Asteroid mining company

[Dubh the dark]

The world's first asteroid mining company has been founded;

Planetary Resources

A group of hi-tech tycoons including Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt have teamed up with explorer and film-maker James Cameron in a venture to mine nearby asteroids, hoping to turn science fiction into real profits.

The megamillion dollar plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals such as platinum and gold out of the rocks that routinely whizz by Earth, with the aim of having a space-based fuel station up and running by 2020.

The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be to launch the first of a series of private telescopes that would search for rich asteroid targets.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...mining-venture

Succeed or fail, I'm glad so many people are trying to make this a reality. It's an exciting venture.

[Aanker]

. You beat me to it. I was literally reading an article about this and thought "hey, that would make a good thread", then came over here and saw this.

But I find it a fascinating prospect that a private company is actually trying to be a driving force behind advancement of technology and space exploration, and that space programs with decreasing government funding will not be a (total) hindrance to the advancement of humanity into space.

[Dubh the dark]

. You beat me to it. I was literally reading an article about this and thought "hey, that would make a good thread", then came over here and saw this.

But I find it a fascinating prospect that a private company is actually trying to be a driving force behind advancement of technology and space exploration, and that space programs with decreasing government funding will not be a (total) hindrance to the advancement of humanity into space.

I watched the press conference they had today. They intend testing commercial devices in space for companies that can't find another way to do so. Lots of former NASA people involved too. This is a promising company and as you say drives space technology without the burden of tax-dollars and cuts. If successful they're talking profits in the trillions over the next few decades. Investors are taking notice.

[MathiasOfAthens]

. You beat me to it. I was literally reading an article about this and thought "hey, that would make a good thread", then came over here and saw this.

But I find it a fascinating prospect that a private company is actually trying to be a driving force behind advancement of technology and space exploration, and that space programs with decreasing government funding will not be a (total) hindrance to the advancement of humanity into space.

Makes sense since there is a monetary gain here, resources. Amazing they can do it so quickly though, they dont get bogged down with legislatures and democracy.

[CtrlAltDe1337]

I want to buy shares in this company.

[Phier]

This is a hobby project for rich people. I think its great, and if they want to fund this kind of stuff more power to them, I wish I had so much money I could fart it away on fun stuff like this.

While the returns for asteroid mining could be, to use the obvious term, astronomical, the risk is astronomical^3. We are talking about adapting and inventing whole new technologies and then not only mining but somehow getting the minerals back to the Earth.

[xcorps]

In 10 years, there will be an asteroid lasso. Then...

[InsaneHanz]

Their application process is genius.

http://www.planetaryresources.com/careers/

[Lord Rahl]

Does anyone else find this a little ironic for Cameron to be involved with this after Avatar? I know there aren't big blue and beautiful aliens living on asteroids, but the whole idea of private companies mining resources from space...

But seriously, I say all the power to them. It's bold, potentially lucrative, and even if it fails I bet the technologies will help out humanity. I'm sure there will be legal issues with this but in my opinion if they end up being able to mine and bring the resources back, and they're the only ones with the ability, it's their right to do it.

[visser300]

Hmmmm, Nasa even could not bring a tiny amount of meteor material back to earth with 70% successful rate. How could these guys suppose to bring tons of gold and diamond (to be profitable) back to earth?

[Sphere]

A worthy project, but there's no way it is going to be profitable.

[CtrlAltDe1337]

Their application process is genius.

http://www.planetaryresources.com/careers/

Haha I love it! I want to work there now, too bad I'm not a rocket scientist

[Phier]

A worthy project, but there's no way it is going to be profitable.

You know this may fix a issue that has been really bothering me. Since the manned space program got nuked for politics, those scientists and engineers needed to find jobs to support themselves, any jobs. If they were together working for a project like this, at least those teams could remain intact. What worries me about the nuking of the space program was not the short term, but the talent. If in a few years suddenly NASA had a budget again geared towards manned space exploration, such talent is just available in the want adds.

[eldaran]

Im personally very glad to see this, it's been pretty clear for quite some time now that the future of Human space travel and exploration, like most travel and exploration in Human history will ultimately be motivated by the prospect of financial gain.

It's a bit disappointing to see a few people being so negative about the idea - where is your ambition?! Where is that spark, that drive to achieve the improbable? Yes it going to be bloody difficult and bloody expensive, but since when has that ever stopped us ('us' as in the species, not me personally ) doing something?

Personally, I think this is only the start -there IS money to be made from space, and eventually in the not too distant future someone is going to start to make money from it, and then the floodgates will be open. It's just going to take a few people with a bit more imagination and drive than some in this thread have demonstrated! Sometimes people do things not because they are easy, and sometimes great leaps in technology require some brave people to just shut their eyes and try something. Good luck to them.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

I know, soon they'll be building 20 kilometer barges to transport carbon products from the moons of jupiter and saturn .

This is so exciting to finally see that the private industries are doing exactly what I predicted - getting off this rock. Nasa wont do it so let the oil companies go make some money

[the_mango55]

It's a neat idea but I think it's many decades away from profitability unfortunately.

Does anyone else find this a little ironic for Cameron to be involved with this after Avatar? I know there aren't big blue and beautiful aliens living on asteroids, but the whole idea of private companies mining resources from space...

Not at all, it allows us to increase our total resources without screwing up our own world. Plus Cameron considers himself an explorer first and filmmaker second.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Yeah, Cameron recently went to the bottom of the Challenger Deep

[Denny Crane!]

We have serious rare metal shortages, one successful operation could end that. How the hell do you bring down 100 tons of metal from outerspace though?

[Lord Rahl]

I'm guessing they'd set up some sort of orbital storage station where they could keep much of the minerals and then send them back to Earth from there. I think it's more about the weight of the minerals having a safe re-entry than anything else. I'm sure that a lot of people would have a problem with hundreds of tons of stuff hitting the ocean and possibly causing tsunamis...if that's what would happen. Perhaps they could cover the minerals in airbags like they did with the Mars rovers. Another option would be to have another type of Space Shuttle type vehicle that could transport the minerals from the orbital station to Earth. That probably wouldn't be too hard to do.

[Denny Crane!]

Mars doesn't have the problems of re-entry that Earth does, there is no way to accurately predict where things will fall and the volume has to be high for it to be worthwhile which means huge volume.

Take a ton of platinum for instance. Bringing in ten tons of platinum is a really significant amount of platinum to the worlds markets so how much would it bring in assuming it didn't cause a deflation in its price? At $1500 an ounce a ton would be worth $48 million so ten tons would be worth $480 million or half a billion dollars. It is a reasonable return but then we don't know how much it cost to get up there and getting ten tons down from orbit, well that is one hell of a meotorite.