Are Ross Perot Jr. and Google's Founders Launching a New Asteroid Mining Operation?

[bananas]

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27776/?p1=blogs

Are Ross Perot Jr. and Google's Founders Launching a New Asteroid Mining Operation?

An impressive array of backers are behind the new firm Planetary Resources.

Christopher Mims 04/18/2012

On Tuesday, a new company called Planetary Resources will announce its existence at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. It's not clear what the firm does, but its roster of backers incudes Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, filmmaker James Cameron, former Microsoftie (and space philanthropist) Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot Jr., son of the former presidential candidate.

According to the company's press release (below):

[...] the company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.

That sounds like asteroid mining. Because what else is there in space that we need here on earth? Certainly not a livable climate or a replacement for our dwindling supplies of oil.

<snip press release>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/planetary-resources-space-startup_n_1438936.html

<snip>

"Since childhood, I wanted to do one thing -- be an asteroid miner," Diamandis said. "So stay tuned on that one."

Then, this week, Diamandis announced his company's plans to create "a new industry in space and a new definition of natural resources," a press release obtained by MIT Technology Review said.

More details will emerge at a news conference scheduled for April 24. But a source who spoke to Diamandis about his venture -- and did not want to be identified because the discussion was private -- confirmed to The Huffington Post that Planetary Resources does, in fact, plan to mine asteroids for precious raw materials.

<snip>

(deleted what I thought was their website)

[bananas]

1. They have a website, twitter feed, facebook page, youtube channel, and googledoubleplusgood

http://www.planetaryresources.com/
http://twitter.com/PlanetaryRsrcs
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Planetary-Resources/160940827358574
http://www.youtube.com/planetaryresources
https://plus.google.com/u/0/104299149917517298353/posts

[bananas]

2. Video interview with Diamondis at MSNBC Cosmiclog

Long article with lots of links plus a video clip:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/18/11273238-google-billionaires-james-cameron-backing-space-resource-venture

Google billionaires, James Cameron backing space resource venture
By Alan Boyle

<snip>

Diamandis has said on more than one occasion that he's intrigued by the idea of digging into asteroids, for materials ranging from water (for fuel as well as for astronauts) to precious metals such as platinum. The Verge points to a TED talk in 2005 where Diamandis discusses his dream, while Forbes magazine has brought up the subject with him more than once in the past few months.

<snip>

[bananas]

3. "Now I'm a Miner, and I'm Digging Digging Digging Digging Digging"

Man, something about that interview with Peter Diamandis brought this old song to mind,
haven't heard it in a very long time:

The Who - Now I'm a Farmer

[longship]

4. The Bad Astronomer posted about this, too

It also could help develop tech to save the planet from asteroid collision. Very cool, far sighted idea.

[Motown_Johnny]

5. I hope they are going for Helium 3 on the Moon instead of precious metals

on asteroids.


Hopefully they looked into this deeply enough to figure out a way to guarantee immediate success instead of hoping there is platinum on whatever asteroid they pick and wherever on that asteroid they happen to land.


http://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html


^snip^


Helium-3 and Nuclear Fusion

To provide a little background -- and without getting deeply into the science -- all nuclear power plants use a nuclear reaction to produce heat. This is used to turn water into steam that then drives a turbine to produce electricity. Current nuclear power plants have nuclear fission reactors in which uranium nuclei are split part. This releases energy, but also radioactivity and spent nuclear fuel that is reprocessed into uranium, plutonium and radioactive waste which has to be safety stored, effectively indefinitely. An overview of this nuclear fuel cycle can be found here.

For over 40 years scientists have been working to create nuclear power from nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fission. In current nuclear fusion reactors, the hydrogen isotopes tritium and deuterium are used as the fuel, with atomic energy released when their nuclei fuse to create helium and a neutron. Nuclear fusion effectively makes use of the same energy source that fuels the Sun and other stars, and does not produce the radioactivity and nuclear waste that is the by-product of current nuclear fission power generation. However, the so-termed "fast" neutrons released by nuclear fusion reactors fuelled by tritium and deuterium lead to significant energy loss and are extremely difficult to contain. One potential solution may be to use helium-3 and deuterium as the fuels in "aneutronic" (power without neutrons) fusion reactors. The involved nuclear reaction here when helium-3 and deuterium fuse creates normal helium and a proton, which wastes less energy and is easier to contain. Nuclear fusion reactors using helium-3 could therefore provide a highly efficient form of nuclear power with virtually no waste and no radiation. A short wall chart explaining this in more detail can be found here. The aforementioned fission, fusion and aneutronic fusion nuclear reactions are also illustrated in animations in my Mining Helium-3 On the Moon video.

Mining Helium-3 on the Moon

One of many problems associated with using helium-3 to create energy via nuclear fusion is that, at least on the Earth, helium-3 is very, very rare indeed. Helium-3 is produced as a by-product of the maintenance of nuclear weapons, which could net a supply of around 15Kg a year. Helium-3 is, however, emitted by the Sun within its solar winds. Our atmosphere prevents any of this helium-3 arriving on the Earth. However, as it does not have an atmosphere, there is nothing to stop helium-3 arriving on the surface of the Moon and being absorbed by the lunar soil. As a result, it has been estimated that there are around 1,100,000 metric tonnes of helium-3 on the surface of the Moon down to a depth of a few metres. This helium-3 could potentially be extracted by heating the lunar dust to around 600 degrees C, before bringing it back to the Earth to fuel a new generation of nuclear fusion power plants.

As reported in an Artemis Project paper, about 25 tonnes of helium-3 -- or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay's worth -- could power the United States for a year. This means that helium-3 has a potential economic value in the order of $3bn a tonne -- making it the only thing remotely economically viable to consider mining from the Moon given current and likely-near-future space travel technologies and capabilities.

[eqfan592]

6. I'm being cautiously optimistic at this point.

Last edited Mon Apr 23, 2012, 01:00 AM - Edit history (1)

And even tho I know exploration is not likely to be their primary objective, it will likely happen to some degree anyway as a bi-product.

EDIT: Maybe I was wrong, and exploration will be a larger part of it after all. And here is an interesting excerpt from a Forbes article:

Robert Zubrin, chairman of the Mars Foundation, compares Peter Diamandis to Delos David Harriman, the protagonist of Robert Heinlein’s “The Man Who Sold The Moon.”

Harriman hyped the idea of riches on the moon to create a gold rush. Like Harriman, Diamandis sees capitalism as the force that will finally coax humanity off the planet."

Robert Zubrin wrote "The Case for Mars" and if you haven't read it yet you are doing yourself a disservice.