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- Title
Together for a SharedWorld.
- Authors
Li Yi; Tianxiang Zhang; Fangrui Liu
- Abstract
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. The exploration of space and the struggle for rights are eternal human pursuits. With the vision that humans will be able to mine asteroids in the near future, we develop models to illuminate its impact on global equity. We define equity as balanced development of countries, and we develop a Development and Equity (D&E) Model to evaluate the level of development and equity in a country. We select 3 primary indicators and 13 secondary indicators of development and equity. We weight them to calculate a Development Index (DI) of each country. To quantify differences in equity, we build the Dimensional Adaptive Equity Assessment (DAEA) Model. That lets us transform the DI into a Global Equity Index (GEI). The GEI before asteroid mining is 66.8. According to the Law of Comparative Advantage, asteroid mining should be conducted by the most-developed countries. We perform cluster analysis byWard's Minimum Variance Method and divide a selected 35 countries into 4 groups, from the very developed to the less developed. We assume that in the short term, asteroid mining will be conducted mainly by countries in the first two groups. We urge establishment of an Asteroid Mining Organization (AMO) to manage asteroid mining. Countries that mine in space should turn over a certain percentage of the benefits to AMO to support non-mining countries. We develop a Production and Allocation (P&A) Model to analyze the changes of each country's DI and arrive at the GEI that results from mining. We find that asteroid mining increases the level of inequity in the short run but promotes equity in the long run. It will take 27 years to restore global equity to the level of the unexploited era. The value of GEI after 50 years of mining is 74.7, a great improvement compared with 66.8 before mining. We change the conditions in the Production and Allocation segments to analyze the trend of GEI. When reallocation increases (i.e., we build a larger pool of funds), GEI rises at a faster rate, after a short decline. From a Production perspective, if the medium countries also engage in asteroid mining, it takes less time to restore the initial GEI. Finally, we propose to the UN both mandatory and incentive policies for the benefit of, and in the interests of, all countries.
- Subjects
UNITED Nations; SPACE exploration; ASTEROIDS; CLUSTER analysis (Statistics); COMPARATIVE law
- Publication
UMAP Journal, 2022, Vol 43, Issue 3, p289
- ISSN
0197-3622
- Publication type
Article