Mining in space? It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but in fact, it’s already here.

A growing roster of Canadian aerospace and mining companies is setting its sights on asteroids as the next frontier for precious metals and reserves of water on the moon that could make it an ideal pit stop on the way to the deeper reaches of space.

That’s what brought several dozen representatives from aerospace and mining companies, as well as geologists, academics and legal experts to the 6th annual conference put on by the Canadian Space Commerce Association (CSCA) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Thursday.

“It sounds like it’s a new area, but in actual fact, it’s been around for more than a decade, Dale Boucher, director of product design, prototyping and testing at the Northern Centre of Advanced Technologies, a Sudbury-based training and technology development centre for the mining industry.

NORCAT, as the facility is known, has developed rover chassis specifically designed for lunar mining activities. In the last decade, it has developed drills for the Canadian Space Agency and NASA.

There’s no full scale interplanetary mining projects right now. But proponents say the groundwork is being laid. Last month, the Curiosity rover completed its first drill hole on Mars as part of its continuing hunt for signs of life.

Last year, Planetary Resources, a group back by the billionaire founders of Google, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, as well as film maker James Cameron, and Charles Simonyi, former chief software architect at Microsoft announced itself as the world’s first asteroid mining company.

“It will happen and it will happen on an enormous scale. But whether that starts now or in 20 years or 50 years, that’s a lot of what the conference is about,” said Arny Sokoloff, conference organizer and president of the CSCA.

Geologists believe that iron, nickel and precious metals could be mined from asteroids at much higher concentrations than on Earth.

And as humans explore deep space, scientists believe that resources such as water may be gathered for use on the journey. That’s referred to as in-situ resource utilization.

Scientists know that the moon for instance, has huge reserves of water. “If you took that water and broke it into hydrogen and oxygen and used it to refuel the shuttle (which is no longer flying), you could launch one shuttle a day for 2000 years with all the water that’s on the moon,” Boucher said.

In effect, “the moon could be used as a refueling stop for spacecraft headed into deep space, thus reducing the amount of fuel that needs to be lofted out of the Earth’s gravity field,” Mark Whittington, author of Children of Apollo, writes.

Canada has been invited to participate in RESOLVE, a NASA-lead mission that would prospect for water and other resources on the moon.

With more than 1,000 satellites already orbiting the Earth, and plans for space tourism (Virgin founder and billionaire Richard Branson), and space hotels (Budget hotelier Robert Bigelow), proponents expect the cost of launching into space will decline.

There are also ecological reasons for space mining, Sokoloff said.

While the cost of Earth-bound mining projects escalate because precious metals are harder to find, the cost of space mining will decline as technology improves, he said.

“Once it’s roughly the same cost to get a pound of gold from space as from earth, no country in the world will want to mine on their territory,” Sokoloff said.

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“You’re not destroying an ecology. You’re taking a lump that has been out there for three billion years. Nobody has used it and there’s nothing living on it. To get this on Earth, you have to rip up and poison and fight with everybody.”

Of course, there are complicated issues around ownership and international treaties. But in the meantime, proponents say that Canada, already a leader in the mining industry, should extend its reach.

“Canada can take a leaders’ role by adapting existing mining legislation to include places like asteroids and the moon. That would require international agreements, but Canada can certainly take a leading role,’ Boucher said.