If the plan gets off the ground as planned, robots could be extracting cosmic riches within 10 years.
"Since my early teenage years, I've wanted to be an asteroid miner. I always viewed it as a glamorous vision of where we could go," Peter Diamandis, one of the founders of Planetary Resources Inc., told a news conference Tuesday at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The company's vision "is to make the resources of space available to humanity."
The inaugural step, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, would be launching the first in a series of private telescopes that would search for the right type of asteroids.
The proposal is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals out of the rocks that routinely whiz by Earth.
The proposal is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals out of the rocks that routinely whiz by Earth.
artist rendition of robot satellite capturing near Earth asteroid
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Using space-faring robots to mine precious metals from asteroids almost sounds easy when former astronaut Tom Jones describes it - practically like clearing a snow-covered driveway.
Jones, an adviser to a bold venture that aims to extract gold, platinum and rocket fuel from the barren space rocks, said many near-Earth asteroids have a loose rocky surface held together only weakly by gravity.
"It shouldn't be too hard to invent a machine like a snow blower to pick up material," explained Jones, a veteran of four space shuttle missions.
Jones, an adviser to a bold venture that aims to extract gold, platinum and rocket fuel from the barren space rocks, said many near-Earth asteroids have a loose rocky surface held together only weakly by gravity.
"It shouldn't be too hard to invent a machine like a snow blower to pick up material," explained Jones, a veteran of four space shuttle missions.
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