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Science Friday > Archives > 1997 > September > September 12, 1997

Hour One: Mining National Monuments /Commercial Space Exploration


Last year, President Clinton issued an executive order declaring a vast area in southern Utah a new national monument. His action created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, set aside over a million acres of land, and blocked the development of a large coal mine that had been planned for the area. But several companies held leases for oil exploration within the area of the monument, and the President agreed to continue the leases pending approval of the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the site.

On Monday, the Bureau of Land Management approved a request from Conoco to drill a test well on a small part of the monument land. The BLM, acting over objections from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and several environmental groups, approved the well because it would not "have significant impact on the geological, paleontological, archaeological, historical or biological values the monument was specifically established to protect."

But applications for four more wells are pending, awaiting the results of this test well. Conoco estimates that there may be hundreds of millions of barrels of oil under its leased holdings within the monument zone. Environmental groups are concerned not just about the effects that this one well may have on the monument environment, but by what they see as a dangerous precedent allowing resource exploitation on monument lands.

In this segment of Science Friday we'll look at the BLM's decision, and talk about the rights of private companies to explore public lands.

Plus... Space used to be the realm of national governments. While private companies sometimes took on parts of a mission, such as launching systems or imaging hardware, planning a full-scale exploratory mission was out of the reach of private businesses. Now, however, more and more companies are discovering that compared to governmental groups, they may be able to explore space "faster, cheaper, and better" - a mantra that NASA has only just recently learned.

This week, a private company called SpaceDev announced plans to fly a craft to a near-earth asteroid. Once there, the craft would compile scientific data for sale to NASA -- or anyone else willing to pay for it. SpaceDev also plans to stake a claim to the asteroid for future mining rights. We'll take a look at the company's plans, talk about how commercial missions may change the space exploration game, and try to figure out just who can own what outside the Earth's atmosphere.

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:

Fran Hunt
Director
Bureau of Land Management Program
Wilderness Society
Washington, DC

Don Banks
Chief of External Affairs
Utah State Office, Bureau of Land Management
Salt Lake City, UT

James William Benson
Chairman
SpaceDev
Steamboat Springs, CO

Ray Williamson
Senior Research Scientist
Space Policy Institute
George Washington University
Washington, DC

Books/Articles Discussed:

Related links:
The Escalante Chamber of Commerce
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

SpaceDev

Commercial Space Markets
Arianespace (a private lauching company)
LunaCorp (private robotic rovers on the moon)
The Artemis Project (a private group planning to build a moon base)
SpaceFuture

SciFri's show about NASA's Discovery Program
The Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous program
Lunar Prospector