New Asteroid Mining Company Aims to Manufacture Products in Space | Wired Science | Wired.com - http://www.wired.com/wiredsc...
Jan 22, 2013
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"A new private company called Deep Space Industries announced today that it intends to send a fleet of small spacecraft to near-Earth asteroids with the aim of mining resources and turning them into products using space-based 3-D printers.
Last year was thick with audacious private spaceflight company unveilings, including the announcement from Planetary Resources, Inc. of their plans to mine relatively valuable platinum group metals from asteroids...There exists potentially extremely valuable material on asteroids, including nickel, silicon, platinum group metals such as platinum and palladium, and water, which can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. DSI intends to create a fleet of prospecting spacecraft called “FireFlies” (perhaps trying to rouse interest in their plans from Joss Whedon acolytes) that will travel to asteroids in Earth’s vicinity on journeys of two to six months."
- Lit
“Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development,” Gump said in statement. “More than 900 new asteroids that pass near Earth are discovered every year. They can be like the Iron Range of Minnesota was for the Detroit car industry last century – a key resource located near where it was needed. In this case, metals and fuel from asteroids can expand the in-space industries of this century. That is our strategy.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/deep-sp...
- Lit
This is really cool, the kind of stuff we need to be doing. There's plenty of money in the world it just needs a big enough challenge to release it. We may also need an Asteroid branch of the air force. I can imagine a bond villain hijacking the mining facilities and holding the earth hostage to an asteroid attack :-)
- Todd Hoff
Guess they would have to develop the technology to easily direct asteroid re-maneuvering and movement first ;) ...Glad you enjoyed the posted material. :)
- Lit