GOLDEN, Colorado -- Outer space has an endless supply of resources. Within rocket's reach there are light buckets full of intense solar energy, at least out to Mars. Then there are valuable materials on the Moon, as well as on Mars and its moons. Near Earth asteroids offer yet another mother lode of minerals.

Mining specialists, space engineers, and energy strategists were among those gathered at Space Resources Roundtable V, held here October 28-30 at the Colorado School of Mines.

Also giving space resource mining its "due diligence" were lawyers. Turns out you can't leave Earth without them.

If humans are ever to truly spread their wings in space, they must be nourished and sustained by space resources. That means no less than "living off the land", severing the supply umbilical of Mother Earth. It's also tagged as in-situ resource utilization -- or ISRU in space lingo short speak. Off-world resources can be transformed into oxygen, propellant, water, as well as used for construction purposes and to energize power stations.

As new trade routes flourish in space, space resources, particularly energy and the systems needed to collect and distribute it, will grow in importance as their value and uses begin to be realized. Moreover, commercial opportunities are expected to exist within this growing domain.

"ISRU really is the stepping stone, a key part of the development of space," said Gerald Sanders, Chief, Propulsion and Fluid Systems Branch at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "We can do things at low Earth orbit bringing materials up from Earth. But once you start getting any distance away from low Earth orbit, the leveraging just isn't there," he told SPACE.com .

Sanders envision a progressive build-up of space infrastructure, akin to a space-based railroad. Part of that trans-space network of hardware is a depot at the Lagrangian L1 point, along with use of Moon-made propellant.

In the past, rocketeers have been focused on cutting the costs of lobbing payloads from Earth into space. In some quarters, that has evoked a "so cheap to launch, everything can be thrown away" attitude. But even if launch costs were radically reduced, Sanders said, not throwing space hardware away makes far greater sense.

All that translates into reusable and sustainable space infrastructure.

"The enthusiasm is perennial. We're all infected with the same dream," said Brad Blair, Ph.D student in mineral economics at the School of Mines. He acknowledges that the NASA humans-to-the-Moon program of the late 1960s into the early 1970s was a certifiable statement of American technical prowess.

In essence, the dusty dozen Apollo moonwalkers were the first prospectors to site-survey another world.

"Apollo was a grand one but there was a lot of potential that was left hanging…now left hanging for the last 30 years or so," Blair said. "We seem to be hooked on this idea of throwing away infrastructure as soon as we make it in space," he added.

"It's very interesting right now to realize that there are two countries with the ability to put humans into space, and the United States is not one of them," Blair said, noting China's recent entry into the human spaceflight arena along with Russia's on-going launch of passenger-carrying Soyuz spacecraft.

Blair senses that there is an "international bid" for the Moon, driven by such nations as China and India that want to go the lunar distance in years to come.

Is there a lunar payoff out there?

Finding an economic return on the Moon is critical for any commercial enterprise to cough up investment money, Blair said. "All of our research so far indicates that there's still need for reliance on the government to get that kicked off."

Once an entrepreneur sees a profitable edge to a Moon-derived product, Blair foresees a stampede towards the door by space capitalists trying to make the next buck. It's a matter of getting the process started. NASA has the ability to open those doors, to reduce the business risk and help spearhead the economic development of space, he said.

The concepts for utilizing the Moon's resources continue to expand, said Michael Duke, the Roundtable's organizer and Director of the Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space (CCACS) at the School of Mines.

Duke said that the discovery of hydrogen deposits -- perhaps in the form of water -- at the lunar poles should be stimulating NASA and other countries to investigate the strategic and economic potential of that resource.

Data presented at the Roundtable meeting suggests propellants produced from lunar ice could be developed commercially, Duke said. "However, we must first learn more about its location and concentration."

A surface exploration program to one of the lunar poles should be undertaken, Duke believes, to better determine just how much ice is resident there and how tough it would be to mine the material, then process it to produce fuel. "Lunar propellant can become a stepping stone for human expansion into the solar system," he said.

Whether or not water ice is tucked away in niches at the lunar poles remains debatable, however.

Researchers analyzing data gleaned from NASA's Lunar Prospector orbiter, as well as the Pentagon's Clementine spacecraft, argue that hydrogen, likely in the form of water ice, exists in huge quantities hidden within craters free of the Sun's warming rays.

It was reported at the meeting that there are "discrepancies" in the data supporting the water ice idea. Carbon deposits at the lunar poles, rather than hydrogen/water ice, was offered as one possibility for what has been detected on the Moon.

The greatest need -- to prepare not only for Moon mining, but also digging out resources from Mars -- is not for technological breakthroughs. Rather, it is for information and clarification.

That’s the belief of Leslie Gertsch, Assistant Professor of Geological Engineering at the Rock Mechanics & Explosives Research Center at the University of Missouri-Rolla.

It is obvious that fundamental differences exist between the working conditions on Earth contrasted to the Moon and Mars, Gertsch said. On the other hand, we shouldn't forget the know-how gained by humans after more than 10 millennia of extracting natural resources on our own planet, she noted.

First of all, Gertsch said, the legal landscape for extraterrestrial resource ownership and extraction must be clarified. Additionally, there needs to be detailed feedstock specifications for products that could be made using off-Earth materials. Obtaining more, and higher resolution data on prospective deposits needed for space mining -- using both orbiters and landers -- is critical too. Lastly, achieving and maintaining the link to the Moon and Mars is key, she said.

Extraterrestrial mining is sure to involve interactions that won't be discovered until on-the-spot work takes place, Gertsch said. The effects of gravity, vacuum, even how particles act when put in a pile or fed through processing machinery…these and other factors need to be considered in moving space mining into high gear, she said.

Terrestrial mining and milling are not designed for use on the Moon or Mars, Gertsch said. "They are doable, but at the cost of being terribly inefficient. Modifying these processes to bring their efficiency up to commercial levels will be non-trivial, but it's not necessary to achieve perfection beforehand," she reported.

"We need to get out there and try these things out," Gertsch advised.

Throughout the three-day meeting, numbers of space mining ideas were tabled.

For example, Lawrence Taylor, Director, Planetary Geoscience Institute at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville advanced the idea of microwave processing of lunar soil.

Taylor, along with colleague Thomas Meek, is studying how lunar regolith -- the topside blanket of "soil" comprised of stone, fine powder and rock fragments -- can be sintered and melted to create a variety of products.

"What's been found really presents us with a fantastic situation," Taylor explained. First of all, the magnetic properties of lunar soil are a lot different than ever thought. Making use of an array of microwaves, working at adjustable frequencies and power settings, lunar soil can be simply and effectively sintered to varying depths.

"I can actually put a glass coating on the upper inch or so. I can make whatever kind of roads you want," Taylor said.

Focused microwaves can blast the lunar soil to also make shielding, antenna dishes, glass fiber, and other products, such as solar cells made out of ilmenite. Even an igloo can be made using the concept, Taylor said.

"It depends on how far you want to stretch your imagination," Taylor said. The best match of Moon and microwave processing, in terms of efficiency and soil composition, is the Apollo 17 landing site - the valley called Taurus-Littrow.

A relatively new legal concept, "telepossession", was detailed at the Space Resources Roundtable.

Richard Westfall, head of Galactic Mining Industries, Inc. of Denver, Colorado, suggested that telepossession can be used to establish title to asteroids accessible from Earth orbit.

The notion is to use robot emissaries to perform tasks that a hands-on asteroid miner could do at a remote site. That includes gaining legal domain over a property and establishing a form of legal possession of the mini-world. Here on Earth, this legal model has been applied to maritime salvage of a shipwreck using underwater telerobots.

Westfall proposed creation and use of Telepossession Probes: A lander and a relay spacecraft.

Rendezvousing with an asteroid in space, the lander performs the tasks of assaying the space rock, drilling, and turning out a product. All these lander activities are sent to the relay spacecraft. This relay craft not only oversees the asteroid's position and condition 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but also collects assay data and transmits this information to Earth operators.

No doubt the idea of gaining some sort of legal footing on an asteroid via robots is sure to spark legal beagle-type debates.

"Part of the education process in the international legal community is to educate people that resources in outer space are virtually unlimited," noted Wayne White Jr., a space law consultant in Huntsville, Alabama. "There's more than enough for everyone," he said.

"We must look at the great frontier of space as the next place to get our large injection of resources," Westfall said. "I admit that we might be opening a can of worms. But you've got to have worms to catch fish," he said.