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back to article Google founders, James Cameron, go asteroid mining

A powerful cabal of tech, media and aeronautics uber executives are set to reveal how their freshly launched company Planetary Resources, will scope for natural resources outside of planet earth. The new entity, backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Google board member K.Ram Shriram, filmmaker …

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  1. stuartrc
    Thumb Up

    This is great

    There are loads of commentards who don't like this for assorted reasons - most of them are probably better qualified than I to comment. However I love the chutzpah of the people doing this.

    Between this lot and Elon Musk we might escape from the stagnation / glacial progress rate we are stuck in at the moment.

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  2. Strudel
    Devil

    Mining a well documented resource

    The consortium have set up to mine one of the worlds greatest resources: Idiotically enthusiastic venture capitalists! Next week I predict a press release containing the words "Nano-tech", "Green Energy", "Sustainable" "Counter-terrorism", "Unlimited growth potential" and "Untapped market".

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  3. arrbee
    Alien

    Plenty of near-earth asteroids to chose from, the main problem is they tend to have eccentric orbits - who do you apply to for a license to modify the path of a space rock ?

    Or (in a few years) we could send up a group of self-replicating robotic miners controlled by an AI such that they mine the rock while it is far from the earth and then use small rockets to send the (possibly refined) products into a more convenient geocentric orbit as the asteroid gets closer to the earth. What could possibly go wrong ?

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  4. Fred Mbogo
    Boffin

    @stuartrc

    Chutzpah is the right word. Wish every billionaire used their fortune like this.

    I wonder if they'll take the Island 3 concepts from the 70s and update them. Gerard O'Neil and his team had interesting ideas.

    I have a question for the more scientifically inclined...what is the feasibility of mining hard to find ores like coltan. I have a simplified grasp of the stellar nucleosynthesis process by which light elements are created in supernovae but I don't know if that applies to heavier elements.

    Heck, even if it doesn't, mining iron and water would be valuable enough. There is enough iron out there to dwarf the entirety of human extraction through all history. Enough water to solve short term water shortage.

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  5. Kharkov
    Go

    It's unlikely but maybe the Private Sector could get there first...

    Assuming they're going to try and make money at this, then their first step is to get some ice and set a fuel manufacturing system. Electricity (from solar energy) plus melted ice (don't forget the impurities) and you've got H2 & Oxygen.

    You'd need special arrangements for that and you'd probably have to go get a nice ice asteroid (say that three times!) that wasn't too big and bring it back to LEO/GEO.

    And after that, they'd need an OTV and then the rest of the solar system is, in technical terms, very easy to get to, as long as you're not in a hurry to get there.

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    1. Dani Eder
      Reply Icon

      Re: It's unlikely but maybe the Private Sector could get there first...

      Actually the first steps are more telescopes for finding asteroids, since we only know about 8% of the ones larger than 100 meters. Then prospector missions to visit and get samples back from the candidate ones you find. Looking at these asteroids from millions of km away, like we do from the ground, just does not tell you enough to determine which ones to mine and what you can get out of them. That pretty much follows Earth mining practice, first survey and take mineral samples back to the lab, then decide if you want to mine there.

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  6. Gobhicks
    FAIL

    "...emerging concept..."?

    ... mining the asteroid belt has been a staple of science fiction for decades!

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    1. Tom 13
      Reply Icon

      Re: "...emerging concept..."?

      The "emerging" part is they are trying to take the "fiction" out of the last bit.

      QX?

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  7. Mike Flugennock
    FAIL

    You can thank Obama's "JOBS" program for this

    Cameron and the Chocolate Factory honchos are simply taking advantage of Obama's new and torturously-acronymed JOBS legislation, which basically legitimizes the kind of sketchiness and flat-out fraud that helped inflate the dot-com bubble.

    Cameron, Schmidt, Page, et. al. likely don't give a shit one way or the other if their crazy-assed Star Trek business idea pans out or not; they'll take the loss, figure out a way to write it off on their taxes and keep on truckin'.

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    1. Tom 13
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Re: You can thank Obama's "JOBS" program for this

      Ya know, I love a good Big 0 rant as much as any other knuckle-dragging 'Merkin, but I love my space exploration even more. So stick a sock in it!

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  8. Jacqui
    Joke

    Ben Gunn

    Where is he when we need him :-)

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    1. Tom 13
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: Ben Gunn

      Are you sure you didn't mean Ben Grimm?

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  9. Slabfondler
    Alien

    Where the future begins tomorrow...

    Yoyodyne.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And global warming is bad???

    This is what happens when people have too much money and have had their minds inhibited by science fiction...

    Are these gentlemen planning on importing the stuff to Earth? If so, how much?

    Consider:

    1. If it is profitable it will continue for many many years.

    2. If it is profitable it will expand until it reaches economic saturation.

    Then we will have a lots of stuff being brought onto the planet, which will affect, very minutely, the gravity of the planet. Which, in turn will affect (a) the Earth's orbit (there goes all that Climate Modelling), and (b) the orbit of other bodies close to Earth.

    I know that this comment will be met with derision and I will be called an idiot and scientific illiterate, but consider the long term prospects. Our ancestors 10,000 years ago started to burn wood to keep warm, and then in the 19th century industrial scale coal burning started our path to Global Warming...

    Will this then require that we dump stuff in orbit? Or beyond? Solved the 3 body problem lately?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And global warming is bad???

      Well they'd have to go some to match the 1000+ tonnes a day of stuff that falls to Earth every day.

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  11. Peddler
    Go

    We can start mining the asteroid...

    as soon as we get rid of those annoying blue people that live on it.

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    1. Kharkov
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Getting rid of the blue people?

      Well I heard they've got lean WMD's. Actually it might have been 'green cheese' but let's take no chances! Fire up Dick Cheney & Karl Rove! Let's take the fight to...

      who are we fighing again?

      Oh, right the roo people - BLUE people, I mean.

      Get them over there before...

      Oh, who am I kidding? There's no need to fire Americans up, it's a war, they love that kind of stuff. At least the important (Yearly income >1 million) people do...

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