In the 1980s, during the nascent days of the satellite communications industry, Luxembourg foresaw the fat cat it could become. The tiny European nation, known for steel manufacturing and tax breaks, provided financial support and passed regulations that allowed its homegrown satellite company, SES, to thrive. And because it provided that early support, one of the globe’s smallest countries came to host the world’s second-largest commercial satellite operator.
Luxembourg liked the way that went down. And now, 30 years later, the country is positioning itself to iterate on that plot, in a different off-Earth industry: asteroid mining.
Asteroid mining is what it sounds like: going to the solar system’s hard bodies, extracting valuable resources, and using them to make something new. If humans are going to become a spacefaring species, they can’t launch all the necessaries from Cape Canaveral. Instead, spacecraft needing a top-off could get fuel from asteroid ice. Humans could scrape space materials to construct orbiting hotels. Martian colonists needn’t bring excessive carry-ons: They could draw building materials and H2O from their home body or an asteroid.
Bold forecasters speak of a full-on celestial supply-chain. In that version of the future, the entities that control that supply chain—doing the mining and selling the resources—will become very rich. They will, in a way, rule that final frontier. In 2016, Luxembourg began taking steps toward dominating the industry, and so potentially the flow of cash and commodities beyond Earth.
Let us establish a few things: First, Luxembourg is rich. According to the World Bank, its per capita GDP is $101,450, compared to the US’s $56,115. Second, it's tiny, smaller than Rhode Island with the population of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Historically, Luxembourg has attempted political neutrality, and nearly half of its residents are foreign nationals. If you believe the kinds of studies that quantify happiness, it is feeling good about all of the above. In fact, Luxembourg is a bit analogous to a utopian space colony: small, confined, welcoming of outsiders, well-off, politically and psychologically stable.
And while it doesn’t have the weight of billions of people to throw around, Luxembourg does have capital, low taxes, small fees for sending money in and out, and customer confidentiality. That’s sent many an American company to Luxembourgish (yes, a real word and the right one) banks. It’s also allowed Luxembourg to build up that bomb-ass GDP, and the knowledge that when it lures companies—or industries—in, capital continues to flow, as when it got in on the ground floor of satellite communications.
Luxembourg stepped onto space mining’s ground floor early last year, when the Ministry of Economy announced the Space Resources initiative. Key to the program, said the official statement, “will be the development of a legal and regulatory framework confirming certainty about the future ownership of minerals extracted in space from Near Earth Objects such as asteroids.” In November, the country drafted a law permitting companies to own the resources they obtain from space. It has also pledged an investment of at least 200 million euros in forms like R&D grants and purchasing equity in companies. Deputy prime minister Etienne Schneider has said that the country can also reimburse companies up to 45 percent of what they invest in R&D. Come hither, ye companies.
And they have gone thither: The two major mining players based in the US, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have now established, or will soon, legal offices within Luxembourg. “Luxembourg certainly is taking a very visionary step,” says Chris Lewicki, president and CEO of Planetary Resources. It’s been good for his corporation. The country has purchased equity in and given grants to it. Along with the European Space Agency, Luxembourg has also collaborated on Deep Space Industries' Prospector-X mission, which will use a nano-spacecraft to test some of its asteroid technologies.
In its investments, Luxembourg can double down on the space industry with impunity, in a way the US really can't. Both companies have had contracts with NASA that fund their R&D. Luxembourg can do the same through the European Space Agency, says Meagan Crawford, Deep Space’s chief operating officer. “But then on top of that, Luxembourg also does direct investment, through loans, through equity, through all sorts of different financial mechanisms,” she says. “That’s not something we see from the US government.”
It’s not just about money. “It’s about creating a legal environment in which asteroid mining is not only feasible but encouraged,” says Crawford. That’s why Luxembourg became the first European country to draft that legal framework, in November, for organizations’ right to own what they obtain from space rocks. The US has a similar law, but it applies only to people and corporations that count as United States citizens, while Luxembourg’s requires only an office address inside its borders, which essentially everyone has (don’t you?).
The money, the legislation, and the response from corporations suggest the country has ambitious goals---and perhaps a reasonable shot at achieving them. “But here we’re in the land of speculation,” says Zoe Szajnfarber of George Washington University, who studies the dynamics of innovation in the space and defense sectors. “What Luxembourg is trying to be is either the Silicon Valley of space mining, where they’re able to attract a lot of talented people and keep them there, or the Delaware of space company headquarters, where they’re attracting a lot of companies who see value in the tax advantages.” But transforming a place into Hub of X is not easy or guaranteed, and we don’t really know how it happens. “It’s kind of like becoming a movie star,” says Szajnfarber.
Plus, the wait between now and digging up asteroids---which could happen in the mid-2020s, if you listen to the hopeful estimates based on aggressive launch and tech demonstration schedules---also leaves space for another country to hoover up opportunities. Deep Space Industries, for example, is talking with space agencies beyond Europe and the US. And the yawning years before the industry takes off give those competitors time to make themselves more attractive. “What [Luxembourg is] offering is really not enough to make people stay if it’s a multibillion-dollar industry and everyone can provide similar levels of investment or tax incentives,” says Szajnfarber.
So while it’s unlikely Luxembourg would totally lose its grip, it’s also unlikely the company could maintain a complete monopoly. “If something materializes up there that’s really profitable, they will be one of—not the one, one of—the countries that benefits from whatever happens,” says space policy and international affairs professor Henry Hertzfeld of George Washington University.
So maybe your favorite space hotel’s new hull will come from, and support, a company based somewhere else. But you may well be buying the metal for your Martian solar panels, the water for your jet pack thrusters, and your lifetime supply of platinum from a company 49 percent owned by a tiny, wealthy nation.
