GOLD RUSH IN SPACE! Asteroid Mining is Coming!

So it seems my previous post kicking off a new adventure was more timely than I thought: space mining is the next big thing! Planetary Resources Inc., which may as well be called Rich Billionaires Inc., is a consortium of wealthy space geeks who want to start mining asteroids for mineral commodities. With almost 9,000 known asteroids out in the Mars-Jupiter belt that might go for as much as a billion bucks a piece, this isn't as far-out as it initially sounds.

From Wired.com:

In terms of extraction, Planetary Resources hopes to go after the platinum-group metals — which include platinum, palladium, osmium, and iridium — highly valuable commodities used in medical devices, renewable energy products, catalytic converters, and potentially in automotive fuel cells.

Platinum alone is worth around $23,000 a pound — nearly the same as gold. Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion.

Within the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources hopes to launch between two and five space-based telescopes at an estimated cost of a few million dollars each that will identify potentially valuable asteroids. Other than their size and orbit, little detailed information is available about the current catalog of near-Earth asteroids. Planetary Resources’ Arkyd-101 Space Telescopes will figure out whether any are worth the trouble of resource extraction.

Within five to seven years, the company hopes to send out a small swarm of similar spacecraft for a more detailed prospecting mission, mapping out a valuable asteroid in detail and identifying rich resource veins. They estimate such a mission will cost between $25 and 30 million.

The group is also planning on using robots to do the mining (reducing human risks) as well as shipping it home.

If there's anything that will get private enterprise to drive a new space race folks--THIS IS IT. And with it, here's hoping a few thousand scientific discoveries along the way.

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Image: Artist concept by Denise Watt for NASA