Slashdot Mirror
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."
You must be remembering it wrong. Kicktraq shows steady progress over the project, and a surge of backers about three days ago:
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space-telescope-for-everyone-0/#chart-daily
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
there's no market for the mined resources in space, and it's too expensive to transport them back to earth.
Not really, it's easy to transport stuff from space back to earth. The expensive part is getting things up from Earth to space, which is the problem asteroid mining is trying to solve.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
No shortages if we only mine on Earth? Have you ever heard about rare earth metals, and the considerable difficulty to mine them? In addition, the single biggest source for these metals is China. The rest of the world is hoarding rare earth metals as much as they can due to Chinas increased regulation. There are asteroids out there that have enormous amounts of these metals.
In fact, many metals are expected to be exhausted in this century. Sure, you can recycle them, but consider the effect this has on the economy and political stability.
The potential benefits clearly outweigh the risks. Even more so when comparing projected costs with those for military operations, for example.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
My guess: either a troll, or a guy with a very narrow view of things incapable of long-term thinking. Unfortunately, there are many of the latter.
These are the people who regularly say that research without a clear and easy-to-understand goal is useless, completely ignoring the fact that especially basic research often cannot have a clear goal (usually that happens in applied research).
Likewise, here, if a project does not immediately deliver a nice spaceship with which you can zip comfortably to an asteroid, grab it, and bring back, it is all pointless, nonsense, etc.
An example of one of the ACs: "There is no technology to do any of the things you describe." . The whole POINT of projects like these is to eventually come up with such technologies. This should be obvious, but apparently isn't to these people.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
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.
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.
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
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
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?
This sig does not contain any SCO code.