THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC (part 1): What is obesity and what are its consequences?

Obesity.   It seems that nearly every month we hear of yet another potential cause.  It’s due to viruses.  Your gut flora is responsible.  It’s your mother’s fault.  It’s in your genes.  You have a bad thyroid.  Etc., etc., etc.

But in truth, the obesity epidemic that is underway all over the world is probably NOT due to thyroid problems or even a drift in our gene pool toward higher numbers of obesity genes.  It wasn’t a significant problem 100 years ago.  Or even 50 years ago.  And there simply hasn’t been enough time for all of us to develop bad thyroids. 

And to say that obesity is an epidemic is no exaggeration.  It’s not even controversial.  We may argue about whether global warming is caused by human activity, we may debate evolution, and we may disagree about the use of embryonic stem cells.  But I don’t think anyone could disagree that obesity has increased dramatically within the last generation or two.

The data is unequivocal—the world has gotten fatter.  And the United States, ever out in front, is a world leader, along with Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Kuwait, Barbados, the Bahamas, and Micronesia (the fattest of all).

Here in the U.S., the percentage of obese individuals has increased from about 15% in 1976 to 35% in 2004. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USObesityRate1960-2004.svg

From this graph, you can see that about 70% of the adult population in the U.S. is either overweight or obese.  It is clear that obesity has been increasing for several decades, but surprisingly, the percentage of people who are overweight has not changed.  (I’d like to know more about this phenomenon, but I haven’t been able to find a discussion about it anywhere.  However, it seems to me that in order for people to be classified as obese, they must first have been overweight, so shouldn’t we see an increase in overweight along with—or prior to—the increase in obesity?  Maybe the answer is that large numbers of people who used to be merely overweight have now become obese, and by chance, just enough formerly normal-weight people have moved into the overweight category to keep the size of that group unchanged.)

And what has happened since 2004, the last year covered by the above graph?  According a 2012 report by the National Center for Health Statistics, there has been no significant change in the prevalence of overall obesity in the United States during recent years.  However, the incidence of obesity was previously higher in women than in men, and during the last decade, the men have caught up.

In order to be sure that we understand what we’re talking about, let’s define our terms.  What do “obese” and “overweight” really mean?

Human body fat percentage is commonly estimated by something called the “body mass index” (BMI), which is computed by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters.  It is a far from perfect index—a body builder with lots of muscle may have a high BMI, for example—but it has the benefit of being very simple and straightforward.

Here are the definitions of “obese” and “overweight” as they relate to BMI:

In the United States a BMI of 18.5 to 25 represents “normal” body weight; a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered “overweight;” and a BMI above 30 is classified as “obese.”  Since the “above 30” category encompasses a large range of BMI values, it has been further divided into several rough sub-categories:  “severe obesity”  (a BMI of 35–40), “morbid obesity” (a BMI of 40-45 or 40-50), and “super obese” (a BMI greater than 45 or 50, depending on who you ask).  And since BMI is dependent on body type, these categories may change for different ethic groups.   In Asian populations, for example, a BMI of 18.5 to 22.9 is “normal,” and 23 to 27 is “overweight.”

Of course, the most accurate measure of “fatness” involves calculating the percentage of a person’s weight that is due to his or her fat cells.  This is a difficult calculation to make, but it can be done by weighing an individual both in and out of water to obtain a measure of that person’s “density.”  Density can then be related to body fat percentage by a formula first developed in 1953 and then refined in 1963.  

There are also other ways of estimating fatness, including X-ray absorptiometry, near-infrared interactance (using a beam of infrared light directed into the biceps), ultrasound, waist-to-hip ratio, and the “pinch test” (in which a fold of skin is measured by calipers).  But underwater weighing is thought to be the most accurate by far.

Since BMI is so widely used, it is logical to ask how well it is correlated with body fat percentage.  The answer is that it IS correlated—but the variation is substantial.  Here is a graph in which the BMI of 8,550 men is plotted on the horizontal axis and their actual body fat percentage is plotted on the vertical axis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Correlation_between_BMI_and_Percent_Body_Fat_for_Men_in_NCHS%27_NHANES_1994_Data.PNG

If each person’s BMI were perfectly correlated with his body fat percentage, this graph would be a straight line because their BMI and their percent body fat would always be the same number.  You can see, however, that the graph is actually shaped more like a jellybean, which means that many of the men tested had an actual body fat percentage that that was higher or lower than suggested by their BMI.  For example, you would expect those in the lower right quadrant to be overweight since they all had a BMI above 25.  But when their body fat was actually measured, it was found to be below 25% (sometimes WAY below).  These men were not fat at all—indeed, they were probably quite muscular.

But the fact that BMI mis-identifies some people as overweight is not the real problem.  The primary purpose of BMI, after all, is to identify people whose body fat percentage is higher than it should be for optimum health.  And just as BMI OVER-estimates fatness in people who are lean and muscular (those in the lower right quadrant), it UNDER-estimates fatness in people who have relatively little lean muscle mass (those in the upper left quadrant).  Therefore, it often fails to sound the alarm for people who actually ARE overweight, which suggests in turn that BMI is underestimating obesity as well.

Obesity is correlated with many diseases, including diabetes type 2, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis, various cancers, sleep apnea, systemic inflammation . . . . the list goes on and on.   At least 50, by my count.  But even though the obese as a class have more health problems than the non-obese, they are not a uniform group.  A very recent (2013) study has shown that approximately 46% of people classified as obese were “metabolically healthy” and otherwise “fit”—and showed no higher percentage of mortality or cardiovascular disease than normal-weight people who were also metabolically healthy. 

As a result, the authors of this study advocate the classification of obese people as either “fit” or “not fit.”  At this point, it is unknown what the differences between these two groups might be, but researchers speculate that that they may actually have different types of fat (more on that in another blog, perhaps). 

It should also be mentioned that obesity is correlated with the so-called “survival paradox.”  First described in 1999, this is a phenomenon in which people with heart failure and a BMI between 30 and 35 (obese) had greater chances of survival than those of a normal weight. 

And a 2006 paper that reviewed 40 studies involving 250,152 patients found that those with a BMI lower than 20 (underweight) had an increased risk for total mortality and cardiovascular mortality, while those with a BMI of 25-29.9 (overweight) had the lowest risk among all the groups for both total mortality and cardiovascular mortality.  Remarkably, the obese patients (BMI 30-35) had NO increased risk for either total mortality or cardiovascular mortality.  And the severely obese (BMI greater than 35) did not have increased total mortality, although they did have greater cardiovascular mortality.

In spite of the results outlined in this paper, it is pretty obvious that the authors did not really believe that obesity has no health consequence—they postulated, correctly it seems, that the results may have something to do with the inaccuracies of the BMI calculation. 

And, yes, according to a 2013 paper, almost ALL research studies reporting the “obesity paradox” used BMI as their measure of obesity.  The authors went on to say that more recent indices of obesity, such as large waist circumference and high waist-to-hip ratio, ARE positively correlated with cardiovascular events and mortality. 

Another aspect of obesity that is of great concern is the increasing financial burden that it places on society.  As reported in 2009, medical expenses for obese individuals in the United States average about $1,429 each year—42% higher than the expenses incurred by those of normal weight.   Further, this same report estimated that the medical costs of obesity, which totaled $78.5 billion in 1998, had risen to $147 billion by 2008, a figure that represents 9.1% of all medical expenses in the U.S.

And that was in 2008.  I wonder what it is today. 

Next time we will begin a discussion of the reasons for obesity.

Useful references

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673606692519

http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/5/389.long

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/5/w822.long

http://wood-ridge. schoolwires.net/cms/lib6/NJ01001835/Centricity/Domain/

175/Obesity%20Article.pdf

THE WONDERS OF CARBON—and the difficulties of making money on new technology

Now I’m not a chemist, and there may be other elements in the periodic table that are cooler than carbon, but I can’t think of one.  First off, it’s the 4^th most prevalent element in the universe, after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen, and the 15^th most abundant element in the earth’s crust.  It makes up all living things on earth, not to mention other important stuff like oil, natural gas, and carbon dioxide.  And most scientists believe that if life is found outside earth, it will be based on carbon.

Carbon is very interesting at the molecular level, that is, in the varied shapes that molecules made of pure carbon atoms can assume and the surprisingly different properties that a simple shape change can provide.  For example, a diamond and a lump of coal are identical at the atomic level—they are made solely of carbon atoms.  But they differ widely at the molecular level.  The carbon atoms in a diamond are arranged in a lattice design while those in a coal molecule have no structure—they are amorphous.  And of course, the lattice design of a diamond makes it transparent, while the amorphous structure of coal makes it just the opposite.

But coal and diamonds are not the forms of carbon I’m going to talk about today.  I’m more interested in the “chicken wire” forms. 

That’s right, chicken wire.  Think of all the different shapes  you can make with chicken wire—and carbon can probably manage every single one of them.

I’d really like to focus on just three shapes:  sheets of chicken wire, spheres of chicken wire, and tubes of chicken wire.  To see examples of these and other forms of carbon, take a look at the diagram below:   diamond (a), graphene (b), ionsdaleite (c), buckyballs (d, e, f), amorphous carbon (g), and a nanotube (h).

Let’s start with buckyballs.  Now stay with me here.  Buckyballs (as well as nanotubes) are classed as “fullerenes,” a word that comes from the last name of the very famous inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller, whose first name also gave us the “bucky” in buckyballs.   Fuller popularized dome homes, which he patented as a “Geodesic Dome” as U.S. Patent No. 2,682,235 in 1954 (the first geodesic dome was actually developed and built in 1923 by Walther Bauersfeld, a German engineer, which makes me wonder if Fuller’s patent was valid).  Certainly the spheroid dome shape has in some ways come to symbolize science, technology, and the future.  Think of the dome at Epcot, for example.  And so in this way Buckminster Fuller has become associated with really cool space-age technology.

Now, spherical shapes can be constructed out of a number of geometric forms.  Fuller’s dome homes had triangular faces, but a soccer ball made by Adidas in 1970 was constructed of 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons; it was called the Telstar soccer ball.  (Does this give you a strong urge to run out and grab up a soccer ball to see if you have a Telstar or not?  I wish I had known this when my kids were younger—there was a teaching moment there!)

The word Telstar comes from the Telstar 1 and 2 satellites launched back in 1962 and 1963, and you’d like to think that as the progenitor of the soccer ball, they were also made of pentagons and hexagons—but no such luck.  The satellites were made up of rectangles and squares in a roughly spheroid shape.

Okay, back to buckyballs.  The theoretical existence of buckyballs was first discussed in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and in 1980 it was predicted that spherical particles of carbon could be created in the laboratory.  However, it was not until 1985 that researchers published a paper reporting that spherical molecules consisting of 60 carbon atoms, labeled C₆₀, had been produced at Rice University.  Although the scientists who conducted this experiment couldn’t actually “see” the structure formed by this carbon molecule, it was eventually found to be a sphere composed of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons.  And their groundbreaking article actually included a photo of an Adidas soccer ball to illustrate the point!

The original paper was authored by five chemists (three of whom were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996—R. Curl, H. Kroto, and R. Smalley), and they came up with the name “buckminsterfullerene” for the spherical carbon molecule they had created.  With a touch of humor seldom found in scientific journals, they also suggested that perhaps it should have been named “soccerene” or “carbosoccer.”  Personally I think these molecules should have been called “Telstar balls” or even “Adidas balls”, but I suspect that kind of industrial affiliation would have been anathema to these academic researchers.

Soon afterwards, thousands of papers were published examining buckyball chemistry and production.  Their spherical shape, plus the possibility of trapping metals and other elements inside, caused a veritable land rush of scientists who immediately embarked on new research programs to investigate potential ramifications and applications.  Many possible uses of buckyballs have been identified, including superconductors, lubricants, catalysts, drug delivery systems, hydrogen storage, optics, chemical sensors, and even cosmetics. 

So here we are, 28 years after this momentous discovery, and it is reasonable to ask whether the early commercial promise of buckyballs has been realized.  (I don’t consider buckyballs produced for research purposes to be commercial products.  You can, however, purchase them by the gram from SES Research in Houston, Texas, for $45.  At 454 grams per pound, that’s $20,430, so it will be a long time before you see buckyballs in your oil change. )

It seems that a medical buckyball product may be the one that is closest to market.  It is a C₈₀ spheroid that can be manufactured in such a way as to trap several different types of metals, including scandium, yttrium, erbium, lutetium, and gadolinium.  These strange-sounding metals (which are “related” to aluminum) have many very specialized uses.  For example, gadolinium is used as a contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because it helps improve the visibility of internal organs and other structures.  Virginia Tech University discovered and patented the method of making these metal-trapping buckyballs and licensed its rights to a Virginia company called Luna Nanoworks.  The company has developed one C₈₀ spheroid called Trimetasphere that contains three metals, and they are investigating its use as a new MRI contrast agent.  Oh, and H. Kroto, one of the Nobel Prize winners, is an advisor to the company.  

So how well is Luna Nanoworks doing financially?  It is a publically-traded company with a market capitalization of $17 million.  Its stock has been selling at around $1.25 since 2011 (down from about $5 a share in 2009), so I presume it hasn’t had much in the way of commercial sales.

Unfortunately I think we can put buckyballs in the category of really really cool science that has an equally cool name but that doesn’t have a commercial application—yet.  It’s hard making money on science, even really really cool science.  Think about that.

Next up is the other fullerene that you’ve probably heard about:  nanotubes (see “f” in the diagram at the beginning of this blog).

Now, when it comes to the question of who discovered what and when in the nanotube world, the story can get pretty contentions.  Some give the award to Sumio Lijima, a Japanese physicist with the NEC company who reportedly succeeded in producing nanotubes in the lab in 1991.  He also examined these new structures under an electron microscope and correctly speculated on their structure (Lijima’s diagram looks like rolled-up chicken wire).  But others believe that carbon nanotubes were actually produced and photographed decades earlier.  They point to two Russians who published an article in 1951 along with pictures of what some people claim to be nanotubes—but the paper was written in Russian and, due in part to the Cold War, wasn’t available to Western scientists for a long time.  Since I myself don’t read Russian, I can’t tell you how these scientists came up with their nanotubes (if nanotubes they were), but they definitely didn’t clearly lay out the molecular structure the way Lijima did in 1991.

One of the coolest things about a carbon nanotube is its long length compared to its width, with a ratio of 132,000,000:1, which is greater than that of any other molecule found so far.  So if you had a nanotube that was an inch wide, it would be 2,000 miles long!  Nanotubes are also the strongest and stiffest materials known—with tensile strength equivalent to that of a 1 mm² cable capable of supporting 14,158 pounds.  In addition, nanotubes can conduct electricity 1,000 times better than copper, and some scientists claim that they are capable of behaving like a superconductor (although this is somewhat controversial). 

On the negative side, nanotubes have been shown to induce an inflammatory response, and because their structure is somewhat similar to that of asbestos fibers, concerns have been raised about possible carcinogenicity.  

Although the nanotube’s interesting properties have caused speculation about many different types of applications, the actual products sold so far are designed to capitalize primarily on the molecule’s strength.   Consequently nanotubes have been used in such things as bicycle components, skis, hockey sticks, hunting arrows, clothing, and resins and paints for wind turbines and boats.

But I would have to give the award for the “Most Bizarre Use of Nanotubes” (I hesitate to use the word “cool” yet again, but that is what I am thinking) to an application that would take advantage of the nanotube’s high length-to-width ratio:  a space elevator with one end tethered to the ground and the other end, well, out in space.  For transporting stuff back and forth between the earth and the International Space Station maybe. 

Certainly one of the coolest (neatest?!) near-term applications of nanotubes has got to be the paper battery.  Originally reported in the scientific literature by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007, these batteries are composed of cellulose (paper), an ionic liquid (1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride), and nanotubes.  They produce between 2 and 8 volts of electricity, and since they are paper thin, they appear to be ideally suited for electronic devices such as cell phones and medical devices.  A new venture founded in 2008 (with the unsurprising name of Paper Battery Co.) plans to have a commercial product on the market by 2014.

And finally, the most recent carbon cousin—graphene.  Think of a single sheet of chicken wire.  The world got its first real glimpse of this molecular structure in 2004, when Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester, England, isolated graphene using Scotch tape.  Yes, indeed—they took some commercially available graphite, and stuck it to some Scotch tape.  Then they peeled the Scotch Tape off and, voila, they found that they had single layers of graphene.  Kind of like lifting pancakes off your plate with duct tape wrapped around your hand.  You get the idea.

This little experiment started another virtual gold rush of entrepreneurs hunting for commercial applications.  Like its buckyball and nanotube cousins, graphene has many unique properties—like being very strong and a great conductor of electricity, as well as having the ability to absorb and re-emit light over a greater range of wavelengths than any other known material.  And being only one atom thick, it is also the thinnest material known.  So graphene is currently being investigated for a wide variety of not-yet-commercial products, including electronic newspapers (e-paper), batteries, flexible electric circuits, and touch screens, not to mention desalinating water, sequencing DNA, and strengthening a wide array of other products.

For example, researchers at Michigan Technological University have shown that platinum (a very expensive metal) can be replaced with graphene in solar cell electrodes.  And scientists at Monash University in Australia have made graphene “supercapacitors” (batteries that can charge and recharge instantly) with as much energy density as a car battery.

And as an example of how one discovery can lead to another, scientists in 2012 reported that they have been able to grow glass on graphene.  That’s right, for the first time ever, researchers have produced a layer of glass only two atoms thick—on top of a layer of graphene.  And just like graphene, the glass looks like chicken wire , but since it is glass, it is composed of silicon and oxygen rather than carbon (glass is SiO₂).  And who knows what its possible uses are—the authors speculate that it might be used in semiconductors or in “layered graphene electronics as a passivated starting layer for gate insulators.”  Whatever that is.

The problem is that, like nanotubes, graphene is expensive to produce.  As a result, Graphenea, a Spanish company founded in 2010, will sell you a mere ½-inch square of single-layer graphene mounted on silicon dioxide for the whopping price of $330.   Or you can buy 250 ml of graphene oxide (advertised for use in batteries, solar cells, supercapacitors, and graphene research) for the slightly-less-shocking sum of $131. 

So graphene won’t be widely used in commercial products until the cost comes down.  Unless, of course, you are selling small and very expensive products—like high-end graphene tennis rackets, which are currently being offered for sale by the Head company.  But it will definitely be awhile before you see graphene in TV screens or e-paper.

So let’s summarize—buckyballs were discovered in 1985 and to date there are no commercial products on the market, but they are getting close.  Nanotubes were discovered in 1991 and commercial products have only recently entered the market.  And graphene, first isolated in 2004, has not yet found its way into commercial products to a significant extent. 

Lesson:  it is really REALLY hard to make money on even the most promising (i.e., coolest) new technologies.  And even if you eventually succeed, it often takes a really long time—due to the existence of competing products that are only so-so in terms of performance, but a lot cheaper to manufacture. 

These fantastic carbon molecules effectively illustrate the position that innovators of revolutionary technologies often find themselves in:  they are trying to “push” a product out the door to buyers who are not yet “pulling.”

Or simply, these are technologies in search of a market.  But with some inspired engineering, the market will come.   And then our lives will be a just a little bit better.

Useful references

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v318/n6042/pdf/318162a0.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022024880900135

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v354/n6348/pdf/354056a0.pdf

http://www.condmat.physics.manchester.ac.uk/pdf/mesoscopic/publications/graphene/Science_2004.pdf

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/34/13574.full.pdf

Profiteering in Space

Is space the new black?  Well, I’m probably the last to know, but 2012 had some amazing “firsts”:  in March of that year, an Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner made a 24-mile skydive; in that same month, an unmanned commercial space capsule named Dragon linked up with the International Space Station; in August the rover Curiosity landed on Mars, and Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, died.

With all the news about the privatization of space in the last couple of years, I’ve been wondering just how many ways there are to make money out there.  Well, it appears there are at least 10—and at least 38 companies already in existence to profit from what they hope is a gold mine in outer space.  Many of them are publically held, meaning that ordinary people can buy their stock.  And as far as I can tell, all of these companies come from Europe or the United States; if any non-western countries are represented, I can’t find them.

Pretty astonishing, no?

The term being used to describe these ventures is “NewSpace”, which replaced the earlier moniker “alt.space”, used in the mid 2000’s.  What NewSpace companies have in common is that they are funded by private means and only use government funding as secondary sources.  Thus far in 2013, ten billionaires have made investments in these ventures, including folks like Larry Page (a Google founder), Paul Allen (a Microsoft founder), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), and Sir Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways).  

There are several things of significance here, not the least of which is that gambling on making money from space is both a high-risk and a high-reward venture, just the sort of activity you’d expect from western entrepreneurs.  It may also mean that should space offer significant business opportunities, the western world will benefit the most—both in dollars (or pounds or euros) and in natural resources.  Not to mention experience.

But before we get into the specifics of the opportunities, we should define some terms.  First of all, what is “space”?  Well, as you might expect, there is no firm boundary to tell you when you are officially in outer space.  However, 62 miles above sea level is the generally accepted line.  Above this point there is no significant atmosphere.  If you’ve ever seen the northern lights, then you know where this approximate boundary is.  Meteor showers show up below this point (at altitudes of about 50 miles), weather balloons go as high as 30 miles, and Felix Baumgartner skydived from 24 miles up.  An astronaut is someone who has been more than 50 miles above the earth.

Now, you might think that being 62 miles up, or in outer space, is a long way from home.  However, it is lower than “low earth orbit” (LEO), which encompasses altitudes between 100 and 1,200 miles.  The International Space Station is at an altitude of 250 miles, and the Hubble Space Telescope is at 347 miles.  The Shuttle was designed to operate at 120 to 600 miles above the earth.  Sputnik, the first satellite, orbited at 133 miles.  Satellites involved with remote sensing occupy the range of altitudes between 370 and 500 miles, and most communications satellites are within LEO.

“Medium earth orbit”, or MEO, ranges from 1,240 miles to 21,000 miles, and this is where the so-called “geostationary satellites” operate—these are the ones we use for our GPS devices. 

I presume that, like me, almost everyone would guess that most (or all) of the manmade devices in outer space were put there by some government.  And I presume it would not be a surprise to learn that the United States and Russia have launched the most satellites.

But in researching this blog, I was pretty shocked to learn that Orbital Sciences Corporation, located in Vienna, Virginia, has been manufacturing and launching satellites since 1982!  And it is no tiny company—with 3,700 employees and revenues of $1.3 billion, they’ve built 174 satellites and 569 launch vehicles. 

So contrary to what some of the recent news would have you believe, the commercialization of space started several decades ago.  But perhaps it is fair to say that the momentum is building.

And here, in my opinion, are the top 10 commercial markets with the potential for generating money in space:

1.   Rockets, Satellites, and Launch Systems

2.   Space Tourism

3.   Resource Extraction (including metals and energy)

4.   Earth Reconnaissance

5.   In-Space Services

6.   Spaceports

7.   Space Manufacturing

8.   Microgravity Research

9.   Space Burial

10.   Space Advertising**

**  I certainly hope space advertising never gets off the ground.  I mean, can you picture a huge billboard visible from earth advertising Coke?  No thanks.  Where is Lady Bird Johnson when you need her?

I would presume that the first category—Rockets, Satellites, and Launch Systems—is the most well-known and the easiest to understand.  Many people are familiar with SpaceX’s successful delivery of cargo to the International Space Station in 2012 and the safe return of cargo back to Earth in a craft (the Dragon) that SpaceX designed and built.  They have a manned flight planned for the next 2-3 years, and according to their website, they already have contracts in place representing 50 future launches and $5 billion in revenue. 

The idea of Space Tourism is also pretty easy to understand—simply, you pay to take a ride into space.  To date, there appears to be only one company in this business arena:  Space Adventures.  They have arranged for seven people to fly into space already (the first tourist went to space in 2001 on a flight to the International Space Station), and the company claims to have already booked half a billion dollars in future flights (the seven tourists who have already gone into space paid between $20 and $40 million apiece).  Other companies currently have plans to enter this “space”.   For example, Virgin Galactic is hoping to have routine commercial flights that take six passengers at a time up to an altitude of 68 miles.  For only $200,000, you can get yourself a seat on one of these flights, but better hurry—according to the company’s website, at least 500 people have already made a $20,000 down payment.

A handful of companies appear to be involved in what I’ve called Earth Reconnaissance (number 4 on the list).  These are companies that have built and are operating satellites to take high-resolution photos and videos of planet earth.  Two companies in this space—Skybox Imaging and Planet Labs—envision “flocks” of satellites imaging the entire earth multiple times a day.   The anticipated markets for these exceedingly high-resolution images include the oil and gas industry, real estate and construction, natural resource management, mining, maritime ship tracking and guidance, insurance and infrastructure monitoring, urban planning, emergency response, and crop intelligence. 

Planet Labs launched two microsatellites called Dove-1 and Dove-2 as test subjects in the spring of 2013, and by December, they hope to have a flock of 28.   These microsatellites are indeed tiny—having a volume of about a quart and weighing in at about 3 pounds (this was truly astonishing to me, as prior to researching this blog post, I thought a satellite was about the size of a room).  And in a spirit of full disclosure, I must acknowledge that one of my sons is an employee of Planet Labs—so in a roundabout way I’m benefiting from the commercialization of space too.

Moving from the “here and now” to more futuristic space endeavors, some companies are targeting asteroids, moons, and planets for Resource Extraction, number 3 on my list—the mining of minerals and/or fuel.  Now it seems to me that this would be unrealistically expensive at the present time since the value of any minerals or fuel brought to earth from space would be dwarfed by the cost of extraction and transportation.  However, having said that, in 2012 some very smart entrepreneurs such as James Cameron (film director) and Larry Page (Google founder) started a company called Planetary Resources.  

The business concept behind Planetary Resources is focused on the potential depletion of some of the earth’s minerals.  For example, platinum (used in circuit boards) may be depleted in as little as 20-30 years.  Claims are made on the company’s website that a 1,500-foot-wide asteroid contains 174 times the earth’s current yearly output of platinum. I’m not sure how much faith to place in these numbers because it doesn’t appear that scientists are THAT certain about the composition of asteroids.  NASA is planning an unmanned expedition to an asteroid in 2016 for the purpose of taking a sample, but it is claimed that a small asteroid only 30 feet in diameter would contain 110 pounds of rare metals like platinum and gold.

It seems to me that bringing back large quantities of gold and platinum would collapse the world price of these metals—the old supply and demand curve at work—and thus jeopardize Planetary Resources’ business model.  It might even jeopardize the economies of whole countries, not to mention the bank accounts of individuals whose assets are tied up in precious metals.  But having an overabundance of minerals should ultimately be to the world’s benefit, as it would certainly diminish concerns about the earth running out of resources.

Interestingly, the first project Planetary Resources is working on is a space telescope with the catchy name of ARKYD 100.  It is not clear exactly what this telescope is going to do, but certainly one use is to determine the composition of asteroids.

The thing on my list that really shocked me was Space Burial (#9).  I never suspected that companies actually exist to do this, but in fact it has been going on since 1997, when a portion of the cremated remains of four individuals (including Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, and Timothy Leary, LSD head-case) were launched into space as a minor part of flights with a different primary purpose.  One particular company, named Celestis, seems to have been involved in all space burials to date.  It has conducted 13 burial missions so far, the last of which involved the remains of 308 individuals that went to space aboard the SpaceX Dragon in 2012.  What Celestis does is handle the placement of cremated remains on a space flight, either 1 gram or 7 grams depending on the level of, ugh, “service.”  There are four different categories of service ranging in price from $995 to $12,500: a quick up-into-space-and-down-again, with the remains capsule vaporizing as it re-enters the atmosphere; an earth orbit; a lunar orbit; and a “voyager” service in which the remains are shot out into space.

And last but not least, Space Manufacturing (#7).  No companies are currently manufacturing anything in space, but it is theorized that some important benefits would accrue from space’s low gravity and lack of atmosphere, including the elimination of sedimentation; better control of liquids and gases, and possibly more control over mixing of some compounds.  Since space is ultraclean, processes now requiring clean rooms could benefit too.  There may be other benefits, especially where the manufacturing process requires strong temperature gradients. 

I’d like to finish with some thoughts on one of the pioneers in this field—William Stone, who has the same kind of adventurous personality personified by Lewis and Clark in their exploration of what is now the western United States.  Stone is one of the most incredible athletes in the world, excelling in cave exploration, which requires many diverse skills like mountain climbing, scuba diving, and rock climbing.  In addition, he has developed very specialized equipment for his explorations, ranging from an innovative underwater re-breathing apparatus to 3-D mapping equipment and even a machine for melting through Antarctica ice. Interestingly, he is one of the founders of a company called Shackleton Energy, which was named after Ernest Shackleton, a famous Antarctica explorer.  Shackleton Energy plans to mine the moon for water, which would then be decomposed into oxygen and hydrogen and ultimately re-formulated into hydrogen peroxide for use as rocket fuel.

That pretty much sums it up. The privatization of space will require the brains, imaginations, skills, and daring of our planet’s most intrepid explorers and entrepreneurs.  The Sir Richard Bransons, James Camerons, Larry Pages, and William Stones of the world may be the present-day counterparts of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and Ernest Shackelton.  I fully expect that William Stone will be a passenger on the first commercial moon landing.

Then he’ll try to go caving on the moon.

Useful References:

http://www.spacex.com/

http://www.planetaryresources.com/

http://www.blueorigin.com/

http://planet-labs.com/

http://www.orbital.com/

http://www.skyboximaging.com/

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/space/item/12692-the-promise-of-privatized-space

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347

http://www.stoneaerospace.com/

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mining-the-moon