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Space travel sadly turned out to be something of a passing fad -- we got all worked up about the moon landing and then quickly figured out there wasn't anything there.
Let's face it: The reason America isn't full of people screaming for a manned trip to the stars is that space just doesn't seem to have anything useful. Well, if Google billionaires Larry Page and Eric Schmidt have their say (and they usually do), we're about to start plundering the living hell out of our solar system's vast trove of riches
The dynamic duo, who collectively are worth about $33 billion, teamed up with filmmaker James Cameron and X-Prize founder (and possible Watchmen villain) Peter Diamandis to fund "a venture to survey and eventually extract" valuable minerals from asteroids that pass near the Earth.
No strangers to thinking big (Page has been a driving force behind Google Glass , and Schmidt has been helping to launch Kenya, Africa, as a tech center similar to Silicon Valley), mining asteroids is just the latest in a string of interesting innovations. Why mine precious metals? It's because precious metals are used in just about every technology we enjoy, and are also important accessories to even low-level hip-hop artists.
Comets and meteors are full of these metals, as well as water, but the last time one of these space-banks paid us a visit, it added only a little bit of gold and water, and subtracted a whole lot of dinosaurs.
While no one attached to the project volunteered how much was invested, consider that they're ready to do this damn thing way sooner than NASA is. Led by Diamandis' organization, Planetary Resources, they're not only competing with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, they're beating them to the asteroids (although to NASA's credit, they did smash the ever-loving crap out of one with an aimed projectile).
Their plan is to use robots for all the mining. A good idea, although imagine how much action one would get if "asteroid miner" was a human job. Most interesting of all, this project is well along in development . It met its fundraising goal this summer and will kick off in late 2013 or early 2014, when Planetary Resources plans to launch a few Verne Troyer-size telescopes into orbit.
These satellites will survey our immediate cosmic surroundings and catalog different pieces of space rock based on potential value. The probes will ascertain the components of asteroid belt objects so we can target the most metallurgically potent specimens.
Water is equally important, as it can be turned into jet fuel upon separation of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Once extracted, this water can then be used to power other crafts, as they would be able to refuel at what would be the first ever gas station in space
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