![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/planetaryresources.jpg\" "\\"planetaryresources\\"")
More details emerged today about Planetary Resources, and the Bellevue-based startup\u2019s plans are sounding more and more like something out of a science fiction novel.<\/p>\nMore details emerged today about Planetary Resources, and the Bellevue-based startup\u2019s plans are sounding more and more like something out of a science fiction novel.<\/p>\n
One idea the company is considering: Bringing an asteroid into orbit near Earth to allow robots to mine it for precious metals, according to a New York Times article today that quotes Eric Anderson, one of the company\u2019s co-founders.<\/p>\n
Anderson calls near-Earth asteroids \u201cthe stepping stones to the rest of the solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company plans to start by launching a telescope into space to find nearby asteroids, according to the Times article, which notes that large-scale mining could still be decades away.<\/p>\n
As crazy as the whole thing sounds, it\u2019s hard to dismiss out of hand, given the people behind it.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s president and chief engineer is Chris Lewicki, the former flight director for NASA\u2019s Mars Rover missions. Anderson is the co-founder of space tourism startup Space Adventures. Also involved with the company is Peter Diamandis, best known as the creator of the X Prize Foundation.<\/p>\n
If that wasn\u2019t enough, the startup is backed by investors and advisers including Google\u2019s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, along with filmmaker James Cameron.<\/p>\n
According to the NYT piece, the company has about 25 engineers and is already making money through development contracts for the technologies involved in the project.<\/p>\n
Planetary Resources will officially unveil its plans Tuesday at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight, and GeekWire will be there. Check back for coverage in the morning.<\/p>\n
An invite for the event said the company \u201cwill overlay two critical sectors \u2014 space exploration and natural resources \u2014 to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More details emerged today about Planetary Resources, and the Bellevue-based startup\u2019s plans are sounding more and more like something out of a science fiction novel. One idea the company is considering: Bringing an asteroid into orbit near Earth to allow robots to mine it for precious metals, according to a New York Times article today […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[190,4820,4974,21],"class_list":["post-19744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nasa","tag-planetary-resources","tag-robots","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}