Midas Program (Superpowers)

The Midas Program is the first attempt at a direct commercial exploitation of space. First conceived in 1957 by an aging Adrianus Orilla Stultus, it involves the establishment of mining sites on celestial bodies in order to extract the minerals contained therein. Though a rather ambitious undertaking, once it was successfully pulled off, it proved to be the single most profitable endeavor in human history.

In his memoirs, Emperor Raphael briefly discusses his later involvement in the project, and why he made the decision to restart it. Translated, and reorganized, into idiomatic English, this is an excerpt :

"Considering several important facts about geology, this [the feasibility of asteroid mining] was easily predictable. Terra is made from coalesced stardust through a multi-billion year process. In its early years, our planet was nothing but a piece of floating magma and so materials were in constant flux within its structure. As any seasoned geological student of Alexandria knows, virtually all of the abundant ferrum formed at the end of stellar nucleosynthesis now resides within the Earth's core. Since this occurred in the early years, all "ferrum-loving" metals found themselves dragged down in the process. Obviously there is no known method to reach this rich source of material at the planet's center, even with today's technology. So how the Hades are we mining elements such as llecium and aurum? Well, as one of our own scientists discovered over a century ago, Terra has been struck by large stellar objects for much of its existence. Many of these meteors contained some amount of transferrum elements, and so it them who we must thank for our noricum Testudos and aurum coins. Their seeding of our planet has allowed the wheel of progress to keep turning past the age of Bironzos and into the Ferrum age that our city was born in.

This knowledge, combined with what we've learned from projects that I funded, tell us that these metals of value were able to be, and have been, extracted from asteroids near our own via planitia. In fact, some of the largest ones we've exploited contain more of certain elements than can be mined by all the nations of this planet combined. Truely, no other Emperor has given our people such an opportunity. I believe that this single program shall be the driving force for most, if not all, of the advancements that this Empire shall achieve in the coming centuries.

History
Adrianus came upon the idea of space mining after hearing about the discovery of nearly limitless quantities of Helium-3 on the lunar far side. Having been the founder of the current Roman space program, he was able to have an audience with the Emperor to discuss his vision.

Citing the already public knowledge that asteroids contained abundant minerals, Adrianus succeeded in swaying the opinion of the Emperor. Unfortunately, the importance of the lunar city of Heliopolis and the media circus following the Mayan's attempt at a Mars landing, Adrianus' plan was pushed to the back of the budget, and was largely forgotten with his death from a brain hemorrhage in 1960.

When Emperor Raphael took the throne following his successor's assassination in 1967, he demanded to be briefed on all the fronts of scientific advancement in the Empire. Though his intense interest in science had no bounds, he was particularly excited about working alongside the Roman space program. So as soon as he was told about the plan of mining asteroids for materials, he immediately sought to make it a reality.

Having what the media dubbed "sanguis Nipponis", the Emperor set about finding a way to put this program in motion in the most frugal way possible. The idea he came up with was to spot mineral rich bodies through the use of the Empire's many space based telescopes, send probes to determine the exact areas of the asteroids that would befit a mining site, and to then finally launch several ships to build the required facilities.

Phase I of the program was completed in 1974 with 52 potential asteroids selected based on properties of terrestrial proximity, mineral abundance and stability. Quite pleased that the current cost was still less than a single flight to Mars, the Emperor felt more prepared to place extra resources into the program to accelerate its development. Phase II began in May of the following year with the launch of Midas I. This probe would visit 8 of the targets and was expected to validate at least 3 of them for exploitation.

The launch of probes continued apace with the expeditions of Midas' II through XV. The latter ceremoniously touched down on I Gordias (OTL 433 Eros) on the 1st of October 1979 to await the follow-up to this phase of the program.

In December of 1979, the Daedalus and Imhotep spaceships set out with four specialized vessels to the asteroid XII Gordias (OTL 16 Psyche) with the intent of building the first mining site. Arriving in January of the following year, construction was immediately begun at 11 of the 48 plotted out mining sites. And so began the age of Space Mining.