Waking Ideas Publishing - Technology & Space
Space News
Written By Danny Nicolas
The largest piece of space news was the press release of Planetary Resources and their mission plan detailed on their website.
There are near-limitless numbers of asteroids and more being discovered every year. More than 1,500 are as easy to reach as the Moon and are in similar orbits as Earth. Asteroids are filled with precious resources, everything from water to platinum. Harnessing valuable minerals from a practically infinite source will provide stability on Earth, increase humanity’s prosperity, and help establish and maintain human presence in space.
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Planetary Resources is bringing the natural resources of space within humanity’s economic sphere of influence, propelling our future into the 21st century and beyond. Water from asteroids will fuel the in-space economy, and rare metals will increase Earth’s GDP.
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Planetary Resources’ mission is clear: apply commercial, innovative techniques to explore space. We will develop low-cost robotic spacecraft to explore the thousands of resource-rich asteroids within our reach. We will learn everything we can about them, then develop the most efficient capabilities to deliver these resources directly to both space-based and terrestrial customers. Asteroid mining may sound like fiction, but it’s just science.
In other news, The Telegraph has a great video of Space Shuttle Enterprise flying past the Statue of Liberty and video of the Northern Lights as seen from ISS, and another potential planet for relocation was discovered.
Published on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 5:24 am | Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
