Billionaires and Polymaths Expected To Unveil a Plan To Mine Asteroids

dumuzi writes "A team including Larry Page, Ram Shriram and Eric Schmidt of Google, director James Cameron, Charles Simonyi (Microsoft executive and astronaut), Ross Perot Jr. (son of Ross Perot), Chris Lewicki (NASA Mars mission manager), and Peter Diamandis (X-Prize) have formed a new company called Planetary Resources, and are expected to announce plans on April 24th to mine asteroids. A study by NASA released April 2nd claims a robotic mission could capture a 500 ton asteroid and bring it to orbit the moon for $2.6 billion. The additional cost to mine the asteroid and return the ores to Earth would make profit unlikely even if the asteriod was 20% gold."

Ohhhhhh!

[mbadolato]

Ross Perot Jr. (son of Ross Perot)

Thanks for explaining that; we would have never figured it out on our own!

Re:Ohhhhhh!

[immaterial]

Having the same name doesn't automatically mean you're related. Just ask my friend Michael Bolton...

Re:It's even dumber than that.

[0123456]

What are they going to find on a rock in space that is not already available on THIS rock in space?

I heard they're looking for something called 'Unobtanium'.

Re:Third: threaten to bring the whole thing to ear

[shiftless]

Great, now we're going to have an asteroid arms race. The U.S. and India will be threatening to crush Germany with a huge rock if it doesn't capitulate to their demands and cease "construction" of its own "weapon of mass destruction" aka their own huge orbiting rock.

Welcome to the brave new world of tomorrow....

Gold isn't up at all.

[SuperKendall]

It's your currency that is heading towards worthless. The value of gold is a constant...

Meanwhile

[skipkent]

A committee has asked Michael Bay to make a film depicting the worst case scenario of this project.

Re:Meanwhile

[robably]

Michael Bay making a film IS the worst case scenario.

No no, they got it all wrong

[Dogbertius]

This is to prevent a new ice age. We simply mine big chunks of ice off of Halley's comet and drop it into the ocean every 75.3 years. That should keep us going until 3003.

Re:Compared to the moon

[russotto]

What resources is does contain comes from that volcanic activity. In other words the moon is not a good candidate for the resources we desire.

Unless we crack the sucker open like an egg and suck out all the goodness from the center.

Re:Huh?

[Snausagez]

Haven't you seen the movie where we mine the moon and it ends up breaking apart and crashing down on our heads?

Re:Huh?

[ceoyoyo]

The problem with the Earth and moon is that yes, they're big and there are lots of resources in them, but all the ones we're really interested in are heavy and thus concentrated at their cores. It's tough to get down there.

Asteroids, on the other hand, are small and their cores are readily accessible, not that you need to do that because they're not differentiated like planets and big moons are. Although if you do mine one from the inside out, when you're done you have an awesome space castle.