The year is 2050 and you are out to dinner at a newly fashionable and very upmarket restaurant.The menu has just two items-space risotto and lunar water.The prices are astronomical.Toronto-based geological and mining consultant Watts,Griffis and McOuat used this scenario in a recent report to illustrate the potential market for space resources.The extraction,processing and commercialisation of water from unconsolidated regolith*,hydrated minerals,or ice on the Moon and asteroids could generate a potential market worth $206bn over the next 30 years.Products like rice or other grains could be exported back to Earth to meet a growing fashionable demand and command larcenous prices,much as the European spice trade developed in ancient and medieval times.
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