Long Live Equity! Division of Labor and Distribution in Asteroid Mining

As resources dried up and technology developed, human beings began to consider the possibility of asteroid mining. Space resources should be shared by all of the mankind, thus raising concerns about global equity among asteroid mining stakeholders. In the first part we redefine the global equity in the context of the development of outer space. According to this definition, we determine a set of evaluation system of economy comprehensive strength, thus determine the different economies should be allocated to the relative amount of resources, distribution amount of the sum of the standard deviation of the theoretical number and reality, can make us more comprehensive measure of the global equity. In the second part, we present our vision for the future of asteroid mining in terms of mining, financing, and marketing. Based on the evaluation-distribution system constructed in the first part, we predict the comprehensive strength of each economy in the future, and also determine the role of each economy in asteroid mining, which proves our proposed vision. Under this model, the more powerful economies would unite into an asteroid mining cartel, which would create both opportunities and challenges for global equity. The third part introduces a GDP accounting method that considers the degree of resource utilization. On this basis, we take the GDP per capita of each economy as the measure of global equity to investigate the impact of the change of evaluation indicators on global equity. We found that the distribution pattern that originally helped to achieve global equity would have a negative impact on global equity when the weight of indicators changed. Finally, we propose policy recommendations to deal with the asteroid mining cartel, namely, setting a ceiling price, exchanging and sharing space technology, and promoting clean and efficient smelting methods. The implementation of these policies will bring asteroid mining closer to the spirit of global equity