A House hearing on space mining turned into a skirmish over billionaire Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest as he seeks to overhaul the federal government.
Democrats have been relentlessly hammering the tech mogul at hearings and markups, decrying his cost-cutting work on behalf of President Donald Trump. But a House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing provided a nexus.
One of the witnesses was Steve Place, senior policy adviser for AstroForge, which is working on finding ways of extracting minerals important for the economy, defense and energy technology from asteroids. The company is working with Musk’s SpaceX.
“We currently have no viable option for this problem other than going off-world. Asteroid mining must be part of America’s mining future,” Place told lawmakers, noting the Earth’s finite resources.
