Our Cosmic Journey – The Importance of Mineral Exploration, Discovery and Development

Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Meeting:
7:30 pm, October 14th, H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, Vancouver
Title of Talk: “Our Cosmic Journey – The Importance of Mineral Exploration, Discovery and Development”

Abstract:
The wealth from mines, from the dawn of recorded human history, is the epic march of mankind along the path of progress. It was the mines that made ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece and Rome great and in more recent times have created immense wealth to the benefit of the people of Europe, North America, Australia and now China, India, Brazil and Russia.
Georgius Agricola in his “De Re Metallica” published in 1556 stated, “Inasmuch as the chief callings are those of money lender, the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, and miner, I say, inasmuch as usury is odious, while the spoil cruelly captured from the people innocent of wrong is wicked in the sight of God and man, and inasmuch as the calling of the miner excels in honor and dignity that of the merchant trading for lucre, while it is not less noble though far more profitable than agriculture, who can fail to realize that mining is a calling of peculiar dignity.”
In Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos – Travels in Space and Time (Episode 8), 1989” he stated, “Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sands on all the beaches of the earth – and each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them there is a succession of incidences, events, occurrences which influence its future – countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. Here on our small planet at this moment we face a critical branch point in history. What we do with our world right now will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed, or stupidity, we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet – to enhance enormously our understanding of the universe and carry us to the stars.”
Today, we are part of the “space generation”, crawling off the surface of the earth into the “oceans of space” – mining will continue to provide the capability for humankind to advance to the moon, mars and on to the stars.