Posted on 04/23/2012 8:32:40 PM PDT by anymouse
A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — has announced 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.
(snip)
"We're out there right now, talking to customers," Anderson said. "We are open for discussions with companies — aerospace companies, mining companies, prospecting companies, resource companies. We're out working in that field, to really open up the solar system for business."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That's not the intent. Water mined in space is used to support operations in space. Broken down for fuel or to breath.
No-one is talking about importing water from space to earth. That would be idiotic.
/johnny
And a Democrat, it is worth nothing.
We should start on the moon. It’s the closest thing, and *relatively* easy to get to should a rescue need to happen. Better that than out at the Kuiper Belt to start.
WATER = H2O = propelant = fuel for those in Rio Linda.
That sounds like a bit more of a haul than water...
Besides, who says these craft have to be manned or fast? An ion drive might take you a year (or longer) to get out and back... but if the mining vessel is automated, who cares? Send it off, wait two years, rake in cash...
I was using water as an example of how idiotic it would be, how cost effective would it be for them to even bring back precious metals?
But I do know that trash-talking cutting edge technology and commerce is a pretty good way to go wrong.
Telegraph, telephone, radio, television, nuclear energy, space travel and many more have all had their nay-sayers. Who wound up looking like fools, 100 or 30 years later.
/johnny
This wouldn’t be necessary if environmentalists let us mine more on Earth.
The ability to make own your space station + private space flight + supplies from asteroid mining = ability to colonize space
Yes, “Outland” has the dubious distinction of being the beginning* of the “commercial exploitation of space resources is evil” movie meme, which Hollywood had pushed with few exceptions ever since.
* “Alien” and “Silent Running” came before, but the prime focus was on threats worse than “the corporation.”
Yea, but this is different, and I’m not really trash talking, I’m just trying to understand how this could be cost effective.
For years I have wanted one or more of the tech boom billionaires to dump some money into space technology. Looks like it is finally happening. About time we started making moves to spread beyond this planet.
-—Mining....an asteroid.....for WATER....
Ooooooh kaaaaaay.........——
I’m guessing that the water would be used for moon base trips, etc., to save the energy needed to launch water into space.
As long as no taxpayer money is spent, I’m all for it.
If the mining is successful, the UN will claim the platinum for the earth community, I.e., George Soros. ;-)
Yep. If you are going to set up habitats off Earth, you’ll need that kind of stuff. Makes more sense to mine it out there than to try and haul it up out of the gravity well.
We're going to have to do something about that one of these days. Hopefully, fairly soon.
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