This market will predict the year when the first extraterrestrially mined material arrives on Earth. The material should be obtained and returned by a private enterprise, not primarily for scientific research, but for sale as a commodity. The venture doesn't need to be profitable or bring back a large quantity of material; it could be a small amount to demonstrate the concept. The market will resolve based on the most authoritative and widely accepted report or data source available after the event.
Possible examples;
Moon mining
Asteroid mining
Material mined from mars and returned to earth
1,000
3.00@Ansel there's plausibly going to be some transition period where both private companies and researchers are working together on a proof of concept. What's the threshold for "private enterprise"? Fully private, or is any private component sufficient?
I imagine the first demos are going to be pretty scientific, not in the sense that they want to study the rocks, but that they want to study the process of mining them - this is still scientific in a sense even though it is in the service of some application (a lot of science is!). And to scrape funding together, joint government-private ventures seem likey.
Deleted