In Space, No One Can Hear You Strip Mine

Kudos to James Cameron, who found another way to make billions more!

Planetary Resources, Inc. is a new Cameron fronted venture,  backed by investors the likes of Google co-founder Larry Page, Ross Perot Jr. (chairman of The Perot Group and son of the former presidential candidate), Eric Schmidt (executive chairman of Google), K. Ram Shriram (Google board of directors founding member), and Charles Simonyi (chairman of Intentional Software Corp.), with the intention to mine near-Earth asteroids for precious metals and water.

Referring to them as "the low-hanging fruit of the solar system", these asteroids would provide ample uthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum  - all rare and in demand on Earth (and mostly controlled by Chinese and foreign interests).  Under the noble idea of advancing humanity's exploration of space, their resource extraction and refining will create the unimaginably rich and powerful corporate backbone for that to occur.  Like an intergalactic gas station, they can provide water and key elements for manufacturing technological products.  For example, a single space rock 1,650 feet wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history.

Before that can happen, it needs to do some in-depth prospecting work. Of the roughly 8,900 known near-Earth asteroids, perhaps 100 or 150 are water-rich and easier to reach than the surface of the moon.  Using a telescope that will be launched into a low-Earth orbit in the next 18 to 24 months, the company will source it's targets.  Currently, all mining activities are planned to be accomplished by swarms of unmanned spacecraft, and the company does not (immediately) plan to extend its operations to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or to the surface of the moon.  but it should be stressed that there was no date or timeline given when they would (or could) begin extracting metals or water from space rocks.

Though a recent study sponsored by Caltech estimated that a 500-ton near-Earth asteroid could be snagged and dragged to the moon's orbit by 2025 at the low low cost of about $2.6 billion, it did not detail the giant space lasso needed, but what ever the method, Planetary Resources has the jump on everyone.