A Bellevue company, backed by some of the world’s most powerful technological minds, announced a plan Tuesday to send robots into space to mine asteroids for gold, platinum and other raw materials.
The venture, undertaken by Planetary Resources, will require development of new technology to avoid costing billions of dollars to operate. The plan is to have the venture active in space within 10 years.
If it works, the new plan could provide billions worth of new materials. A single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the Platinum Group Metals mined in history, according to Planetary Resources.
“Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space,” said Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources. “As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications.”
Additionally, water-rich asteroids could serve as “stepping stones” for deep space exploration, according to Planetary Resources, providing space-sourced fuel and water to orbiting depots.
“Water is perhaps the most valuable resource in space. Accessing a water-rich asteroid will greatly enable the large-scale exploration of the solar system. In addition to supporting life, water will also be separated into oxygen and hydrogen for breathable air and rocket propellant,” said Eric Anderson, co-Founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources.
Of the approximately 9,000 known mineral-rich asteroids, there are more than 1,500 that are energetically as easy to reach as the Moon. The crucial part of the mission will be developing the technology to extract resources from the asteroids in an affordable way. This could effect not only this plan, but also open up the door for affordable space travel for people.
The company lists among its backers some of the world’s foremost software and technological minds. Among them are: film maker James Cameron; Larry Page and Eric E. Schmidt CEO and chairman of Google.; K. Ram Shriram, Founder of Sherpalo, Google Board of Directors founding member; David Vaskevitch, former chief technology officer at Microsoft.
