Trka za resursima” u astro-prostoru: šta nam donosi budućnost?

The paper analyses how a fast advance in technology can ease both discovering and exploitation of alternative energy resources available in space, and at the same time can open new long-term conflicts over supremacy in commercialisation of space resources. The author considers viability of actual and planned projects of members of the prestigious club of “space nations”—the United States, Japan, Russia and the European Union. Global energy demand growth stimulates technologically advanced countries to explore more intensively the technically feasibility and economic viability of renewable energy sources in space. Along with advancement in space technology in the foreseeable future, astro-resources could be used as an alternative or at least a supplement to the existing resource base. The author argues that the increasing space technology ambitions of China, India and, to some extent Iran, create a potential knot of new geopolitical and geoeconomical international conflicts. In conclusion, the author emphasizes that the extraterrestrial sources for the Earthʼs energy needs will not only stay an important alternative basis for energy security in decades to come, but space itself is likely to become rather a new battlefield of the great powersʼ strategic interests than a part of the common heritage of mankind, equally accessible to all nations.