Planetary Resources Kickstarter Meets Its Initial Goal 99
symbolset writes "Most of you know about Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company, and their Kickstarter campaign in the finest spirit of Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon. The campaign has reached its minimum $1M goal to get funded with eight days left to go. In celebration, PR's CEO and Chief Asteroid Miner Chris Lewicki does an interview with Forbes where he discusses the future opportunities, the potential pitfalls, and the unlimited potential of private sector space exploitation. It's well worth the read. Planetary Resources' kickstarter has some worthy stretch goals that are well worth looking at, and the sort of supporter premiums that many Slashdotters will not want to miss. Only $175,000 more and they get a second ground station, at $2M they add exoplanet search capability. Both of these stretch goals are within reach."
Re:Despite what you ACs think (Score:4, Informative)
And can you find me these "Experts" you are talking about?
Will Stephen Hawking [dvice.com] do?
Re:There are a lot of ACs opposed to this idea (Score:3, Informative)
Uh,no. Not even close.
Rare Earth elements aren't "rare", in that there isn't a lot of them. They just don't lump together in easily mineable concentrations. The United States, Russia and Australia (at least) have mega-craploads of rare-earth elements. It is just cheaper to source them from China.
Educate thyself and read paragraph two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element [wikipedia.org]