointless? I don't think
Speaker 2: you do think it's pointless trying to use the Moon
Speaker 2: as a stop ahead to Mars and so on.
Speaker 3: I go back to what we said at the beginning,
Speaker 3: and the race for oil, you can't afford not to
Speaker 3: be there. The background to this is the Indians proved
Speaker 3: there was water at the south pole of the Moon,
Speaker 3: and they're the ones, the only ones who landed a
Speaker 3: craft there. It's very hard to land the South Pole.
Speaker 3: It's very rugged terrain, caves, mountains, boulders, and they've done it.
Speaker 3: And that's because it is also very very likely that
Speaker 3: there are large amounts of many of the metals. There's
Speaker 3: a small amount of lithium, quite liganite, all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 3: and there's water. Therefore there's oxygen and hydrogen, and therefore
Speaker 3: there's fuel and things to drink. So you've proved that
Speaker 3: it's theoretically possible to go there. Now, get in there,
Speaker 3: which everybody's trying to do, is also doable. It's weather.
Speaker 3: Is there enough of the stuff down there? And can
Speaker 3: you make it profitable to dig it up? Stick it
Speaker 3: in some sort of space shuttle, because there are now
Speaker 3: space planes. The Americans and the Chinese have got them
Speaker 3: robotic they look like the shuttle. They can go up
Speaker 3: from one two years in orbit. And further, is it
Speaker 3: viable at the moment The economics don't add up, But lithium,
Speaker 3: as you know, is destined. It is thought to go
Speaker 3: up and think something like forty times its current value
Speaker 3: over the next decade, and so as those prices of
Speaker 3: these precious metals go up and the finite resource here
Speaker 3: goes down, so the economic modeling of the moon becomes
Speaker 3: potentially more viable. But even though you're really I wouldn't
Speaker 3: say you bet in the farm, but you know it's high,
Speaker 3: high risk. But as a country or a company, you
Speaker 3: cannot afford not to be part of this one. I
Speaker 3: know we're going to run out of time. One last example,
Speaker 3: and this is even more theoretical, but it goes back
Speaker 3: to what I said about oil, and you're not gonna it's.
Speaker 2: A beauty podcast him. We've got as long as you
Speaker 2: want past.
Speaker 3: Try and be brief. There's helium three on the moon.
Speaker 3: We don't have very much of it here, there's lots
Speaker 3: and lots of it in the soil and the rocks
Speaker 3: up there. If AI could possibly crack nuclear fusion, not fission,
Speaker 3: not breaking it apart the way we do now, not
Speaker 3: smashing atoms apart, but fusion. If AI can do that,
Speaker 3: because we've been told for years and years, it's we're
Speaker 3: in the customer it. The helium three that's on the
Speaker 3: moon can be used as fuel, but radiation free fuel,
Speaker 3: and the head of the Chinese Space Agency, an eminent scientist,
Speaker 3: believes there is enough helium three on the Moon in
Speaker 3: those circumstances to fuel all of humanities and needs energy
Speaker 3: needs on Earth for the next ten thousand years. Now.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we're going to crack fusion. I
Speaker 3: don't know if the economic modeling can go and get
Speaker 3: the helium three. But the point I'm making is with
Speaker 3: those sorts of stakes there, which major player is just
Speaker 3: going to say, nah, I'm not going to bother And
Speaker 3: that is one of the reasons why we're going to go.
Speaker 3: Another reason is much more romantic. There is something in
Speaker 3: the human spirit, which is why we've always climbed to
Speaker 3: the top of a mountain to see what was then
Speaker 3: gone across an ocean, because we wondered what was on
Speaker 3: the other side. And that is our restless spirit. So
Speaker 3: I've spent forty five minutes talking economics and politics to you,
Speaker 3: but you know there is also that side of us,
Speaker 3: and that is another reason why we are going to
Speaker 3: keep going.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think forward to the moment when our
Speaker 2: country and which country will it be, says do you
Speaker 2: know what We're going to start digging you know that
Speaker 2: moment when they start digging in any kind of industrial
Speaker 2: way on the Moon. There's all sorts of legal and
Speaker 2: ethical issues, not least that for many many people around
Speaker 2: the world, the moon is spiritual. Sorry to go all
Speaker 2: spiritual on.
Speaker 3: You, but you know, no, there are legal and ethical issues.
Speaker 3: And I don't you know, I don't want to sound
Speaker 3: too cold saying that it's more cynical than cold, all right.
Speaker 3: I mean this brings us back to the Artemist Accords
Speaker 3: America series of bilateral agreements with more than forty countries now,
Speaker 3: and in the Artemist Accords, it's clearly states that if
Speaker 3: you've invested all that money in going to the Moon,
Speaker 3: and then you've invested digging, and then you strike gold,
Speaker 3: the new gold, you can then declare a safety zone.
Speaker 3: Well how big, Well you choose for how long you choose?
Speaker 3: Now that sounds to me like sovereignty under another name.
Speaker 3: And you can quote to me as much as you
Speaker 3: like the nineteen sixty seven Out of Space Treaty, which
Speaker 3: was not ratified by everybody and it's completely out of date.
Speaker 3: But I'm going to keep digging, so you know, I
Speaker 3: accept these ethical and legal challenges the ethical challenges to
Speaker 3: mining lithium in the DRC may be correct, but they
Speaker 3: haven't won the argument and the legal aspects of X,
Speaker 3: Y and Z. Well, you and whose army were? You're
Speaker 3: gonna fly me at the moon and stop me. So
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to sound so cynical, but you know this
Speaker 3: is big industry, big government, and big stakes for winning,
Speaker 3: potentially winning, but certainly being involved in one of the
Speaker 3: big energy questions of the twenty first century. So I
Speaker 3: suspect that has more weight than the objections that are
Speaker 3: already being sounded.
Speaker 2: How many years away is it?
Speaker 3: I think in the twenty thirties we will have moon bases.
Speaker 3: I think in the twenty thirties we will have started
Speaker 3: mining at what scale I don't know, but everything I
Speaker 3: see at the moment points that that is going ahead.
Speaker 3: Another legal point out of Space Treaty, you cannot own
Speaker 3: any part of space or a planet or the moon. Fine,
Speaker 3: who owns those rocks that were brought back? And NASA
Speaker 3: is currently tendering for a company and I think a
Speaker 3: Japanese company may have won it. I want you to
Speaker 3: go at the Moon, dig up a rock, bring it back,
Speaker 3: and sell it to me for a dollar. Now, what's
Speaker 3: in it for the company, what's in it for NASA.
Speaker 3: The company's going to get a lot more tenders and
Speaker 3: a dollar. But NASA are going to prove norms. They're
Speaker 3: going to establish norms because once you've bought that, you
Speaker 3: have established that, Yes, you owned it, you sold it
Speaker 3: to me. I own it, and I know it's only
Speaker 3: a dollar and a rock. But the point is you're
Speaker 3: establishing norms. Another one the United Nations Convention of the
Speaker 3: Law of the Sea, which I'm sure you read most evenings.
Speaker 3: Only a few countries signed out when it started. Now
Speaker 3: it is the norm. The Artemis Accords were signed by
Speaker 3: only twelve countries when it launched, and now it's more
Speaker 3: than forty. It is establishing the norms. And the Artemist
Speaker 3: Cause allows for drilling and bringing back and selling. So
Speaker 3: you know, we're in a new era. I just think
Speaker 3: we still think about space that where we thought about
Speaker 3: it in the sixties and seventies, we've moved on.
Speaker 2: It was very striking, wasn't it a few months back
Speaker 2: to have the Americans let it be known that they
Speaker 2: believe that Russians will target satellites, so that to the
Speaker 2: expression the public admission that now satellites are part of warfare.
Speaker 3: Yeah, something has happened there which is obviously so classified.
Speaker 3: We don't have the details because before they did that,
Speaker 3: several months prior to that, they said that the Russians
Speaker 3: were working on a new weapon in space, and I
Speaker 3: was trying to figure out what. And there's two obvious scenarios.
Speaker 3: One genuinely is a nuclear bomb in space, which yes,
Speaker 3: I know it's forbidden, but you know, so is invading Ukraine.
Speaker 3: You can explode a very small yield nuclear bomb in space,
Speaker 3: probably without setting the atmosphere on fire. And the reason
Speaker 3: you would want to do that is that at the
Speaker 3: moment you can fire a ballistic missilet big satellite and
Speaker 3: knock it out, hitting a bullet with a bullet. It's
Speaker 3: incredibly hard and incredibly expensive, but if you were just
Speaker 3: to the second problem is that because the satellites are
Speaker 3: now so small, and you have an array of satellites,
Speaker 3: it's very small ones maybe twenty of them in a constellation,
Speaker 3: and if you hit one of them, well they still work,
Speaker 3: and then you go and you just put another one
Speaker 3: up there, so to wipe out the whole twenty or fifty,
Speaker 3: a very very small nuclear bomb or some other form
Speaker 3: of explosion will do it. So that's one scenario, and
Speaker 3: the other one is this idea of a direct energy weapon,
Speaker 3: which now exists on Earth. They hit the drones, are
Speaker 3: these lasers laser beams burn them out? Again? It could
Speaker 3: be sticking one of them. So the Americans have done
Speaker 3: two things. They've warned they're looking at a weapon in space,
Speaker 3: and now they're saying, and it's to hit the satellites.
Speaker 3: It's not inevitable that it's going to happen. It's inevitable
Speaker 3: that space will be weaponized, because if you disbelieve me,
Speaker 3: you have to just ignore the last twelve thousand years
Speaker 3: of recorded history. So why would given that we've weaponized
Speaker 3: pretty much every other year we've gone into, why we're
Speaker 3: not going to weaponize this one. It's why the French
Speaker 3: are already working on bodyguard satellites, putting a satellite between
Speaker 3: one that's really important and has perhaps their nuclear codes
Speaker 3: early warning system in it and the potential aggressive satellite
Speaker 3: that might be approaching it. These things are in train.
Speaker 2: Tim Marshall, that was fantastic. Now Votomics for its next
Speaker 2: episode will have to come firmly back to Earth, but
Speaker 2: for this one, thank you very much. Thank you good stuff.
Speaker 3: Tim. Yeah, it was fun, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this week's Vota Nomics from Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: This episode was hosted by me Alegri Stratton. It was
Speaker 2: produced by Sumersadi, with booking support from Chris Martlu, production
Speaker 2: support and sound designed by Moses and am Brendan Francis
Speaker 2: Newnham is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Head of
Speaker 2: Podcasts and special thanks to Tim Marshall. Please subscribe, rate,
Speaker 2: and review wherever you listen to podcasts