Asteroid mining venture backed by Page, Cameron unveiled
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 24th Apr 2012 08:51 UTC
In the News "A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers - including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page - is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water." Amazingly cool. Even if it never makes a dime of money, at least these people are contributing to space exploration now that the US has pretty much cut NASA to death. Come to think of it, it's pretty sad we've been relying on a single government for much of our space exploration.
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hashnet
Member since:
2005-11-15

a 10 meter cube of pure gold would worth about $914 billions.
Of course, we'd have to wait until one passes in the vicinity. Then bring it in earth orbit, then somehow to the surface.
I salute this enterprise, but on a ROI standpoint, it'd be better to scour the seafloor for metals and rare earth.

Reply Parent Score: 1

zima Member since:
2005-07-06

Plus the small detail of asteroids not being anything close to such nuggets (and we have good samples via meteorites, or spectral analyses). Expect fairly common materials and/or, more or less, rubble.

And it's generally sad how such cube would, yes, probably very strongly catch human interest... (or at least half-sad, with around half of our gold needs being for "shiny!" factor)

Reply Parent Score: 2