Asteroid Mining Is Just Latest Billionaire's Club Space Project

[Brave7]

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. "They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

http://www.space.com/15395-asteroid-...resources.html

What are your thoughts?

[snakeair]

This sounds like a plot for a movie.

[Moola Mails]

This seems like the next logical step in space exploration. I wonder when this goal will actually be realized.

[dowjoetod]

Recently I watched a short movie on the matter and it was great! They said, that on some asteroids there might be platinum for billions of dollars, hundreds of billions... There would be some troubles fetching the metal, but anything can be solved, espacially if we are talking for such amounts of money...

[jjmcd82]

If you're interested in reading more about the challenges and benefits, I would definitely recommend "Mining the Sky" by John S Lewis. It is a very approachable book even if you're not too savvy with rocket science, but it is technical enough that you get a good idea of the costs and benefits involved.

Personally, between Planetary Resources and projections for solar costs in the near future, I'm starting to think that the time frame around 2022 will usher in one of the largest economic booms the earth has ever seen - without relying on dirty energy or scarce resources, and effectively erasing many of the primary environmental concerns we're faced with.

The post-WW2 boom will look pale in comparison...

[cetak777]

Can we claim something that we can only see not even touch ?

[cameronpalte]

Wow, that's very interesting to find out. Looks really neat. Cetak we can claim things we haven't even touched with things like x-rays and gamma-rays. Thanks for the post!