For a year after the idea, I had no path to it. I read what I could find and got no closer to knowing how someone actually enters this field.
Then Ethan Berney sent me a link to a graduate program at the Colorado School of Mines in Space Resources. It was, as far as either of us could tell, the only one of its kind: a school that had taught mining since 1874 deciding that the next place to mine was off Earth.
The application
Dr. Mark Haug wrote my recommendation in April 2019. He taught 800 to 900 students a semester and said so in the letter, which is his way of noting that the conversations we had in his office were not something he had time to have with everyone.
The personal statement is the part I find hardest to read back. I was 23 and writing to strangers about why they should let me in.
It closes with the first written version of the mission:
The company’s mission will be to help mine the infinite resources in space, utilizing those resources to both advance space exploration and improve all life on Earth.
The mission we operate under today reads: to help harvest and cultivate the infinite resources in space, utilizing those resources to both further space exploration and benefit all life on Earth and in Space. Mine became harvest and cultivate. Earth became Earth and in Space. Seven years of revision, and the sentence is still recognizably the same sentence.
The acceptance
That was the first moment the dream had a door attached to it. Not a plan yet, but a place to go and people who took the question seriously enough to teach it.
Ethan Berney, who sent the link, now serves on iGO’s board of advisors. Dr. Angel Abbud-Madrid, who signed the acceptance, has said he would join it as well.