Planetary Resources: 57 Minute Talk
Planetary Resources:Space Mining
Planetary Resources: Team Video
Shackleton Energy Company: TedTalk
Shackleton Energy Company: Mining The Moon
Gingrich: Proposed Base on Moon
George W.Bush - 2007 - Colonizing Space
NASA 2011: Deep Space Exploration
Another Space Mining Company Still Struggling To Get Off The Ground
ARL FRANZEN APRIL 25, 2012, 9:29 AM
Updated 1:22 pm ET, Wednesday, April 25
PlanetaryResources, an ambitious new private spacefaring company backed by a number of high-tech billionaires on Tuesday detailed its plans to mine asteroids near earth for resources such as platinum and water, using a fleet of robotic, drill-equipped spacecraft.
But it’s not the only company that has its eyes on wringing space rocks for resources and riches. Another company, Shackleton Energy Company, waslaunched in 2007 specifically to pursue commercial mining operations on the moon, with the goal of eventually establishing a manned lunar mining colony at a cost of about $25 billion.
Shackleton’s proposed mining operations would specifically go after water ice trapped in the Moon’s polar craters (including the Shackleton crater near the moon’s south pole) which would then be split into constituent hydrogen and oxygen and used to synthesize rocket fuel. The fuel would then be transported to depots in orbit around the Earth, allowing craft to be launched from the ground with less fuel aboard at a cheaper cost.
Shackleton detailed its plans in the following video:
Shackleton was founded by Bill Stone, president of Stone Aerospace, a Texas based firm developing robotic exploration vehicles for the deep sea and outer space.
Stone in 2011 told SPACE.com that Shackleton was on track to send two robotic prospecting missions to the moon within four years, but that mining wouldn’t take place until 2021, at the earliest.
Stone’s other company, Stone Aerospace was itself the recipient of a $4 million, four-year NASA contract to develop an ice-drilling robotic probe that would be used to obtain samples from Jupiter’s moon Europa. Unfortunately, that project has been placed on indefinite hold now on hold due to NASA’s tightened budget for 2013.
Still, Shackleton found reason to celebrate its rival space mining company’s plans. As Shackleton CEO Dale Tietz told TPM via email:
“The announcement today of the new space mining program led by Planetary Resources is a significant validation of this business that demonstrates, with significant private investment, lucrative commercial mining opportunities exist in space that could benefit humanity.”
Tietz also provided a revised and updated, more nebulous timeline for its lunar mining colony, telling TPM: “This decade we will deploy our propellant depots, provide support services (repair, provisioning and logistics) and will initiate building out the new in-space transport system for all spacefaring customers starting in Low Earth Orbit and the Moon.”
Meanwhile, regarding the uncharted legal territory that could cause problems for space mining operations, Shackelton cavalierly brushed them aside;
“As for legal hurdles, we see no major obstacles that preclude immediate commercial mining and production operations in space, as all will be space treaty compliant. As we build our infrastructure of depots, transporters, habitation and mining operations, we would be delighted to provide Planetary Resources with propellants, services and infrastructure support to make them even more successful as one of our commercial customers.”
One hitch that may hold Shackleton back: Funding. The company attempted a crowdfunding campaign on the website RocketHub in October 2011 but only raised about $5,000 of a targeted $1.2 million. Still, Shackleton says it is pursuing its plans and alternate funding sources.
Correction: This article originally incorrectly cited the cost of Shackleton’s proposed lunar mining operation at $87 billion, when it fact that number is from a NASA study for a larger operation that would be undertaken by the agency. We have since corrected the error in copy and we regret it.
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/just-another-space-mining-company.php
Article #2
ARL FRANZEN APRIL 25, 2012, 9:29 AM
Updated 1:22 pm ET, Wednesday, April 25
PlanetaryResources, an ambitious new private spacefaring company backed by a number of high-tech billionaires on Tuesday detailed its plans to mine asteroids near earth for resources such as platinum and water, using a fleet of robotic, drill-equipped spacecraft.
But it’s not the only company that has its eyes on wringing space rocks for resources and riches. Another company, Shackleton Energy Company, waslaunched in 2007 specifically to pursue commercial mining operations on the moon, with the goal of eventually establishing a manned lunar mining colony at a cost of about $25 billion.
Shackleton’s proposed mining operations would specifically go after water ice trapped in the Moon’s polar craters (including the Shackleton crater near the moon’s south pole) which would then be split into constituent hydrogen and oxygen and used to synthesize rocket fuel. The fuel would then be transported to depots in orbit around the Earth, allowing craft to be launched from the ground with less fuel aboard at a cheaper cost.
Shackleton detailed its plans in the following video:
Shackleton was founded by Bill Stone, president of Stone Aerospace, a Texas based firm developing robotic exploration vehicles for the deep sea and outer space.
Stone in 2011 told SPACE.com that Shackleton was on track to send two robotic prospecting missions to the moon within four years, but that mining wouldn’t take place until 2021, at the earliest.
Stone’s other company, Stone Aerospace was itself the recipient of a $4 million, four-year NASA contract to develop an ice-drilling robotic probe that would be used to obtain samples from Jupiter’s moon Europa. Unfortunately, that project has been placed on indefinite hold now on hold due to NASA’s tightened budget for 2013.
Still, Shackleton found reason to celebrate its rival space mining company’s plans. As Shackleton CEO Dale Tietz told TPM via email:
“The announcement today of the new space mining program led by Planetary Resources is a significant validation of this business that demonstrates, with significant private investment, lucrative commercial mining opportunities exist in space that could benefit humanity.”
Tietz also provided a revised and updated, more nebulous timeline for its lunar mining colony, telling TPM: “This decade we will deploy our propellant depots, provide support services (repair, provisioning and logistics) and will initiate building out the new in-space transport system for all spacefaring customers starting in Low Earth Orbit and the Moon.”
Meanwhile, regarding the uncharted legal territory that could cause problems for space mining operations, Shackelton cavalierly brushed them aside;
“As for legal hurdles, we see no major obstacles that preclude immediate commercial mining and production operations in space, as all will be space treaty compliant. As we build our infrastructure of depots, transporters, habitation and mining operations, we would be delighted to provide Planetary Resources with propellants, services and infrastructure support to make them even more successful as one of our commercial customers.”
One hitch that may hold Shackleton back: Funding. The company attempted a crowdfunding campaign on the website RocketHub in October 2011 but only raised about $5,000 of a targeted $1.2 million. Still, Shackleton says it is pursuing its plans and alternate funding sources.
Correction: This article originally incorrectly cited the cost of Shackleton’s proposed lunar mining operation at $87 billion, when it fact that number is from a NASA study for a larger operation that would be undertaken by the agency. We have since corrected the error in copy and we regret it.
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/just-another-space-mining-company.php
Article #2
How asteroid mining could turn billionaires into trillionaires (+video)
A cadre of Silicon Valley tycoons have announced plans to extract water and precious metals from near-Earth asteroids. Could that actually work?
By Irene Klotz, Reuters / April 25, 2012
This computer-generated image provided by Planetary Resources, a group of high-tech tycoons that wants to mine nearby asteroids, shows a conceptual rendering of satellites prospecting a water-rich, near-Earth asteroid.
Planetary Resources/APEnlarge
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.
Google Inc executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and filmmaker James Cameron are among those bankrolling a venture to survey and eventually extract precious metals and rare minerals from asteroids that orbit near Earth, the company said on Tuesday.
In Pictures: Asteroids
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the feasibility of mining asteroids.
Planetary Resources, based in Bellevue, Washington, initially will focus on developing and selling extremely low-cost robotic spacecraft for surveying missions.
A demonstration mission in orbit around Earth is expected to be launched within two years, said company co-founders Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson.
Planetary Resources' aim is to open deep-space exploration to private industry, much like the $10 millionAnsari X Prize competition, which Diamandis created.
The prize, which galvanized the emerging commercial human spaceflight industry, was awarded in 2004 toScaled Composites' SpaceShipOne for the first flights beyond Earth's atmosphere by a privately developed, manned spaceship. Commercial suborbital spaceflights are expected to begin next year.
Planetary Resources' first customers are likely to be science agencies, such as NASA, as well as private research institutes.
Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.
Not all missions would return precious metals and minerals to Earth. In addition to mining for platinum and other precious metals, the company plans to tap asteroids' water to supply orbiting fuel depots, which could be used by NASA and others for robotic and human space missions.
"We have a long view. We're not expecting this company to be an overnight financial home run. This is going to take time," Anderson said in an interview with Reuters.
The real payoff, which is decades away, will come from mining asteroids for platinum group metals and rare minerals.
"If you look back historically at what has caused humanity to make its largest investments in exploration and in transportation, it has been going after resources, whether it's the Europeans going after the spice routes or the American settlers looking toward the west for gold, oil, timber or land," Diamandis said.
"Those precious resources caused people to make huge investments in ships and railroads and pipelines. Looking to space, everything we hold of value on Earth - metals, minerals, energy, real estate, water - is in near-infinite quantities in space. The opportunity exists to create a company whose mission is to be able to go and basically identify and access some of those resources and ultimately figure out how to make them available where they are needed," he said.
Diamandis and Anderson declined to discuss how much money has been raised for their venture so far. In addition to Google billionaires Page and Schmidt and filmmaker Cameron, Planetary Resources investors include former Microsoft chief software architect Charles Simonyi, a two-time visitor to the International Space Station, Google founding director K. Ram Shriram and Ross Perot Jr.
Planetary Resources also declined to discuss specifics about how and when asteroid mining would begin. A 30-meter long (98-foot) asteroid can hold as much as $25 billion to $50 billion worth of platinum at today's prices, Diamandis said.
The company's first step is to develop technologies to cut the cost of deep-space robotic probes to one-tenth to one-hundredth the cost of current space missions, which run hundreds of millions of dollars, Diamandis said.
Among the targeted technologies is optical laser communications, which would eliminate the need for large radio antennas aboard spacecraft.
"We're taking new approaches at design," Diamandis said. "Part of the philosophy we're taking is building very low cost, very small spacecraft. You put up six or 10 or dozens and you get reliability."
Planetary Resources, which currently employs about 20 people, is overseen by former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki. It was founded about three years ago, but has been operating quietly behind the scenes until now.
A cadre of Silicon Valley tycoons have announced plans to extract water and precious metals from near-Earth asteroids. Could that actually work?
By Irene Klotz, Reuters / April 25, 2012
This computer-generated image provided by Planetary Resources, a group of high-tech tycoons that wants to mine nearby asteroids, shows a conceptual rendering of satellites prospecting a water-rich, near-Earth asteroid.
Planetary Resources/APEnlarge
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.
Google Inc executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and filmmaker James Cameron are among those bankrolling a venture to survey and eventually extract precious metals and rare minerals from asteroids that orbit near Earth, the company said on Tuesday.
In Pictures: Asteroids
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the feasibility of mining asteroids.
Planetary Resources, based in Bellevue, Washington, initially will focus on developing and selling extremely low-cost robotic spacecraft for surveying missions.
A demonstration mission in orbit around Earth is expected to be launched within two years, said company co-founders Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson.
Planetary Resources' aim is to open deep-space exploration to private industry, much like the $10 millionAnsari X Prize competition, which Diamandis created.
The prize, which galvanized the emerging commercial human spaceflight industry, was awarded in 2004 toScaled Composites' SpaceShipOne for the first flights beyond Earth's atmosphere by a privately developed, manned spaceship. Commercial suborbital spaceflights are expected to begin next year.
Planetary Resources' first customers are likely to be science agencies, such as NASA, as well as private research institutes.
Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.
Not all missions would return precious metals and minerals to Earth. In addition to mining for platinum and other precious metals, the company plans to tap asteroids' water to supply orbiting fuel depots, which could be used by NASA and others for robotic and human space missions.
"We have a long view. We're not expecting this company to be an overnight financial home run. This is going to take time," Anderson said in an interview with Reuters.
The real payoff, which is decades away, will come from mining asteroids for platinum group metals and rare minerals.
"If you look back historically at what has caused humanity to make its largest investments in exploration and in transportation, it has been going after resources, whether it's the Europeans going after the spice routes or the American settlers looking toward the west for gold, oil, timber or land," Diamandis said.
"Those precious resources caused people to make huge investments in ships and railroads and pipelines. Looking to space, everything we hold of value on Earth - metals, minerals, energy, real estate, water - is in near-infinite quantities in space. The opportunity exists to create a company whose mission is to be able to go and basically identify and access some of those resources and ultimately figure out how to make them available where they are needed," he said.
Diamandis and Anderson declined to discuss how much money has been raised for their venture so far. In addition to Google billionaires Page and Schmidt and filmmaker Cameron, Planetary Resources investors include former Microsoft chief software architect Charles Simonyi, a two-time visitor to the International Space Station, Google founding director K. Ram Shriram and Ross Perot Jr.
Planetary Resources also declined to discuss specifics about how and when asteroid mining would begin. A 30-meter long (98-foot) asteroid can hold as much as $25 billion to $50 billion worth of platinum at today's prices, Diamandis said.
The company's first step is to develop technologies to cut the cost of deep-space robotic probes to one-tenth to one-hundredth the cost of current space missions, which run hundreds of millions of dollars, Diamandis said.
Among the targeted technologies is optical laser communications, which would eliminate the need for large radio antennas aboard spacecraft.
"We're taking new approaches at design," Diamandis said. "Part of the philosophy we're taking is building very low cost, very small spacecraft. You put up six or 10 or dozens and you get reliability."
Planetary Resources, which currently employs about 20 people, is overseen by former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki. It was founded about three years ago, but has been operating quietly behind the scenes until now.
Source:http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0425/How-asteroid-mining-could-turn-billionaires-into-trillionaires-video
Article #3
Published April 26, 2012
FoxNews.com
Looking to reboot your life?
A new asteroid mining venture backed by Silicon Valley titans and filmmaker James Cameron is hiring.
Planetary Resources, Inc., announced Tuesday at a news conference in Seattle that it wants to mine near-Earth asteroids for water and precious metals like gold and platinum within the next 10 years if all goes as planned. And the brand-new company is looking for a helping hand.
"You will get your hands dirty. If you prefer your hands clean, go somewhere else."- Planetary Resources
"Since my early teenage years, I've wanted to be an asteroid miner. I always viewed it as a glamorous vision of where we could go," company founder Peter Diamandis told reporters at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
Diamandis hopes others share his passion for space exploration: The company website is now accepting applications for a “few good asteroid miners,” to help the firm find new ways to “explore space beyond Earth orbit.”
“Bottom line -- we build spaceships and explore asteroids. If you need any other motivation to apply, don’t bother,” the site states.
Company representatives did not respond to FoxNews.com requests for specific job details, such as how much an asteroid miner will earn or what qualifies one for such an out-of-this-world job. But one insider familiar with the company's plans doubts they're looking for miners at all.
"They aren't hiring asteroid miners," he told FoxNews.com. "They're hiring aerospace engineers to design a low-Earth orbit micro-satellite space telescope to look for asteroids."
SUMMARY
Some reasons why this job will change your life:, according to Planetary Resources:
We are finding a new way to explore space beyond Earth orbit.
You will get your hands dirty. If you prefer your hands clean, go somewhere else.
We have a grill. We are not afraid to use it.
Bottom line – we build spaceships and explore asteroids. If you need any other motivation to apply, don’t bother.
More information can be gleaned from the site, where prospective applicants must fill out a litany of short-answer questions proving their love for space, describing their soldering skills and even proffering the name they’d give to a hypothetical crash dummy.
If such plans seem fanciful or even outrageous, it’s because they very well could be.
Several scientists not involved with the project said they were simultaneously thrilled and wary, calling the plan daring, difficult -- and very pricey. They don't see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly $1,600 an ounce. An upcoming NASA mission to return just 2 ounces (60 grams) of an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1 billion.
But the entrepreneurs behind Planetary Resources have a track record of profiting off space ventures. Diamandis and co-founder Eric Anderson pioneered the idea of selling rides into space to tourists, and Diamandis' company offers "weightless" airplane flights.
Investors and advisers to the new company include Google CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Cameron, the man behind the blockbusters "Titanic" and "Avatar."
"The pursuit of resources drove the discovery of America and opened the West," Schmidt said in a statement on the site. "The same drivers still hold true for opening the space frontier."
Anderson says the group will prove naysayers wrong. "Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a pie-in-the-sky idea," Anderson said. "We're in this for decades.”
For those serious about a career in space mining, Planetary Resources said it has "immediate needs" in the following areas: 1) guidance, navigation, and control; 2) flight and ground software; and 3) optical and laser systems.”
But remember, mining asteroids is no walk in the park.
“You will get your hands dirty,” the site warns. “If you prefer your hands clean, go somewhere else.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/26/james-cameron-backed-space-venture-seeks-asteroid-miners/#ixzz1tFR6AuoD
Article #4
Asteroid mining no crazier than deep-sea drilling, advocates say
By Mike Wall
Published April 26, 2012
LiveScience
Small, water-rich near-Earth asteroids can be captured by spacecraft, allowing their resources to be extracted, officials with the new company Planetary Resources say. (Planetary Resources, Inc.)
A newly unveiled firm's asteroid-mining plans may be ambitious, but they're not any crazier than some extractive operations already under way here on Earth, company officials say.
The billionaire-backed Planetary Resources, Inc. announced Tuesday (April 24) that it hopes to mine near-Earth asteroids for water and precious metals, with the dual aims of making a tidy profit and helping open the final frontier to further exploration and exploitation.
Asteroid mining promises to be a multidecade effort requiring many billions of dollars of investment. But in that respect — and in the technological challenges that must be overcome — it's similar to deep-sea oil drilling, said Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis.
"They've literally created robotic cities on the bottom of the ocean, 5, 10 thousand feet below the ocean's surface — fully robotic cities that then mine 5 to 10 thousand feet down below the ocean floor to gain access to oil," Diamandis said Tuesday. "For me, that kind of work makes going to the asteroids to extract resources look easy." [Images: Planetary Resources' Asteroid Mining Plans]
Mining the heavens
While Planetary Resources has big dreams, it appears to have deep pockets as well. The company counts at least four billionaires among its investors, including Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, who are worth about $16.7 billion and $6.2 billion, respectively.
Filmmaker/explorer James Cameron is a Planetary Resources adviser, as are former NASA astronaut Tom Jones and MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager.
The company aims to extract platinum-group metals and water from nearby space rocks. The metals could drive down the prices of many consumer goods here on Earth, officials say, while the water has the potential to revolutionize space transportation.
Water can be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel. Planetary Resources hopes its mining activities lead to the establishment of in-space "gas stations" that would allow a variety of spacecraft to refuel cheaply and efficiently. (Launching such propellant from Earth would be far more expensive, company officials say.)
Planetary Resources hopes to identify a suite of promising asteroid targets within the decade. Actual mining activities — which will be carried out by swarms of low-cost robotic probes in deep space — will come later.
Drilling in nearly 2 miles of water
The company is under no illusions about the challenges ahead.
"We're talking about something which is extraordinarily difficult," Diamandis said. Still, he stressed that it can be done, comparing asteroid mining's scale, scope and degree of difficulty with deep-sea oil drilling.
"These are commitments of 5 to 50 billion dollars in each of these platforms," Diamandis said. "It's extraordinary what humanity can now do."
To get an idea of what he's talking about, consider Shell Oil's Perdido platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which began oil production in March 2010. It floats in water 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) deep and taps a field that begins nearly 2 miles beneath the ocean's surface. [SOS! Major Oil Disasters at Sea]
Perdido sits about 200 miles (320 kilometers) off the Texas coast, too far from land to lay new pipeline cost-effectively, according to Shell officials. So the company decided to hitch Perdido into an existing pipeline 80 miles (128 km) away, using robotic submarines to make the intricate connections 4,600 feet (1,400 m) below the Gulf's surface.
The design and training stages for this submarine mission took a total of 2 1/2 years, Shell officials have said.
The Perdido platform cost about $3 billion to build, and Shell expects it to be in operation for more than 20 years, Reuters reported earlier this year. Over that period, the platform could generate $39 billion in revenue and $16 billion in profits, according to the Associated Press.
And rigs such as Perdido don't just suck oil up off the ocean floor. They're capable of accessing deposits at least 30,000 feet (9,144 m) below the seabed, after first dropping gear through nearly 2 miles of water.
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/26/asteroid-mining-no-crazier-than-deep-sea-drilling-advocates-say/#ixzz1tFQDXiZ4
Article #5
Asteroid mining is awesome, but Newt Gingrich’s moon base is loony. Huh?15 hrs ago
View Photo
Gingrich Proposes Moon, Mars Flights: A Reality Check (ABC News)
Poor Newt Gingrich! The very same week the news broke that he plans to formally end his campaign for the presidency, the former House speaker got a second kick in the teeth when the Internet fell in love with an asteroid-mining plan put forward by James Cameron and the Google guys. The very same Internet that ridiculed Gingrich for his promise to build a permanent moon base by 2020.
Gingrich must be asking himself, What’s the difference between this and my lunar base? When he waxed insane about outer space, we scoffed. When Cameron and Google talk the same way, we swoon. What gives?
Maybe it’s because Gingrich didn’t spin his plan right. He had no PowerPoint, and he got patriotic. He went Cold War, Kennedyesque. He foolishly gave it a deadline. “We will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gingrich told fans in Florida in January.
Maybe he should have used the newer idiom of the innovation-and-commercialization classes: “We’ll have self-congratulatory Davos-style ‘ideas’ conferences till the cows come home; write many proposals; court billionaire investors with the promise of private space travel; sell tickets to stuff; make PowerPoint presentations for decades—and then let the whole thing quietly expire! Imaginary space missions forever!”
That’s been the message so far of the asteroid-mining plan put forward by Planetary Resources, the private venture in which the “Avatar” director and the Google bosses have conspicuously invested.
Mining asteroids for the good of “humanity,” using the money of Google honchos and the titanic imagination of director James Cameron: What a bold stroke of extraterrestrial derring-do that just might save the world! Twitter’s popping with it. It’s just the kind of big-hearted, idea-driven, Seattle-based, dollar-signs-in-eyes plan that the Twitterverse approves of. There’s Gizmodo: “This is going to be HUGE.” And Paul Allen: “an audacious idea & we need more of those”!
And what heaps of glittering resources will be disinterred from the galaxy by these altruistic and lavishly underwritten spaceman-miners? Petroleum, dare I ask, to empower earthlings demoralized at the pump? Clif bars to feed the starving? Nickel, to make more iPhones?! Or perhaps—let’s really dream now—a rich vein of mild, balanced, fair-trade coffee ore will be struck, as it snakes through a silicaceous gouge in 951 Gaspra or 243 Ida ...
It’s pretty to think so. And brood over. And watch CGI videos about. But, alas, no one has gotten quite so specific about the expected asteroidal quarry at Planetary Resources, a new and true asteroid-mining company, brainchild of Renaissance men Peter H. Diamandis and Eric Anderson. They talk mostly in broad strokes. “The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system,” says Anderson, who with Diamandis also founded the space tourism company Space Adventures.
As a marketing venture passing as an intergalactic plan to save us all, Planetary Resources is nothing if not the model Company of the Future. Planetary Resources exists, its literature tells us, to "expand Earth's natural resource base,” though anyone aiming to kick the company’s tires could be forgiven for seeing it as another way to collect checks from North American alpha egos for whom our sweet old earth doesn’t feel quite big enough.
In spite of its obscure timetable, hazy goals and odd provenance, Planetary Resources, which is indeed financed in part by Google bosses Eric Schmidt and Larry Page and by Cameron (who in a charming way tends to double down on the grandiose and the fishy-sounding), has seized the credulous attention of much of the mainstream news media. Bloggers seem to agree it’s just crazy enough to work. Wired wrote mostly approvingly, only to radically reverse course and deem the venture premature. “Wired Science’s resident space historian David S. Portree,” Wired’s Adam Mann concluded, “thinks asteroid mining might make more sense when we have a more established space-based habitats with a different economy and better technology.” (Hey wait a minute: Wasn’t that Gingrich’s plan, to start with a moon base?)
But why wait, if you’re eager to start cutting ribbons and signing up investors? “The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months,” CBS News reported with a straight face, “would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for rich asteroid targets.”
In short, before you buy billion-dollar pieces of this Brooklyn Bridge: No one’s mining asteroids anytime soon. Not Google big shots. Not James Cameron. And when and if anyone ever does mine asteroids, they’re not going to be finding crude oil. Or a cure for human death, or a race of gentle friends. So let’s all relax.
The company speaks vaguely of asteroids long on platinum (to address the wedding-ring shortage?) and “real estate” (for the platinum-mining camps?). Otherwise, while admitting that actual mining is a ways off (two years before they start looking), the company peddles computer videos of what might happen in space, kind of, after a long, long, long time of studying those asteroids with telescopes.
The best comparison here is to the space tourism company, Space Adventures. Diamandis, in fact, made this comparison himself, when he introduced a crowd in Seattle to the Planetary Resources concept.
He told a tale of triumph. “Sixteen years ago,” he began, “we were launching this vision of private spaceflight when that was not the norm. And we had a lot of doubters—a lot of people who said it was impossible. But 16 years later there are thousands of people who are buying tickets and billions of dollars being invested. Any one of us can buy a ticket to go to space. I have two!”
They said we couldn’t send a rich man to space—those doubters—and yet 16 years later we have money and they have ... tickets!!
Want to buy one? Space Adventures has used its billions to send a whole seven people to the International Space Station.
I’m going to pass. As Diamandis might say, I’m a doubter.
As for the Gingrich plan, going to the moon on the government’s dime to demonstrate American supremacy? Maybe it’s not an original idea. But it sounds like a sure thing.
http://news.yahoo.com/asteroid-mining-is-awesome--but-newt-gingrich%E2%80%99s-moon-base-is-loony--huh-.html
Article #3
Published April 26, 2012
FoxNews.com
Looking to reboot your life?
A new asteroid mining venture backed by Silicon Valley titans and filmmaker James Cameron is hiring.
Planetary Resources, Inc., announced Tuesday at a news conference in Seattle that it wants to mine near-Earth asteroids for water and precious metals like gold and platinum within the next 10 years if all goes as planned. And the brand-new company is looking for a helping hand.
"You will get your hands dirty. If you prefer your hands clean, go somewhere else."- Planetary Resources
"Since my early teenage years, I've wanted to be an asteroid miner. I always viewed it as a glamorous vision of where we could go," company founder Peter Diamandis told reporters at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
Diamandis hopes others share his passion for space exploration: The company website is now accepting applications for a “few good asteroid miners,” to help the firm find new ways to “explore space beyond Earth orbit.”
“Bottom line -- we build spaceships and explore asteroids. If you need any other motivation to apply, don’t bother,” the site states.
Company representatives did not respond to FoxNews.com requests for specific job details, such as how much an asteroid miner will earn or what qualifies one for such an out-of-this-world job. But one insider familiar with the company's plans doubts they're looking for miners at all.
"They aren't hiring asteroid miners," he told FoxNews.com. "They're hiring aerospace engineers to design a low-Earth orbit micro-satellite space telescope to look for asteroids."
SUMMARY
Some reasons why this job will change your life:, according to Planetary Resources:
We are finding a new way to explore space beyond Earth orbit.
You will get your hands dirty. If you prefer your hands clean, go somewhere else.
We have a grill. We are not afraid to use it.
Bottom line – we build spaceships and explore asteroids. If you need any other motivation to apply, don’t bother.
More information can be gleaned from the site, where prospective applicants must fill out a litany of short-answer questions proving their love for space, describing their soldering skills and even proffering the name they’d give to a hypothetical crash dummy.
If such plans seem fanciful or even outrageous, it’s because they very well could be.
Several scientists not involved with the project said they were simultaneously thrilled and wary, calling the plan daring, difficult -- and very pricey. They don't see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly $1,600 an ounce. An upcoming NASA mission to return just 2 ounces (60 grams) of an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1 billion.
But the entrepreneurs behind Planetary Resources have a track record of profiting off space ventures. Diamandis and co-founder Eric Anderson pioneered the idea of selling rides into space to tourists, and Diamandis' company offers "weightless" airplane flights.
Investors and advisers to the new company include Google CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Cameron, the man behind the blockbusters "Titanic" and "Avatar."
"The pursuit of resources drove the discovery of America and opened the West," Schmidt said in a statement on the site. "The same drivers still hold true for opening the space frontier."
Anderson says the group will prove naysayers wrong. "Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a pie-in-the-sky idea," Anderson said. "We're in this for decades.”
For those serious about a career in space mining, Planetary Resources said it has "immediate needs" in the following areas: 1) guidance, navigation, and control; 2) flight and ground software; and 3) optical and laser systems.”
But remember, mining asteroids is no walk in the park.
“You will get your hands dirty,” the site warns. “If you prefer your hands clean, go somewhere else.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/26/james-cameron-backed-space-venture-seeks-asteroid-miners/#ixzz1tFR6AuoD
Article #4
Asteroid mining no crazier than deep-sea drilling, advocates say
By Mike Wall
Published April 26, 2012
LiveScience
Small, water-rich near-Earth asteroids can be captured by spacecraft, allowing their resources to be extracted, officials with the new company Planetary Resources say. (Planetary Resources, Inc.)
A newly unveiled firm's asteroid-mining plans may be ambitious, but they're not any crazier than some extractive operations already under way here on Earth, company officials say.
The billionaire-backed Planetary Resources, Inc. announced Tuesday (April 24) that it hopes to mine near-Earth asteroids for water and precious metals, with the dual aims of making a tidy profit and helping open the final frontier to further exploration and exploitation.
Asteroid mining promises to be a multidecade effort requiring many billions of dollars of investment. But in that respect — and in the technological challenges that must be overcome — it's similar to deep-sea oil drilling, said Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis.
"They've literally created robotic cities on the bottom of the ocean, 5, 10 thousand feet below the ocean's surface — fully robotic cities that then mine 5 to 10 thousand feet down below the ocean floor to gain access to oil," Diamandis said Tuesday. "For me, that kind of work makes going to the asteroids to extract resources look easy." [Images: Planetary Resources' Asteroid Mining Plans]
Mining the heavens
While Planetary Resources has big dreams, it appears to have deep pockets as well. The company counts at least four billionaires among its investors, including Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, who are worth about $16.7 billion and $6.2 billion, respectively.
Filmmaker/explorer James Cameron is a Planetary Resources adviser, as are former NASA astronaut Tom Jones and MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager.
The company aims to extract platinum-group metals and water from nearby space rocks. The metals could drive down the prices of many consumer goods here on Earth, officials say, while the water has the potential to revolutionize space transportation.
Water can be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel. Planetary Resources hopes its mining activities lead to the establishment of in-space "gas stations" that would allow a variety of spacecraft to refuel cheaply and efficiently. (Launching such propellant from Earth would be far more expensive, company officials say.)
Planetary Resources hopes to identify a suite of promising asteroid targets within the decade. Actual mining activities — which will be carried out by swarms of low-cost robotic probes in deep space — will come later.
Drilling in nearly 2 miles of water
The company is under no illusions about the challenges ahead.
"We're talking about something which is extraordinarily difficult," Diamandis said. Still, he stressed that it can be done, comparing asteroid mining's scale, scope and degree of difficulty with deep-sea oil drilling.
"These are commitments of 5 to 50 billion dollars in each of these platforms," Diamandis said. "It's extraordinary what humanity can now do."
To get an idea of what he's talking about, consider Shell Oil's Perdido platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which began oil production in March 2010. It floats in water 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) deep and taps a field that begins nearly 2 miles beneath the ocean's surface. [SOS! Major Oil Disasters at Sea]
Perdido sits about 200 miles (320 kilometers) off the Texas coast, too far from land to lay new pipeline cost-effectively, according to Shell officials. So the company decided to hitch Perdido into an existing pipeline 80 miles (128 km) away, using robotic submarines to make the intricate connections 4,600 feet (1,400 m) below the Gulf's surface.
The design and training stages for this submarine mission took a total of 2 1/2 years, Shell officials have said.
The Perdido platform cost about $3 billion to build, and Shell expects it to be in operation for more than 20 years, Reuters reported earlier this year. Over that period, the platform could generate $39 billion in revenue and $16 billion in profits, according to the Associated Press.
And rigs such as Perdido don't just suck oil up off the ocean floor. They're capable of accessing deposits at least 30,000 feet (9,144 m) below the seabed, after first dropping gear through nearly 2 miles of water.
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/26/asteroid-mining-no-crazier-than-deep-sea-drilling-advocates-say/#ixzz1tFQDXiZ4
Article #5
Asteroid mining is awesome, but Newt Gingrich’s moon base is loony. Huh?15 hrs ago
View PhotoGingrich Proposes Moon, Mars Flights: A Reality Check (ABC News)
Poor Newt Gingrich! The very same week the news broke that he plans to formally end his campaign for the presidency, the former House speaker got a second kick in the teeth when the Internet fell in love with an asteroid-mining plan put forward by James Cameron and the Google guys. The very same Internet that ridiculed Gingrich for his promise to build a permanent moon base by 2020.
Gingrich must be asking himself, What’s the difference between this and my lunar base? When he waxed insane about outer space, we scoffed. When Cameron and Google talk the same way, we swoon. What gives?
Maybe it’s because Gingrich didn’t spin his plan right. He had no PowerPoint, and he got patriotic. He went Cold War, Kennedyesque. He foolishly gave it a deadline. “We will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American," Gingrich told fans in Florida in January.
Maybe he should have used the newer idiom of the innovation-and-commercialization classes: “We’ll have self-congratulatory Davos-style ‘ideas’ conferences till the cows come home; write many proposals; court billionaire investors with the promise of private space travel; sell tickets to stuff; make PowerPoint presentations for decades—and then let the whole thing quietly expire! Imaginary space missions forever!”
That’s been the message so far of the asteroid-mining plan put forward by Planetary Resources, the private venture in which the “Avatar” director and the Google bosses have conspicuously invested.
Mining asteroids for the good of “humanity,” using the money of Google honchos and the titanic imagination of director James Cameron: What a bold stroke of extraterrestrial derring-do that just might save the world! Twitter’s popping with it. It’s just the kind of big-hearted, idea-driven, Seattle-based, dollar-signs-in-eyes plan that the Twitterverse approves of. There’s Gizmodo: “This is going to be HUGE.” And Paul Allen: “an audacious idea & we need more of those”!
And what heaps of glittering resources will be disinterred from the galaxy by these altruistic and lavishly underwritten spaceman-miners? Petroleum, dare I ask, to empower earthlings demoralized at the pump? Clif bars to feed the starving? Nickel, to make more iPhones?! Or perhaps—let’s really dream now—a rich vein of mild, balanced, fair-trade coffee ore will be struck, as it snakes through a silicaceous gouge in 951 Gaspra or 243 Ida ...
It’s pretty to think so. And brood over. And watch CGI videos about. But, alas, no one has gotten quite so specific about the expected asteroidal quarry at Planetary Resources, a new and true asteroid-mining company, brainchild of Renaissance men Peter H. Diamandis and Eric Anderson. They talk mostly in broad strokes. “The resources of Earth pale in comparison to the wealth of the solar system,” says Anderson, who with Diamandis also founded the space tourism company Space Adventures.
As a marketing venture passing as an intergalactic plan to save us all, Planetary Resources is nothing if not the model Company of the Future. Planetary Resources exists, its literature tells us, to "expand Earth's natural resource base,” though anyone aiming to kick the company’s tires could be forgiven for seeing it as another way to collect checks from North American alpha egos for whom our sweet old earth doesn’t feel quite big enough.
In spite of its obscure timetable, hazy goals and odd provenance, Planetary Resources, which is indeed financed in part by Google bosses Eric Schmidt and Larry Page and by Cameron (who in a charming way tends to double down on the grandiose and the fishy-sounding), has seized the credulous attention of much of the mainstream news media. Bloggers seem to agree it’s just crazy enough to work. Wired wrote mostly approvingly, only to radically reverse course and deem the venture premature. “Wired Science’s resident space historian David S. Portree,” Wired’s Adam Mann concluded, “thinks asteroid mining might make more sense when we have a more established space-based habitats with a different economy and better technology.” (Hey wait a minute: Wasn’t that Gingrich’s plan, to start with a moon base?)
But why wait, if you’re eager to start cutting ribbons and signing up investors? “The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months,” CBS News reported with a straight face, “would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for rich asteroid targets.”
In short, before you buy billion-dollar pieces of this Brooklyn Bridge: No one’s mining asteroids anytime soon. Not Google big shots. Not James Cameron. And when and if anyone ever does mine asteroids, they’re not going to be finding crude oil. Or a cure for human death, or a race of gentle friends. So let’s all relax.
The company speaks vaguely of asteroids long on platinum (to address the wedding-ring shortage?) and “real estate” (for the platinum-mining camps?). Otherwise, while admitting that actual mining is a ways off (two years before they start looking), the company peddles computer videos of what might happen in space, kind of, after a long, long, long time of studying those asteroids with telescopes.
The best comparison here is to the space tourism company, Space Adventures. Diamandis, in fact, made this comparison himself, when he introduced a crowd in Seattle to the Planetary Resources concept.
He told a tale of triumph. “Sixteen years ago,” he began, “we were launching this vision of private spaceflight when that was not the norm. And we had a lot of doubters—a lot of people who said it was impossible. But 16 years later there are thousands of people who are buying tickets and billions of dollars being invested. Any one of us can buy a ticket to go to space. I have two!”
They said we couldn’t send a rich man to space—those doubters—and yet 16 years later we have money and they have ... tickets!!
Want to buy one? Space Adventures has used its billions to send a whole seven people to the International Space Station.
I’m going to pass. As Diamandis might say, I’m a doubter.
As for the Gingrich plan, going to the moon on the government’s dime to demonstrate American supremacy? Maybe it’s not an original idea. But it sounds like a sure thing.
http://news.yahoo.com/asteroid-mining-is-awesome--but-newt-gingrich%E2%80%99s-moon-base-is-loony--huh-.html
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