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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."
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
The asteroid Ceres contains more water than all the fresh water on Earth - in a low-G environment. Water, for those who don't know, is rocket fuel once the Hydrogen atoms have been separated from the Oxygen. In addition to that, hydrogen is one of the many preferred reaction masses for ion engines. Water is also drinkable and useful as a source of breathable air. A reliable source of water in low-G is what we need to kick off exploration of the solar system, and Ceres is it.
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?"
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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.
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.