New Company: Planetary Resources

[Mojavi-Viper]

The company Planetary Resources will be officially announcing their existence today 1:30 pm Eastern Time. http://www.spacevidcast.com/live/

Basically this is a company with a lot of big backers that will mine asteroids and other items in space to bring back to Earth, such as gold, platinum, exc...

[nibula]

Avatar?

[Mojavi-Viper]

Avatar?

Well James Cameron is one of the backers, so either way, YES. haha

[Tiberion]

Speech seems to be ongoing. Pretty good so far, a little bit of 'rah rah!'

Launching initial missions in 2 years? Lets hope they can do it.

[Mojavi-Viper]

Speech seems to be ongoing. Pretty good so far, a little bit of 'rah rah!'

Launching initial missions in 2 years? Lets hope they can do it.

Yeah I am watching it also, apparently they have been working on this company since 2010. Even more interesting there is another media event in June in which they get their air craft trainer or the craft itself, it wasn\'t clear. (I need a manuscript transcript of the presentation)

[Obollzzor]

My favorite blogger Phil Plait wrote some about this, link

[Ydoow]

Seems a little ambitious, but exciting.

If it goes through, I see extremely cheap electronics in our future.

Hopefully it doesn\'t decrease technology growth though. The stressed resources do create the demand for more resource efficient technology.

[EDF]

I new and glorious dawn awaits!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347

Plans have been made for mining of meteorites, and for the first time in two years I don\'t feel like killing myself for a change

lol jkjk

But seriously though, this could lead to better quality of life on earth, or better yet, space colonization.

Oh lawd. Just think of the possibilities this could bring.

[Ydoow]

I finally get to tell all my friends to shove it everytime they say 'Whoopdee dooo, and what does NASA and space do for me or the common good of humanity?'

Makes me want to hurt people.

[thorfinn]

[Obollzzor]

Well, hopefully there are no Na\'vi on asteroids

[Yorik]

http://youtu.be/t0c9oZh4vTo

Gets very interesting at 28 minutes

[Ydoow]

I\'m a little concerned how such a large influx of materials will affect recycling efforts as well.

i.e. Not being seen as necessary

[Mojavi-Viper]

I\'m a little concerned how such a large influx of materials will affect recycling efforts as well.

i.e. Not being seen as necessary

Most of the materials that will be mined will be stuff that is considered Rare Earth Elements a big one being Platinum, which all platinum mined from Earth did not come from Earth, but from asteroids hitting Earth and such. However it is a point that I believe should be further looked into. I never thought of that.

[Ydoow]

Yeah I mean most of the stuff will be metals, but they all go into cellphones and the like.

The main reason cellphones and other electronics are being recycled so heavily now is because the prices of rare metals has skyrocketed (because of demand for electronics and such).

With such a large influx of these metals, the prices will plummet as supply can finally meet demand with ease, and thus recycling won\'t be nearly as profitable.

The best way to counter-act this would be to do a African Diamond-eque deal, where they limit how much metal they release into the market.

Even if it\'s just to create a gradual decline in prices instead of a sudden drop.