An Asteroid Mining Model Based on Input and Output Equity
Authors: Peng Zimu 
Published: April 2023

With the progress of science and technology and the rapid consumption of earth resources, the exploitation of outer space resources such as planetary mining has become an international hot issue. The power gap between countries in today’s world is so wide that how to realize the so-called fairness has become a problem worth thinking. Firstly, we establish an Input Output Equity Model (IOEM) to measure global equity. We define global equity as the balance between the input of human and material resources in the management and construction of a country and the overall strength of the country. Ten sets of data from many countries are divided into four categories: Science and technology, Traffic, Workforce and Energy consumption. We used the Entropy Weight method (EWM) based on TOPSIS comprehensive evaluation to determine the weight of each part and index, comprehensively evaluated 12 countries covering six continents and calculated their input equity index. Then we compared the index with the GDP of each country and found that the overall trend was consistent. This shows that there is a balance between input and output, which verifies the rationality of the model. We then establish the Asteroid Mining Model (AMM) to evaluate and predict the Asteroid Mining capabilities of various countries. In combination with the whole process of asteroid mining and the analysis of main components, we choose these three indicators: Scientific Research (SR), Exploitation of Mineral (EM) and Aeronautics and Astronautics (AA) to measure. We use the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the weights of the three factors and calculate Asteroid Mining Model (AMI) for each country. Then, the model is applied to two representative countries, China and Colombia, and the future is predicted by fitting. According to the results, it is concluded that the asteroid mining industry has a good development prospect. Next, we use correlation analysis to discuss the impact of the asteroid mining industry on global equity and conclude that there is a correlation between the decision index of asteroid mining and equity index, among which the correlation coefficient between aircraft and equity index reaches 0.9290. It can be concluded that the development of asteroid mining in the future will inevitably affect global equity. Furthermore, in order to explore how changes in asteroid mining will affect global equity in different ways, we carry out multiple linear regression analysis of variables from macro and micro perspectives respectively and find that the development of asteroid mining industry will indirectly affect global equity through its impact on computers and researchers. Finally, based on our findings, we propose policy recommendations for the development of asteroid mining to the United Nations from the perspective of global equity. Our advice can be summed up as “Inspire, Share and Collaborate”. We hope that while promoting scientific and technological development and exploration of outer space, all countries will enjoy friendly cooperation and common development so as to realize a fair and beautiful vision of the universe.