Company Announces Asteroid Mining Plans
There's been muttering and rumor-mongering about this, but as of today it's official- the private company Planetary Resources is setting plans in motion to begin asteroid mining operations.
This sounds a little insane... but it's backed by some impressive names and know-how. From the Bad Astronomy blog:
"The company had a pretty fierce amount of credibility right off the bat, with several ex-NASA engineers, an astronaut, and planetary scientists involved, as well as the backing of not one but several billionaires, including a few from Google… not to mention James Cameron. The co-founders of Planetary Resources are Peter Diamandis - he created the highly-successful X-Prize Foundation, to give cash awards to incremental accomplishments that will help achieve technological breakthroughs, including those for space travel - and Eric Anderson, X-Prize board member and Chairman of the Board of the Space Spaceflight Federation."
Cautiously- is it time to let ourselves be optimistic about space exploration again?
This sounds a little insane... but it's backed by some impressive names and know-how. From the Bad Astronomy blog:
"The company had a pretty fierce amount of credibility right off the bat, with several ex-NASA engineers, an astronaut, and planetary scientists involved, as well as the backing of not one but several billionaires, including a few from Google… not to mention James Cameron. The co-founders of Planetary Resources are Peter Diamandis - he created the highly-successful X-Prize Foundation, to give cash awards to incremental accomplishments that will help achieve technological breakthroughs, including those for space travel - and Eric Anderson, X-Prize board member and Chairman of the Board of the Space Spaceflight Federation."
Cautiously- is it time to let ourselves be optimistic about space exploration again?