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“ Once resource values become more certain , the competition among both commercial and public space agencies will be fierce ”
CLAY KILLINGSWORTH RESEARCH ANALYST , GUIDEHOUSE forms , unlike the ore-bound deposits in asteroids and other bodies .
Extraterrestrial mining thus presents the possibility of greatly increasing the supply of REEs and other precious and semiprecious metals on Earth . Increasing supplies of these resources would facilitate the adoption of sustainable means of travel by driving down the often-prohibitive costs associated with distributed electricity storage and generation .
Water plays a key role in making space travel sustainable and economical . Electrolysis of water produces elemental hydrogen and oxygen , which together can be used as rocket propellant . The value of producing propellant in space lies in not needing to launch it from Earth ’ s surface , as increasing a rocket ’ s mass necessitates exponentially more fuel to reach the same destination ; every kilogram of fuel put into
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