Canada is doing it again. First, they pushed out into the sea, and explored the feasibility of ocean mining. Now, they have set their eyes on space, more precisely, the moon.
In an excellent article over at the Financial Post, they lay out the CIM’s agenda for their yearly conference. Canada has great concerns that their mining innovations are trailing the rest of the world. My guess is that our neighbors to the North get tired of hearing about the US, and how we are the leaders in innovation all the time. So, instead of building a moon base(as NASA intends to do), they are taking the more practical approach of mining the moon’s metallic deposits.
The metal/chemical composition of moon soil
This is quite a forward looking move by Canada. The only question seems to be whether they will be providing their services to the US or China. Evidently, the Chinese will be attempting to build a moon base. Knowing the Chinese, they would use this as grounds to claim the moon as their national property. After all, the US only has a flag up there, and China has long known it is running out of resources for a burgeoning population.
Interestingly enough, Canada is not just looking at metals, but mining and converting the moon’s surface ice into water for use at the space station. Since this is often cited as the next great crisis, you can’t help but wonder if China is in the hunt to shore up extraterrestrial water supplies.
This is guaranteed to become a contentious international issue, as the rights to the moon are of very great real and symbolic importance. The world is destined to have a turf war, and Canada will most likely stay out of it entirely. By focusing on the development of the methods and equipment needed to handle and extract resources, it seems that Canucks will be the ones who will hold the dominant position when it comes time to pay the piper.
Unfortunately, none of this is great news for the OTR tire industry, as the tires needed for such equipment are relatively small. As technology improves (and with an optimistic start date of 2020), it may well be that tires won’t even be a consideration as the technologies mature.
At any rate, our congratulations go out to Canada for their spirit of innovation. We’ll keep you up-to-date with any progress or regression in this area. Stay tuned for the latest news affecting the mining and tire industries.
Until next time, I’ll be…
Signing off…
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