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Asteroid mining has arrived! April 24, 2012

Image credit: Planetary Resources

This is the most exciting space news in decades! Start-up firm Planetary Resources announce today that is was establishing a business to mine asteroids in space. They are backed by a powerful collection of thinkers and billionaires to pull it off including Larry Page (Google founder), Dr. Eric Schmidt,  Ross Perot Jr. , Dr.Charles Simonyi and James Cameron are among those participating in the venture.

Their first effort will be to orbit a telescope capable of  detecting candidate  asteroids which are close to Earth  for mining.  Once identified they ” …plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals.”  What a milestone this is in placing the future of space exploration and utilization into the hands of practical people, not NASA scientists bent on finding microbial life under some rock.

A great deal of work is yet to be done but this is clearly some of the best news imaginable regarding the opening up space beyond government contrived waste & folly.