Asteroid mining has arrived! April 24, 2012
Posted by Mark Flavin in Space Ventures.Tags: asteroid mining, planetary resources, space mining
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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.
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