What’s missing from space exploration?

“Manufacturing” says Made in Space CEO Andrew Rush as quoted in the Jacksonville Daily Record. “You need a reason to go. Every frontier we’ve ever opened as a people was because there was an economic reason for us to go and live and work in that place … That’s what we think is the missing piece in space exploration, . . . that economically-focused motivator to go and innovate and do new things.”

Property rights and space settlement

Does the Outer Space Treaty allow the establishment of property rights for space settlement? Rand Simberg explains that through the use of multilateral agreements among like-minded nations, the accord may actually be more permissive then originally thought

ESA laying plans for lunar resource prospecting

The European Space Agency is developing a drill and analysis package called Prospect designed to extract water from lunar regolith. The miniature laboratory will fly to the Moon on Luna-27, a Russian spacecraft. Landing site selection is underway but no target date for the mission has been set.