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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."
Just a few days ago (when it was published on theoatmeal.com) I visited that campaign and it was a few thousands of dolars (around 15k, if I recall correctly). Now, Not more than a week later it reached 1,1 million? The number of people who supported it hasn't grown that much from that time. I don't recall the exact figure, unfortunately. I don't know, it just seems kinda fishy. They started the project may, 29 and they've got a little over 10k. Now, after a few days, they got to 1,1 million? Maybe oatmeal public really generous. However, there were only 2.5k likes on that particular comic. Something is not right.
I don't see the connect between trying to monetise resources in space and building a Kepler 2. They seem like completely divergent goals.
With respect to the second point I'd prefer to see something like the Terrestial Planet Finder but whatever.
Good luck to them, there's a lot of useful stuff up there and you don't need to worry about leaving a mess.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Hey, you didn't expect billionaire Planetary Ventures investors like Larry Page (net worth $23 B), Eric Schmidt ($8.2 B), Ross Perot Jr. ($1.4 B), K. Ram Shriram ($1.65 B), and Charles Simonyi ($1 B) to foot the bill, did you?
What's up with that? Did you all have a meeting and decide this is a bad thing?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
While (I believe) current space treaties prohibit any COUNTRIES from claiming planetary bodies, it is not clear if a an individual or company can claim the resources on them.
The U.N. should allow (and someday protect and enforce!) property rights.
This might open up a huge wave of investment and exploration. Say (perhaps like shipwreck salvage rights) one could claim the exclusive mineral rights to a (piece of a) celestial body. Even if it weren't permanent, like only a 100 year lease, many people might be tempted (look at what the British did with Hong Kong; their administration help turn it from a fishing port into one of the world's great cities even though they knew they'd have to give it back to the Chinese. So a completely regulation/tax free environment on an asteroid might be useful (once prices to LEO become more reasonable, go Space X!).
This has been mentioned as one of the possible ways to help get Africa out of its misery, if property rights could be accurately (right now it's a complete mess) determined and assigned it would become a source of capital that their people could buy and sell; in short it would open up a huge source of capital. Along with the proper controls (I know, that's the big problem) it could permanently stimulate their economies in a big way. (I understand the Chinese, in order to lock down property boundaries in their rural districts have been using google maps and satellite photos. Once properly recorded the villagers and make transactions confident in knowing that they have enforceable contracts).
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.
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Go back to watching A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge.
Oh boy, the first recovery of a solid that needs drilled out of the bottom of the sea. Yes cheap and easy energy will surely be flowing soon.
Terrestrial notions of ownership don't apply outside Earth's atmosphere any more than Native American's notions of property survived the European invasion. On the frontier what matters is if you can take it and hold it long enough to form a local government to recognize your possession as ownership.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That's work if you can live in space long-term. But this isn't a space colonisation scenario (we can but dream), it's a space industry scenario. If you break the law in space, there's nothing to stop law enforcement from seizing your assets back on the ground.
If you break the law in space, there's nothing to stop law enforcement from seizing your assets back on the ground.
"Nice city you have there, lots of friendly people. Be a pity if someone de-orbited a four ton rock on it, wouldn't it?"
Blank until
It's the main problem of private sector space exploration - the companies need to make their money "on earth", but mine the resources "off earth".
Of course, if you had another company with assets in space that you could sell your stuff too, the problem would be greatly diminished. That would require a criticial mass of private space activites that would sustain an exchange of resources "off earth" while conducting the payments "on earth".
4 tons? They'd see a very short shooting star, not sure why that'd be a pity.
Why would you want to send there an "anybody"? Yes, life support systems cost a fortune. That's why we're currently exploring mars with robots, not people!
Well, while we can argue about property rights to planetary bodies, there is this tiny little detail - you've got to get there first to claim anything. So, as I see it, companies may claim they are providing means to get there and shipping service back to Earth. They need not claim any rights to asteroids, other than the universal fact which seems to hold true for the moment: it's there for anyone to take, we just provide the means to get it.
1. People like you thought airplane or moon landing are unrealistic and unfeasible, but they're wrong
2. Just because there's no technology to do it now, doesn't mean there won't be technology to do it in the foreseeable future. This is what PR is doing, developing the technology.
3. And who says the developed technology won't be used on earth too, it can benefit both earth based mining and asteroid mining. The material from asteroid is not meant for Earth anyway.
4. The extraordinary claim is not we'll be mining asteroid, it's the claim that "It's over, and we're going nowhere"
5. Space may be dead for you, but the kickstarter campaign proves it lives on in many people's hearts, so go ahead and drown in self-pity, we got asteroids to mine.
Antimatter could be collected on the moon as there is no atmosphere we could use solar panels more effectively and then antimatter, which is very small could be transported back to earth.
Property rights are no different in space than on Earth - you may claim anything you want, but you may only hold what you can defend. The twist here is that asteroids are currently not claimed by a sovereign nation, and very few have any capability to even attempt to take or defend property in space by force.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
I miss Seaquest too.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Technically, the 1979 Moon Agreement prohibits private persons and corporation from claiming ownership of celestial bodies. The problem is that the agreement is generally ignored, with few signatories, which include none of the space powers, and therefore it has negligible impact.
It would actually be interesting to see how the arrival of private companies to spaceflight and space resource extraction changes the legal regime: the 1967 Outer Space Treaty is badly outdated, and needs to be updated at the very least, but preferably scrapped and replaced with another, more up-to-date agreement, one that includes the private sector, and also regulates orbital weapons, with a special focus on orbital kinetic bombardment platforms, as well as settling the legal status of extraterrestrial resources and the circumstances of their extraction.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
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.
HELL NO!
All property rights are per definition theft!
The land belongs to all life-forms in the solar system!
If somebody wants to be the sole ruler over a piece of land, he has to pay every single life-form off for the worth of the stuff in that piece of land. Not our governments. US. And both water and rare minerals ain't gonna come cheap!
That and making imaginary money (money generated out of thin air or interest) illegal just like imaginary property, is the only way to prevent a free-market-destroying monopolistic privileged wealthy ruler class that "owns" everything and pays everyone from forming in the first place.
http://twit.tv/show/triangulation/108
It's also not clear why an agreement signed by any nation would be binding on an individual who would (if they happenened to be a citizen of such a nation) be free to change their nationality to that of a non-signatory (and I don't think you'd be hard pressed to find a non-signatory that would be happy to welcome the citizenship of somebody who owned a siginficant portion of a celestial body).
Then you'd better have a sustainable life support system, because you're never coming back down, and they won't be letting any supplies go up. If you want to play supervillain, make sure you have enough handy rocks to terrify the whole world. And failsafe deorbiting rockets, so they won't be tempted to sneak a bomb onto a supply rocket and blow it after docking.
No, that plant was proven to be very reliable. It survived a severe earthquake and began automatically shutting down before the tsunami hit.
It was designed to withstand tsunamis, just not one as big as actually occurred. When hit by the over design limit tsunami, it suffered damage but did not fail dangerously. No one was killed, and radiation tests show that the only people to be exposed to significant radiation levels were site workers, none of which received a fatal dose.
So, if a nuclear power plant can safely shut down after such natural disasters, it shows that nuclear power is very safe. The engineers who designed that plant should be commended.
Sources:
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster)
Preliminary dose-estimation reports by the World Health Organization and United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation indicate that 167 plant workers received radiation doses that slightly elevate their risk of developing cancer, but that it may not be statistically detectable. Estimated effective doses from the accident outside of Japan are considered to be below (or far below) the dose levels regarded as very small by the international radiological protection community.
World Nuclear News (http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/rs_fear_and_stress_outweigh_fukushima_radiation_risk_3105131.html)
The most extensive international report to date has concluded that the only observable health effects from the Fukushima accident stem from the stresses of evacuation and unwarranted fear of radiation.
I'm a fruit pirate. I bought a watermelon once, and spat the seeds in the back yard. They grew into another watermelon,
Except - that's not even remotely how shipwreck salvage rights work.
Again, seriously disconnected from reality. It would never have occurred to the 19th and early 20th century British that they wouldn't be able to re-negotiate a favorable treaty when the time came.
man I thought that too until I rewatched a bunch on netflix; Even the filter of nostalgia couldn't save that acting now that I'm older.
That part is actually a bit more complicated than that. And since there have been no cases in this topic before (and likely won't be in the near future), one can only guess.
One important point, though, is that the neutrality and non-sovereignty of space is a ius cogens norm of international law by now: it actually doesn't require a treaty to be upheld, but it's still a good thing to have one. Therefore, I think welcoming such a person would be only slightly less riskier than holding a welcome party for Osama bin Laden (albeit on a different, less physical level).
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Sure.
"Once Hydrogen atoms have been separated from the Oxygen".
Which is why I store water to fuel my car. For I'll then become a millionaire,
"Once Hydrogen atoms have been separated from the Oxygen".
Ah yes, and also :
"useful as a source of breathable air".
Of course,
"Once Hydrogen atoms have been separated from the Oxygen".
Separated miraculously, with for instance a small solar panel, which will create fuel at such a rate that it'll recover the actual fuel that was needed to just bring it on location in less than two or three years.
"Once Hydrogen atoms have been separated from the Oxygen".
How can you be so naive? /...
And you are both a "friend" and "friend of friend" here on
Herve S.
On the other hand, governments provide roads, police service and sanitation, at least where they are functioning properly. I am of the belief that a government is of, for, and by the people. Who exactly are we trying to blame?
harmonious design
You really don't understand how corporations work, do you?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If a corporation threatens to blow up a city, just how limited do you think the liability will be?
Have you ever seen a corporation sentenced to prison time? How would that even be done?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Because the corporation may be a fuzzy collective, but it is still made up of people. People who would have to give the ultimatum, people who would design the WMD. People can be arrested. It takes a lot to puncture the shield of corporate liability, but I think terrorist threats should prove sufficient.
Do you imagine that if Al Quida were to incorporate formally, Osama would have been allowed to go free after 9/11?*
*Ok, there is still an element of doubt about just how involved he was personally, but you get the idea.