"Americans should have the right to participate in the commercial exploration, extraction and use of resources in outer space, in accordance with applicable law."
This is one of the fragments of the executive order alluding to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the basis of international space law, that President Donald Trump has signed to establish the policies for the exploitation of space resources.
Space resources
100 billion dollars for every inhabitant of the Earth . This is the value that NASA calculates for all the minerals stored in asteroids in the main belt of our Solar System, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Gold, platinum, tungsten, water …
According to the order, the United States intends to negotiate in the coming months joint declarations and bilateral and multilateral agreements with foreign states regarding safe and sustainable operations for the extraction and public and private use of space resources.
From Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov has criticized the initiative, stating that "space monopolization, either in one way or another, (…) all such attempts would be totally unacceptable." Peskov has pointed out that Trump’s initiative should be studied from a legal point of view.
The astronomer and popularizer Neil DeGrasse Tyson stated in an interview on CNBC that "the first trillionaire in history will be the person who exploits natural resources in asteroids."