Property and Mineral Rights to spurl space dev.

[DarkenedOne]

There are two good reasons we haven’t expanded to Antarctica.

It’s too cold and we can’t grow food or livestock there. Both just like Mars.

Plus Mars has a few other things to screw us up.

No running water.
Enough radiation to kill you in short order.
The very real possibility of a meteorite smacking into your structure.
Oh and you can’t breathe there.

It would not be the first time that humanity faced survival issues when traveling in a new environment. I mean just 60 years ago we had no capability what so ever to even live in space for a few seconds. Today we have people who have lived in space for years. Humanity has gone to the moon. So with our rate of technological grow it is entirely possible that a few hundred years from now we will have people living on other planets.

Why, because the US is at the moment planning on building an outpost on the moon. Other countries have expressed similar plans as well, thus issues with ownership are sure to arise.

No to the first point. It was political double talk and it’s too expensive. They are choking on the cost of Ares1. There is no way they will eat AresV and the cost of a permanent outpost. And to the second point of other countries, see the answer to the first point.[/quote]

 

[BenS1985]

You are trying to legislate rain drops. It’s pointless. This same general topic comes up monthly around here.

In short minerals from space will never ever be used on Earth!

In long the cost curve will never be in favor of space based minerals.

Look at it from a different angle. When was the last time you saw a 747 loaded with iron ore? Or maybe a A320 filled with aluminum oxide?

Since space travel will never be cheaper than air travel, you will never see space minerals being transported to Earth.

Space minerals for use in space??? There’s no market! We are still struggling to put three people into orbit at one time. This Star Trek space colonization stuff is pure fantasy.

Never say never.
Using ore as an example is a bad one simply because of the availability. Strawberries & Live Lobster are a much better example.
Prior to the introduction of widely available jet travel you couldn't get either of these items at grocery stores or restaurants in Phoenix AZ. But starting in the 1960's air shipping by jet became cheap enough to allow them to be shipped by air from as far away as New Zealand for the berries & the Maine coast for the "Scavengers of the Sea."
Many things have to happen before we will start to enjoy the bounty the Solar System can provide, but I have little doubt we can & will do it eventually.

Exactly. I can agree with you samkent that for commonly available materials it will likely always be cheaper to extract those materials from earth than it will be from space. These materials are ones dominated by the cost of mining them. Since as space tech advances so will mining tech one can be pretty certain they such materials will continue to be mined here.

However the story is different for valuable substances like gold, silver, Helium-3, tritium, uranium-235, and etc. These substances are expensive not because they are difficult to mine. They are expensive because they are both rare and valuable. Gold for example has gone for a cost as high as $21k per kilogram. Therefore these materials will remain expensive even as our technology increases, and the cost of space flight goes down.

Now it is highly likely that we will find these valuable substances in extraterrestrial deposits, and that in the future it will be economically viable to mine them.

Its not a matter of 'highly likely' - it is a matter of absolute certainty. We landed on 433 Eros at the very end of the last decade, and found a veritable treasure trove of minerals.

In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.

That is just in one asteroid and not a very large one at that. There are thousands of asteroids out there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/401227.stm

Eros *was* valued at $20 trillion dollars....in 1999 when gold was trading for $250 an ounce. It is now well above $1,000 an ounce and will not look back. Supposedly, it contains much rare minerals that can be used in semiconductors.

As a space junkie, I really hope that private companies get the moxie to reach out there and start mining from an asteroid like Eros. We could use its gold and platinum for raw minerals here on earth, and make metal foams from the aluminum on the asteroid (which is stated to be very plentiful).

I fully agree that it would not be viable to transport some of the cheaper raw materials to earth for usage. However, the more valuable ones (such as the gold and exotics) would most likely be worthwhile to send back to earth. Processed exotics like metal foam can be made in space for a fraction of their cost on earth, and are very important for future projects.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Its not a matter of 'highly likely' - it is a matter of absolute certainty. We landed on 433 Eros at the very end of the last decade, and found a veritable treasure trove of minerals.

Got a reference for that? AFAIK, we found no such thing.

 

[samkent]

Its not a matter of 'highly likely' - it is a matter of absolute certainty. We landed on 433 Eros at the very end of the last decade, and found a veritable treasure trove of minerals.

I'm afraid you didn't digest the rest of the article.

It takes about 2,000 calories to boil a gram of iron so the equivalent of between 20 to 200 thousand megatons of TNT would be needed to start liberating substantial quantities of iron from the asteroid.

200 thousand megatons of TNT will sure cut into your profit angle.

If you wanted to mine only a section of Eros at a time then a huge solar energy collector - a sheet only a few kilometres in size - could collect enough energy from sunlight to power a smelting plant on the surface of Eros

A few kilometers in size and a smelting plant for zero g, is that all? I'll slip that into our stimulus package, no problem.

Have you even considered the cost to bring any of this booty back to Earth? It's astronomical! Excuse my pun.

Lets use a thought experiment. Pretend that Apollo is running strong with todays cost adjusted dollars. Pretend there are platinum bars stacked up on the Moon just waiting for you to step out of the LM and load em up. Drop the third crew member in favor of extra bars. Can you bring back enough to make a profit from each mission??

Now what happens when you have to add in a lunar bull dozer and processing facilities and all the other infrastructure? Any profit you thought you had has just warped to the other side of the solar system.

Even if you could bring back large quantities of rare metals, consider the comodities markets. I'm not an expert but if you double the supplyof anything, you don't just halve the price. The bottom of the market will fall out.

 

[BenS1985]

Its not a matter of 'highly likely' - it is a matter of absolute certainty. We landed on 433 Eros at the very end of the last decade, and found a veritable treasure trove of minerals.

Got a reference for that? AFAIK, we found no such thing.

Argh. Your right. I finally found the spectrometer data after a bit of digging. It looks like what they found was mostly iron, aluminum, oxygen, silicon and other lower-cost minerals. My sincere apologies.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/289/5487/2101.pdf (you need to register to obtain this, AFAIK)

Lets use a thought experiment. Pretend that Apollo is running strong with todays cost adjusted dollars. Pretend there are platinum bars stacked up on the Moon just waiting for you to step out of the LM and load em up. Drop the third crew member in favor of extra bars. Can you bring back enough to make a profit from each mission??

Now what happens when you have to add in a lunar bull dozer and processing facilities and all the other infrastructure? Any profit you thought you had has just warped to the other side of the solar system.

Even if you could bring back large quantities of rare metals, consider the comodities markets. I'm not an expert but if you double the supplyof anything, you don't just halve the price. The bottom of the market will fall out.

With Apollo-era technology? It may not be profitable. But I don't believe any person believing in space mining would argue that chemically-launched rockets would provide value for a transfer of materials. However, if you had a space elevator, costs would be much lower, and most likely allow for the development of space-based mining to acquire minerals for earth.

As for the law of supply and demand, it really comes down to how much you are supplying over a period of time. If a location had a large supply of something, it would not be acquired immediately - it may take years or decades for that location (such as an oil well) to exhaust its supply. In such a case demand may be met at a lower price, but not bottoming out.

And to say all that, its not like raw materials are the only thing available. You have more exotic things like Helium 3 out there that is available, and has the potential to be worth a large amount of money. From my understanding, HE3 is worth >$1 billion a ton. Even at half that price, you'd think it may be worthwhile to acquire

 

[samkent]

I suspect that is the cost of production. AFAIK there is no market for H3 since there is no known use for it. Only proposed and suspected uses.

 

[BenS1985]

I suspect that is the cost of production. AFAIK there is no market for H3 since there is no known use for it. Only proposed and suspected uses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3_refrigerator

As for the price of HE3 - from my understanding, the $1 billion USD/ton estimate comes from the value of energy obtained from the ton of HE3 at current market prices. 3 grams of HE3 can provide 493 megawatt hours at 100% efficency. At $0.075 per kilowatt hour, that translates to $36,975 of energy at market price for just 3 grams.

 

[samkent]

From wiki

If commercial fusion reactors were to use helium-3 as a fuel, they would require tens of tons of helium-3 each year to produce a fraction of the world's power,

By the time we get either one of the two all our homes will have solar panels on the roof. And our cars will likely run on something beyond batteries.

So from my point of view HE3 is a non issue.

 

[bdewoody]

What kind of space business involving human space flight will inspire the very wealthy to spend the capital necessary to establish such a business? It's not very likely that the vast amounts of mineral resources contained on the moon, the asteroids or Mars will ever be returned to the earth unless it is something vital to our continued existance and not found in sufficient quantity on or in the earth.

 

[EarthlingX]

What kind of space business involving human space flight will inspire the very wealthy to spend the capital necessary to establish such a business? It's not very likely that the vast amounts of mineral resources contained on the moon, the asteroids or Mars will ever be returned to the earth unless it is something vital to our continued existance and not found in sufficient quantity on or in the earth.

I'm not sure about this, but how about a space ? Somewhere more than 2 - 3 days away from everywhere, somewhere where you can go under the sky without a bunch of eyes watching you from above ?

You know, real macho takes his girl on the far side of the Moon to watch the stars ...

There are are lot of 'ifs' involved, and i'm not exactly non-partial, but well, i think some people, or organizations might find it interesting.

 

[bdewoody]

What kind of space business involving human space flight will inspire the very wealthy to spend the capital necessary to establish such a business? It's not very likely that the vast amounts of mineral resources contained on the moon, the asteroids or Mars will ever be returned to the earth unless it is something vital to our continued existance and not found in sufficient quantity on or in the earth.

I'm not sure about this, but how about a space ? Somewhere more than 2 - 3 days away from everywhere, somewhere where you can go under the sky without a bunch of eyes watching you from above ?

You know, real macho takes his girl on the far side of the Moon to watch the stars ...

There are are lot of 'ifs' involved, and i'm not exactly non-partial, but well, i think some people, or organizations might find it interesting.

You are referring to tourism I suppose. That's about the only for profit business I can think of too. But it will be only for the extremely wealthy for quite a while and if just one accident happens involving deaths that business will vanish. There is one other factor that we have all been ignoring, the insurance industry. I wonder what kind of policy Lloyds of London would write for such a venture.

 

[DarkenedOne]

It takes about 2,000 calories to boil a gram of iron so the equivalent of between 20 to 200 thousand megatons of TNT would be needed to start liberating substantial quantities of iron from the asteroid.

200 thousand megatons of TNT will sure cut into your profit angle.

20 to 200 thousand megatons. We are not talking about blowing the asteroid up here. Asteroid or preferably moons would be mined much of the same way they are mined on earth. You do not have to blow up the earth in order to mine it. No you use drills and other tools to cut up the ore in order to reduce it into a form that can be transported to a ore processing facility. The ore processing facility would probably be a structure on the surface of the object, just like here on earth. It would take the mined ore and refine it into ingots(the substance in pure form), which would then be transported to factors for further processing.

Have you even considered the cost to bring any of this booty back to Earth? It's astronomical! Excuse my pun.

Lets use a thought experiment. Pretend that Apollo is running strong with todays cost adjusted dollars. Pretend there are platinum bars stacked up on the Moon just waiting for you to step out of the LM and load em up. Drop the third crew member in favor of extra bars. Can you bring back enough to make a profit from each mission??

So from what I understand if you take the cost of Apollo and divide by the material returned than the cost of getting material from the moon is around $40,000,000. So no for platinum. At that price only a few materials would make the cut including anti-matter at several hundred billion per kg, and useful, but low occurring nuclear isomers like hafnium-178 and tantalum at several billion per kg.

No take into account that Apollo was designed to put man on the moon, not for returning materials to earth. One would imagine that a mission like that would probably be unmanned thus by at least a factor of ten.

Remember the uranium-235 and the plutonium-239 that powers todays nuclear reactors are worth around $4000000 per kg.

Of course we are assuming 50 year old technology. It is likely that doing the same today would be substantially less and doing it 50 years from now would be even better than that.

Even if you could bring back large quantities of rare metals, consider the commodities markets. I'm not an expert but if you double the supplyof anything, you don't just halve the price. The bottom of the market will fall out.

Which is why you would not double the market supply?

 

[DarkenedOne]

From wiki

If commercial fusion reactors were to use helium-3 as a fuel, they would require tens of tons of helium-3 each year to produce a fraction of the world's power,

By the time we get either one of the two all our homes will have solar panels on the roof. And our cars will likely run on something beyond batteries.

So from my point of view HE3 is a non issue.

As we develop and advance our technology we will discover and make use of ever more advanced materials. Solar panels for example use significantly more advanced and harder to find materials than the gas and coal power plants that they replace. Future cars will also use more advanced, less abundant, and more expensive materials than they do now.

It is likely that some of the materials will come from space.

 

[EarthlingX]

What kind of space business involving human space flight will inspire the very wealthy to spend the capital necessary to establish such a business? It's not very likely that the vast amounts of mineral resources contained on the moon, the asteroids or Mars will ever be returned to the earth unless it is something vital to our continued existance and not found in sufficient quantity on or in the earth.

I'm not sure about this, but how about a space ? Somewhere more than 2 - 3 days away from everywhere, somewhere where you can go under the sky without a bunch of eyes watching you from above ?

You know, real macho takes his girl on the far side of the Moon to watch the stars ...

There are are lot of 'ifs' involved, and i'm not exactly non-partial, but well, i think some people, or organizations might find it interesting.

You are referring to tourism I suppose. That's about the only for profit business I can think of too. But it will be only for the extremely wealthy for quite a while and if just one accident happens involving deaths that business will vanish. There is one other factor that we have all been ignoring, the insurance industry. I wonder what kind of policy Lloyds of London would write for such a venture.

Yes, tourism too, but mainly as a room for expansion. Our history has examples of societies being run with lines of communication much longer than what we have now, and those allow more local freedom and still maintain cohesion.
Earth is getting smaller every day, we need more room.

The question about insurance is a very good one. I guess it would be related to the success rate, not the projected failure rate, but it would be nice to know.

 

[bdewoody]

From my viewpoint there is only one country that has totally run out of room. Japan. They need the space (no pun intended) and have the motivation to establish permanent bases at least on the moon. I have read that their civil engineering community has already prepared detailed construction plans for bases on the moon.

 

[Boris_Badenov]

From my viewpoint there is only one country that has totally run out of room. Japan. They need the space (no pun intended) and have the motivation to establish permanent bases at least on the moon. I have read that their civil engineering community has already prepared detailed construction plans for bases on the moon.

Therein lies the key to the utilization of off planet resources (Space).
Once a viable colony is established & two way transportation is lay-ed in, then the cost will drop in ways we can't imagine at this time.
Elon Musk has the right idea IMO to start that colony on Mars.
Due to distance it needs to be as self sustaining as possible. But the need to bring in more colonists will keep the transport working. And the desire to have that two way trip is going to push for shorter trip times so the ships will become more capable. That capability will enable in space mining.

 

[Polishguy]

From my viewpoint there is only one country that has totally run out of room. Japan. They need the space (no pun intended) and have the motivation to establish permanent bases at least on the moon. I have read that their civil engineering community has already prepared detailed construction plans for bases on the moon.

Therein lies the key to the utilization of off planet resources (Space).
Once a viable colony is established & two way transportation is lay-ed in, then the cost will drop in ways we can't imagine at this time.
Elon Musk has the right idea IMO to start that colony on Mars.
Due to distance it needs to be as self sustaining as possible. But the need to bring in more colonists will keep the transport working. And the desire to have that two way trip is going to push for shorter trip times so the ships will become more capable. That capability will enable in space mining.

A Mars colony shouldn't be hard to make self-sufficient. The martian soil is rich in most nutrients (nitrogen is iffy, but it exists in the atmosphere enough to synthesize ammonia), and sulfides, which the Spirit rover just found, can be used to make the soil more acidic. Hematite and Silicon dioxide are very common on Mars, so glass and iron should be easy to make. Aluminum is also abundant, but locked in a tough compound called alumina that is hard to decompose. Plastics can be made from the reactions of carbon dioxide and water, making polyethylene (which makes plastic bags, and spectra plastic) and polypropylene (used for furniture). Rocket propellant can either be hydrogen/oxygen or methane oxygen (depending on how much water is available), and methane/oxygen can run internal combustion engines on Mars.

 

[Boris_Badenov]

A Mars colony shouldn't be hard to make self-sufficient..

This line got a good chuckle, all the rest I couldn't agree more.

The martian soil is rich in most nutrients (nitrogen is iffy, but it exists in the atmosphere enough to synthesize ammonia), and sulfides, which the Spirit rover just found, can be used to make the soil more acidic. Hematite and Silicon dioxide are very common on Mars, so glass and iron should be easy to make. Aluminum is also abundant, but locked in a tough compound called alumina that is hard to decompose. Plastics can be made from the reactions of carbon dioxide and water, making polyethylene (which makes plastic bags, and spectra plastic) and polypropylene (used for furniture). Rocket propellant can either be hydrogen/oxygen or methane oxygen (depending on how much water is available), and methane/oxygen can run internal combustion engines on Mars.

 

[samkent]

Of course we are assuming 50 year old technology. It is likely that doing the same today would be substantially less and doing it 50 years from now would be even better than that.

Any numbers to back that up?? The only things to get cheaper are products made in Asia. Is China mass producing rockets yet?

Solar panels for example use significantly more advanced and harder to find materials than the gas and coal power plants that they replace.

Uhh, that's news to me. Solar panels use silicone and GaAs. Both of which are cheap and plentiful.

A Mars colony shouldn't be hard to make self-sufficient.

Boing! As I shake my head...

The martian soil is rich in most nutrients (nitrogen is iffy, but it exists in the atmosphere enough to synthesize ammonia), and sulfides, which the Spirit rover just found, can be used to make the soil more acidic. Hematite and Silicon dioxide are very common on Mars, so glass and iron should be easy to make. Aluminum is also abundant, but locked in a tough compound called alumina that is hard to decompose. Plastics can be made from the reactions of carbon dioxide and water, making polyethylene (which makes plastic bags, and spectra plastic) and polypropylene (used for furniture). Rocket propellant can either be hydrogen/oxygen or methane oxygen (depending on how much water is available), and methane/oxygen can run internal combustion engines on Mars.

Ingrediants are a far cry from finished products. I can get aluminum and steel from my local scrap yard. Which is many steps ahead of ore locked in the ground. But I am still light years from making my own Ares1.
What would you have to give the colonists that would allow them to make a new electric motor for their broken rover? It's cheap and easy on Earth to repair something but when you are on a hostile island with next to nothing it's another matter.

 

[HopDavid]

A Mars colony shouldn't be hard to make self-sufficient.

Every cubic centimeter of Martian living volume must be enclosed. Perhaps some of the enclosing structure could be made from in situ resources. But some of the components such as air locks require machined parts and electronics that would need to be imported from the earth for a long while.

The martian soil is rich in most nutrients (nitrogen is iffy, but it exists in the atmosphere enough to synthesize ammonia), and sulfides, which the Spirit rover just found, can be used to make the soil more acidic. Hematite and Silicon dioxide are very common on Mars, so glass and iron should be easy to make. Aluminum is also abundant, but locked in a tough compound called alumina that is hard to decompose. Plastics can be made from the reactions of carbon dioxide and water, making polyethylene (which makes plastic bags, and spectra plastic) and polypropylene (used for furniture). Rocket propellant can either be hydrogen/oxygen or methane oxygen (depending on how much water is available), and methane/oxygen can run internal combustion engines on Mars.

When you go the hardware store to buy construction materials, you are getting stuff from minerals imported from diverse places. Nickel from Canada, copper from Arizona, etc.

Mars has no transportation infra structure. You might be able to start one settlement near a rich lode of copper ore, another near sulfur deposits. But how would the two bases trade commodities? Lack of roads preclude trade between various mines and manufacturing communities.

If you are relying solely on the low grade ore within easy reach of a given base, energy requirements for mining are going to be huge.

I would imagine the resources you list are available on the Himalayas. When you build a self sufficient colony on top of Mount Everest, I will give some credence to your assertion "A Mars colony shouldn't be hard to make self-sufficient."

 

[DarkenedOne]

Of course we are assuming 50 year old technology. It is likely that doing the same today would be substantially less and doing it 50 years from now would be even better than that.

Any numbers to back that up?? The only things to get cheaper are products made in Asia. Is China mass producing rockets yet?

Well lets see now. Your every day calculator has comparable computing power as the apollo's computers, yet only costs about 20 bucks compared to the Apollos computers which must of cost hundreds of thousands if not millions, weighs only a few grams while apollo computers weighed 100s of kilograms, and consumes only a few miliwatts while the apollo era computers consumed 10s of watts. Oh and do not get me started on the difference in size.

Also you have solar and nuclear power sources that are both far superior than the fuel cells used on apollo creating massive savings in weight and volume.

You have far more advance composite and weight saving materials than apollo did, such as the aluminum lithium composite being used in Orion and the carbon fiber composite in SpaceShipOne.

I could go through all of the technological advancement in space technology that have occurred since Apollo, but it would take me more time than I wish to spend doing so. Point is that the few that I have just explained to you would make the entire system far more cost effective if you decided to build another apollo.

However as I said before the purpose for Apollo was not to ship massive quantities of anything back to earth, therefore we can assume that if a system was designed specifically for that task it would be far more efficient than Apollo.

Solar panels for example use significantly more advanced and harder to find materials than the gas and coal power plants that they replace.

Uhh, that's news to me. Solar panels use silicone and GaAs. Both of which are cheap and plentiful.

Not as cheap and plentiful as the steal engines and coal power sources they replace. That has been a major problem with solar power that stands as a major obstacle for large scale energy production.

Steel only costs about $1 per kilogram while silicon is around $3.2 per kilogram, and that is not taking in consideration the rare earth metals that are added for extra efficiency.

 

[Swampcat]

You have far more advance composite and weight saving materials than apollo did, such as the aluminum lithium composite being used in Orion and the carbon fiber composite in SpaceShipOne.

Just want to point out that the aluminum-lithium being used for the current Orion is an alloy, not a composite.

OTOH, NASA has studied the use of composites for use in HSF. Check out Composite Crew Module (CCM) Pressure Vessel Pathfinder Development.

 

[Eman_3]

Right now, it's very straightforward. The USA is a signatory to "TREATY ON PRINCIPLES GOVERNING THE ACTIVITIES OF STATES IN THE EXPLORATION AND USE OF OUTER SPACE, INCLUDING THE MOON AND OTHER CELESTIAL BODIES (1967)".

In it, can be found

Article I

The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other
celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the
interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or
scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free
for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind,
on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and
there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.

There shall be freedom of scientific investigation in outer space,
including the moon and other celestial bodies, and States shall
facilitate and encourage international co-operation in such
investigation.

Article II

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not
subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of
use or occupation, or by any other means.

So unless the USA wishes to be branded as dishonest and not worth of any trust, breaking this treaty would open up a can of worms. For instance, if the USA decided to break this treaty and allow commercial claims, then, let's pick the Chinese for example, sit back and watch the exploration. Once a profitable method and location is worked out, the Chinese just move in, or at least next door. Dow Chenical spends a trillion dollars exploring for specific materials, and the Chinese spend just a billion to send out a detachment of military and some workers to assemble the production facilities. If the USA decides to use force, then the Chinese nuke Los Angeles, or something similar.

So maybe it's in everyone's best interests to respect the treaty.

 

[bdewoody]

I don't know who will break it but as soon as there is a profit to be made in space this treaty will be out the window.

 

[rhapsodyinspace2]

The solar systems first trillionaire will be a space based businessman! So yeppers....someones gonna cross those lines at some point!

One asteroid full of basic metals or water could pull Social Security out of the red by giving us precious metals to back up our currency and bring us out of debt. We wouldnt have to put those precious metals into the market and drag down the prices but having it in possesion in a Fort Space Knox (you wouldnt even have to bring those precious materials back to Earth)would make our I.O.U.'s that we have forced on our children and grandchildren and possibly great grand children backed by solid investments and holdings!

And if you want a spectacular driving force for the 2010-2030's the President can simply say that as a country of vision, as a country of acceptance of the future of space our next state of the union should be a space based colony and give Nasa the funds to make it happen. That within 10 years we should have a 51st star on our flag and that star should be space based!

Sorry....Ive been drinking!

But this would be something new....something no one else has done! A new vision and a new direction. A focused steady path to the future!