Planetary Resources Kickstarter Meets Its Initial Goal

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:Making property rights in Space legal is very i

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be exactly like Hong Kong, except without the atmosphere and it costs an economic and environmental fortune to send anybody there, all in the hopes of completely unrealistic schemes to bring iron ore back to earth.

Go back to watching "Star Trek," nerd.

Despite what you ACs think

[symbolset]

NASA thinks it's a good enough idea to send a probe out there.

If Man doesn't leave Earth then it will be our grave. Man will end. That is not in any way controversial, deniable or disputable. ALL the experts agree, not just 97%. If Man does leave Earth our galaxy at least is ours to claim: 200 billion times all the world. That's a lot of upside for the cost, evading the downside of not doing it notwithstanding.

The only argument against this are nihilistic notions that Man needs to end.

Re:Making property rights in Space legal is very i

[XcepticZP]

Sorry, but what makes you think the UN or any existing country should have the rights to anything up there, or enforce them the rights for that matter? They already sucked up ALL the friggin land on our planet, leaving no room for anyone to settle/migrate, instead forcing us to be subservient to their supposed social contract and morally corrupt laws. You'd like them to then project this ownership to yet-unclaimed land, that they would then be oh-so-generous to lease to us with a supposedly "regulation/tax free environment"?

Sorry about the mini-rant, and a little off topic. But it is a whole new world up there that is full of opportunities; and to sully it with a dirty thing such as heavy government is such a bad idea. Even you yourself admit that a regulation/tax free environment is a good thing for some reason, yet fail to make the connection with government. Government is the one that sucks productivity with regulations and taxes, for very little, waste-filled gain.

Re:How about sea floor mining also

[killkillkill]

When exactly were the nuclear plants proven unreliable? One was proven unreliable under the specific condition of being hit by a 50 ft wall of ocean.

My car has had nothing but scheduled maintenance in its 150k life, but it's probably unreliable because it probably wouldn't survive if it got hit by a semi.

Re:There are a lot of ACs opposed to this idea

[ardor]

From the same page:

"New demand has recently strained supply, and there is growing concern that the world may soon face a shortage of the rare earths.[19] In several years from 2009 worldwide demand for rare earth elements is expected to exceed supply by 40,000 tonnes annually unless major new sources are developed. "

"As a result of the increased demand and tightening restrictions on exports of the metals from China, some countries are stockpiling rare earth resources."

Also, I did not say that there aren't many of them. I said there are considerable difficulties in mining them. Which is probably the main reason why China is the supplier no.1 . There is a lot of stuff dispersed amongst the oceans, too, it is just unfeasible to extract it (yet).

There is nothing wrong with pursuing asteroid mining, just like there isn't anything wrong with trying to come up with new technologies to extract rare earths better, or make collection from elements in the ocean more practical. I firmly oppose this view that just because X does not either immediately yield any gains or has no 100% guarantee of suceeding it is pointless. If you think the invested money could be used elsewhere better, why not yank money off yet another weapons development project, which cost orders of magnitude more than three asteroid mining programs?

Re:Despite what you ACs think

[dAzED1]

how about the argument that "man" as a species is less important than all the "men" that actually exist? If you have to break the backs of several generations just to have the slight possibility that someone whose unborn great great great great great grandchild might get to land on some other rock...

It would be exponentially less expensive, comparatively immediate, and help real, tangible (versus the intangible concept of "man") if we cleaned up a place (Earth) that is already 99.99999% ideal for our species, versus trying to take some other rock which doesn't even have an atmosphere, and tera-forming it for the benefit of a tiny handful of people.

Re:Despite what you ACs think

[dAzED1]

I absolutely promise you that your daily life is inconsistent with what you're saying here. I don't even know you, and I can still say that without fear of being wrong. There's the challenge: do you personally live your life 100% to the benefit of the continuation of the species, regardless anything that might happen to you personally?