The New Space Age in the making: Emergence of exo-mining, exo-burials and exo-marketing

摘要

At the beginning of the 21st century we witness considerable global developments in space exploration and a new era has begun: the New Space Age. The principal symbols of that age are firstly internationalization of space activities, secondly commercial utilization of space technologies, and lastly emergence of outer space economy. This paper presents selected signposts of the New Space Age. Three cases of recent outer space enterprises: recovery of asteroid resources (exo-mining), post-cremation memorial spaceflight (exo-burials) and first extraterrestrial advert (exo-marketing), are introduced in order to emphasize the monetary and social dimension of commercial application of space technologies. To give an illustration of these trends, this paper provides a brief socioculturally minded account of three outer space undertakings that are interpreted as signposts of the new era.