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The folks who brought you zero-gravity airplane flights and multimillion-dollar trips to the International Space Station have lined up some billionaire investors for their next space venture — but they're not quite ready to tell you all about it.
Instead, they're sending out a media alert for a Seattle news conference next week, when they promise to "unveil a new space venture with a mission to help ensure humanity's prosperity." The new venture, called Planetary Resources, has the stated aim of expanding Earth's resource base. That's led a couple of observers to speculate that Planetary Resources is being formed to go into the extraterrestrial mining business.
One of the venture's founders is Peter Diamandis, who has played a leading role in setting up multimillion-dollar X Prizes for private space travel and other technological feats. He also founded Zero G Corp., which turned weightless-airplane flights into a tourist attraction. The other co-founder/co-chairman is Eric Anderson, who is chairman of Space Adventures, the company that has arranged space station trips for a succession of millionaires and billionaires.
A former client of Anderson's, software billionaire (and two-time spaceflier) Charles Simonyi, is listed as an investor in Planetary Resources. Other investors and advisers on the list include Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, plus fellow billionaires K. Ram Shriram and Ross Perot Jr. (son of the former presidential candidate), plus filmmaker James Cameron.
X Prize Foundation
Google co-founder Larry Page and X Prize co-founder Peter Diamandis share the microphone in 2007 during the unveiling of the Google Lunar X Prize. Page is listed as an investor in Planetary Resources, another venture that Diamandis is founding.
Today's media alert says the new company "will overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'"
"That sounds like asteroid mining," Christopher Mims writes on MIT Technology Review's "Mims' Bits" blog. "Because what else is there in space that we need here on earth? Certainly not a livable climate or a replacement for our dwindling supplies of oil."
Parabolic Arc's Doug Messier, meanwhile, writes that the venture will be an "extraterrestrial mining company."
Diamandis has said on more than one occasion that he's intrigued by the idea of digging into asteroids, for materials ranging from water (for fuel as well as for astronauts) to precious metals such as platinum. The Verge points to a TED talk in 2005 where Diamandis discusses his dream, while Forbes magazine has brought up the subject with him more than once in the past few months.
For now, Planetary Resources is keeping the mystery close to the vest. The plan is to reveal the details next Tuesday at the Seattle Museum of Flight's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. Diamandis, Anderson and Simonyi will be in attendance, along with Chris Lewicki, a former NASA Mars mission manager who is the company's president and chief engineer; and Tom Jones, a planetary scientist and retired astronaut who serves as an adviser to the company.
Will the mystery keep until then? Stay tuned.
Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation and co-author of "Abundance: Why the Future is Better Than You Think," talks about the key to prosperity in the 21st century, and the importance of innovation and forward thinking to make the impossible possible.
More about extraterrestrial investments:
- Could legal loophole lead to extraterrestrial land claims?
- Private property in outer space? It's debatable
- To infinity and beyond: Investing in space travel
- How to make the moon pay
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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Aw, crap. Isn't this how Ripley first encountered the alien?
This could have real potential. The nearest asteroids are near earth objects. If they were to pulverize them for their minerals and water, it would be a great service to earth and should be subsidized by world governments. I still think a permanent base on one of the moon's poles should be first on the agenda. Maybe an international base on the moon could serve as a hub for the mining operation. That kind of subsidy would jump start all of space exploration. building rockets on the moon would save the immense cost of escaping earth's gravity.
The Nearest resource is the 1000's of satellites full of gold in the form of connectors & insulation that circle the globe.
Put all that gold together and it wouldn't really amount to all that much phil. I would venture to guess that there are other elements in those satellites that are worth a bit more. But then again, as evidenced by the cable companies, you can make a lot more by having those satellites up there as opposed to mining them for gold.
"...building rockets on the moon would save the immense cost of escaping earth's gravity."
Immense cost? If you mean fuel, that's not what makes flight to LEO expensive. Fuel is cheap, and plentiful (including hydrocarbon forms that don't exist on the Moon) down in this 'deep' gravity well. Duplicating an entire manufacturing infrastructure on the Moon (where unlimited shirtsleeve construction and operation environments don't exist) 'just for the shallower gravity well' is not cheap.
And you still have to move people and stuff between Earth and Lunar surface to do things.
Lunar hydrogen (if the ice is plentiful enough) and oxygen (which could be obtained in nearly unlimited quantities from the regolith, if necessary) is best used by sending it back to LEO to fuel/refuel Earth manufactured, orbitally assembled spacecraft departing from there.
And even that assumes the use hydrogen/oxygen rockets. Other kinds of chemical rockets (say, kerosene or methane) could only use the oxygen as oxidizer, nuclear thermal rockets could only use the hydrogen, as reaction mass.
frank- its not the fuel that's expensive it's the amount. 2 million pounds of fuel even at a dollar per gal is a hellva lot of money. its the amount. basically cause the moon has 1/6 earth gravity you can use less fuel and less people which means less cost to the rocket maker cause everything can be smaller due to you not needing a big fuel tank. fuel weighs 6 pounds per gallon.
Which doesn't change what I said. The cost of even 2 million pounds of fuel is a sliver of the cost of the entire launch operation. Liquid oxygen is on the order of the same cost per gallon as milk. This does not explain by itself, the cost of, say, a single Shuttle launch.
The maximum fuel load of a Boeing 747 is about 392,000 pounds, about 1/5th of your example. However, a flight on Earth using all of it is going to cost far less than 1/5th of a rocket launch using 2 million lb of the same high-grade kerosene. (a fuel you can't find in any quantity on the Moon).
Aviation is a more mature technology that requires far less support per aircraft, they operate far more often, and uses machines that are inherently re-useable (which is most meaningful commercially only when you do fly often, as an RLV is likely to cost more to develop, and per unit, than an ELV of the same capacity. And even expendables benefit from high launch rates, because of the manufacturing economies of scale. The Russians know this, they've cranked out incrementally improved R-7s for decades, and have yet to fly a human on anything else). It's far more sensitive to fuel costs, precisely because all its other operating costs are relatively low. Rocketry of any kind has yet to approach that point. The 'standing army' of support for many rocket designs is also a major factor. You'd see a lot more happening, if space launch was such that the cost of propellant and oxidizer was the 'bottleneck,' the dominant cost, because it would be far lower.
Nor does your assertion change the fact that the people and technology required to do anything on the Moon are still down here. Without low-cost to LEO, anything done elsewhere is still going to have serious limits on cost and practicality.
Again, the Moon is still a long way to go (and you on Earth do still have to go there, somehow) to get a 'shallower gravity well' that may only have hydrogen and oxygen at its bottom, as opposed to the 'deeper' gravity well of Earth, with more fuel options down here, and a mature infrastructure for obtaining most of them.
Understand though, I'm all for ISRU, using local resources for fuel, where that's possible, like Mars. Assuming we're talking mostly chemical rockets, 'refueling' makes the most sense at two places: In LEO after you've come up from Earth's surface (from separately launched fuel of Earth or Lunar origin), and at your destination.
More people willing to build the future instead of clinging to the past.
Not to mention that this will be a "green" venture, as these resources can be procured without harm to any ecosystem once a base of operations is set up in space, with its own fuel refining capability.
These guys make me feel poor ....
Must be nice to play with so much money ....
I think I would rather do something like what "The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation" is doing ....
With their massive vaccination program , which actually saves millions of lives ....
At least they are keeping the advances in space travel going strong ....
I wish them luck ....
Thanks Alan ....
Every single one of these mentioned is a self-made man. Every single one of them worked for their money.
And while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does great work, the truth is that we must venture beyond Earth for our resources and if we as a species hope to survive.
@digitalnoise - I agree. To expand on your latter point: While we're stuck on Earth, this is a zero-sum game. We help the poor by giving them some of our wealth. The average wealth doesn't change. But if this was taken to its logical conclusion, all first-worlders would be considerably worse off. Asteroid mining gives us a chance to change all that and increase the average wealth per individual. Maybe someday, everyone can have a first-world lifestyle.
Avi is correct. America needs new forward motion every few decades, this ensures we are an economic world leader. Inevitably, all our manufacturing will travel East - as well the technology as their populations' education continually increases. This space race could be the thing that helps lift the US economy, while dozens of companies sprout up around it - and that means new jobs with an enormous boost to the relative GDP.
avi - you couldn't be more wrong. If life on Earth were a zero-sum game, we'd be mighty crowded in the caves our ancestors lived in, wouldn't we?
I can't really fault the Gates Foundation for saving lives, but every one of those saved lives is going to be another consumer of Earth's limited resources. Perhaps we need to expand our resource base before bringing more hungry mouths to the table.
I'm not convinced that we have the technical capabilities to do that with asteroid mining at this point. We can't even deliver our own spam in a can to ISS right now. Maybe in 50 or 100 years we'll have worked our way up to using extraterrestrial resources, but not now. It has to start somewhere, though, so good luck to them.
where do i sign up to do labor ill workforever as long as i get my own ship within 20 years
It takes money to make more money. That is their key to prosperity, for them. Everything they have done was for profit and something for all the Billionaire's to do for fun. What about saving our planet from a asteroid hit. Our Government says they are out of money to save us all. Going to the Moon, is not easy. But it is nice to talk about it.
Space travel isn't that exciting to the population, thus not that useful to support as a politician... people think it's expensive and useless to them, but they ignore all the modern convineances that came from the Apollo program, and the fact that compared to other forms of government spending the moon landings were done on the cheap.
well, I'm pretty sure the tech that will be used to capture and mine these asteroids would easily be adapted to shifting asteroids off of a collision course with us...
James - Nailed it, friend. Seems like we need an education campaign to teach people the huge benefits we've been reaping for the space program. If we spent as much money on space as we did with our past couple of wars.... wow, my mind has trouble trying to think of where we'd be right now!
Actually, many of the folks I've run into who are opposed to space exploration and development are aware of the technology developed from the space program. Their basic argument on that issue is that it would have been developed anyways, for some other purpose and in a worse case scenario, the technology would have arrived on the scene maybe 5 years later than it did. Some even make the argument that the advances have actually been bad for us, as now more kids play football on their Xbox rather than in their backyards. I can't say they're totally wrong on the development side because it's arguing about "what might have happened if". The true education that needs to be done is making folks realize how small the total space budget really is. I had one person basically scoff at me and declare, "That may be their "official" budget, but I'm sure they get hundreds of billions more in "discretionary spending" that isn't on the books." That's the wall you run up against, the fact that the general population is so convinced that NASA's budget is so much larger than it actually is.
A simple thing like a very big CME, could take us all out, way sooner than a big rock.
This is where humanities future will be decided. If we don't do this soon, we will kill ourselves and become an extinct species.
Finally the private sector is showing some long range vision. All the luck in the world (and outside) to you.
My uncle was chief of surface operations at an asteroid mining site. Sudbury Ontario is an ancient impact site with an ore body of mostly nickel, worth more than a trillion dollars by the time it is exhausted. Astronauts trained there for the Moon missions.
Wish I could help.
Space mining has a vast potential for limitless resources. There is an estimated 150 million liquid metric tons of Helium_3 on the moon. Many countries are opting for a position there. A ton of liquid helium_3 has an estimated energy potential equivalent to $4 billion of coal. Fusion reactors are reaching beyond mechanical break even these days. Normal hydrogen fusion produces 200 joules of energy and release a neutron to destroy the reactor vessel. He_3 releases 600 joules of energy and atomically bonds in such a way as to keep the neutron. The reactor vessel then receives only infrared and higher energies.
Mining the asteroid belt would yield countless exotic materials. Materials normally buried deep within a planet are available for mining in the asteroid fields with little difficulty compared to planet excavating.
If we are to secure a place in the heavens, we must have an economy to build upon. Dropping a pure chunk of nickel into a landing site, or uranium would be very popular ventures.
Mmmm... yeah. "Little difficulty" 'Cause space flight is so easy and inexpensive. Riiight.
Good luck guys and we shall see you up there.
Takes MONEY to make MONEY! Beats WAR!
Billionaires in space today will lead to plumbers in space tomorrow. Congratulations and good luck to all involved.
I hope I die is space, which as everyone knows is the only way a spirit can inhabit an extraterristial body.
As the first ghost in space I would be harbinger for the countless non-corporeal beings destined to haunt an eternal universe. Admittedly, it's a long shot.
These entrepreneurs must have a client base in mind, or the mining of said minerals might not be so profitable if they all have to be shipped back to the surface of Earth. Perhaps they need to create an eco-industrial park in space where all the companies up there will need the waste from adjacent companies to create their product, creating a cycle of sustainability. This makes the most sense to me. For instance, mining helium, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen to create artificial atmospheres and water might be a good first step because all the competing companies in space will need these materials to sustain life in space, and they will need these materials quickly, and be located nearby to make it very profitable. Also, they could use robots to mine rare-earth elements, then those might be profitable enough to ship back to earth, just don't tell the Chinese about 'em.
No one in the USA can put a human in space, only Russia with 50 year old technology can do it? We got higher with the X15 in the 50's than any of these Billionaires have so far!
Are you under the mistaken impression that things are going to stay that way...?
I have long argued that mining colonies are going to be the true "opening up" of the final frontier. Unfortunately, I also believe that we'll see many of the same things we've seen in the past...horrible conditions, lack of safety protocols in the interest of profit margins, ect. I hope I'm wrong, but humans have nasty tendency to repeat themselves.
However, at least we'll be out there.
You may be right, let's hope it's not like this movie:
http://www.bing.com/movies/search/synopsis?q=Outland+Los+Angeles%2c+CA&id=ff387042-368b-4eff-8293-c0217585f14a&FORM=DTPMVO
It is a good thing. An inevitable thing. A given. Many space ventures will start this way. The debate of historians will be was this a premature excersise in futility or the first step in a new economy, differentiated from all the other eras by one key fact, space travel. Had it not been these guys, it would have been others, surely waiting in the wings are some key china entrepenours, and others around the world!!...America has another feather in it's cap, this is good for us, also good for everyone else, for sure, it may give more creedance to the viability of space ports, at least untill earth implements the asimov interplanetary gravitational equivalence trading rule, one pound off one pound on, no more no less.
It is abhorrent that, on the chessboard at least, this can be viewed more as a blocking move than anything else. If this consortium becomes the monopoly (lets face it, all these men know how to manipulate things into that corner of the board) on space ventures, replete with lobbyists to the tenth degree, pushing regulation keeping people like me and you from blazing our own trails, and hoarding all the bounty, then things will not of changed at all from the seventeenth through the twentthird centuries. Bottom line, imagine wall mart hitting the scene in 1776, geared up with bull dozers and cheap foriegn labor while smiths merchantiles barely eeked it out in a virginia settlement.....I want the ftc to ensure that any of the rest of us have equal access to information on designing our own space ships, all the government data and blueprints should be available to us, and not them as a specific entity. I want the faa to take into consideration special conditions, allowing favarobable launch areas for us little guys, rather than herding us into large spaceports with large fees....I can only imagine how happy mexico would be if I showed up with a working 1701c in the middle of great american space barron age, and promised them the opportunity to found the town of Los Huevos, Mars in exchange for free launches for starfleet in perputuity....I'll stop there because I don't many of you can really comprehend what I am asking for....one thing is for certain, if boing would of been able to stop the wright brothers with special lobbying, they would of. Think about it.
At least America is the only country they can launch from, that at least gives us some degree lead time till the others realize space ports. I say we should not but up barriers to their progress, but at the same time, we should not allow them to create barriers to others progress. It is a free country, on all sides. This game needs more competition, I hope it comes from right here at home. Please vote for people that share such a deep rooted concern for freedom for all, note that leaves almost no repbulicans and few democrats...and surely NOT these billionaires....the very people that will be helped by a deep seated belief in the preamble that set this country upright to begin with. Keep moving forward, backwards is not an option, Kudus to these guys and good luck to their venture....maybe they will be generous some day and help out my venture....If they ever need my help, I am sure they'll be able to find me.
Frank, g...you made a couple of assumpitons about making rockets on the moon....you have no idea that they would chemical rockets...they could be of several varieties you, limited yourself below current possible tech and only wrote from your bias...of all things, you do not even consider the possibilty of collecting and heating lunar gases and what effects that might have on various fuels or lifting methods....as well, you assume that the rockets would look like you favorite saturn five, what if they did not? what if robots made them directly from the regolith with little or no human intervention, let alone presence?...I am at war with the naysayers frank...I blame them specifically for much of todays mess....more people saying something can't be done or won't be done or should not be done becuase of their personal preference, not a grounded knowledge of physics or an understanding of the human power of sheer will. Stop it frank, leading from the rear is not wise, put down your personal views and join us up here at the front, and see all the views, start telling people THEY CAN DO IT!!...Point out the engineering difficulties, and, as an engineer, never, I MEAN NEVER, say it can't. It can, and if we don't some one else will. Thanks.
I agree that there are unlimited technological innovations we can use to build a moon base, but what you said about this being some sort of game... This is NOT a game. This is the survival of the human race we are talking about. We don't need ANY competition. What we need is COOPERATION!
This great. We should be mining asteroids. Very easy to bring them to Earths orbit to be mined.
Most interesting conversation of a difficult subject. So I'll be nice an quote ( the future is always stranger then what we can imagine )........Thanks Ray& Frank