THIS IS WHAT THE 21ST CENTURY IS ABOUT. OR SHOULD BE.

There’s a whole Solar System out there, with lots of iron and copper and other metals, plenty of ice to use for water, air and fuel — and staggering amounts of solar energy to power the process.

I know it has become fashionable these days to decry space as a place where the rich will flee to escape us clods — but in fact it is harsh and desolate, a set of environments where recycling isn’t just a nice idea but a near-necessity — and where conditions are such that you’re already set up to work with harsh and dangerous processes while being isolated from them. We can extract exotic metals and process radioactives on the Moon all we like and not endanger a single newt or squirrel — or person, if they do it right — and the aftermath won’t be a spreading contaminated lake in China or a massive disposal problem in the Pacific Northwest.

Or, I suppose, we can hunker down in shared, egalitarian* poverty and every year there will be less and less, until one day, it’ll all be gone.

I know which future I prefer.

Me too, but socialism offers more opportunities for graft and control.