{"id":19747,"date":"2012-04-19T18:12:13","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T10:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/mining-a-20-trillion-asteroid-new-clues-emerge-about-space-robot-startup\/"},"modified":"2012-04-19T18:12:13","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T10:12:13","slug":"mining-a-20-trillion-asteroid-new-clues-emerge-about-space-robot-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/mining-a-20-trillion-asteroid-new-clues-emerge-about-space-robot-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"Mining a $20 trillion asteroid? New clues emerge about space robot startup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"620\" height=\"465\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sUOBLX55h4s\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve been digging up details this week about a Seattle-area startup&nbsp;that is&nbsp;developing robots to explore space, led by the former flight director for NASA\u2019s Mars Rover missions, along with some of the biggest names in commercial spaceflight, and backed by investors and advisers&nbsp;including Google\u2019s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, along with filmmaker James Cameron.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-36594\" title=\"asteroidl\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/asteroidl.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/asteroidl.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/asteroidl-200x159.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">What exactly is this venture going to do? We won\u2019t know for sure until Tuesday, when the company will hold a news conference to unveil its plans.<\/p>\n<p>But for some big clues, check out the video video of a 2005 TED talk by Peter Diamandis, the X Prize Foundation leader, who is listed in Washington state records as chairman of Planetary Resources Inc., the startup behind the space robot venture. The Verge&nbsp;pointed to the video&nbsp;today, after the MIT Technology Review said it sounded like the company would be mining asteroids.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the key excerpts from the 2005 talk by Diamandis \u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I think it is a moral imperative that we open the space frontier. It\u2019s the first time that we\u2019re going to have a chance to have planetary&nbsp;redundancy \u2014 a chance to, if you would, back up the biosphere.<\/p>\n<p>If you think about space, everything we hold of value on this planet \u2014 metals and minerals and real estate and energy \u2014 is in infinite quantities in space.&nbsp;In fact, the Earth is a crumb in a supermarket filled with resources. \u2026<\/p>\n<p>We have these huge rocks, killer sized rocks in the hundreds of thousands or millions out there. \u2026 If you think about these other asteroids, there\u2019s a class of them, nickel-iron, which in platinum group metal markets alone are worth something like $20 trillion if you can go out and grab one of these rocks.<\/p>\n<p>My plan is to actually buy puts on the precious metal market and then actually claim that I\u2019m going to go out and get one, and then that will fund the actual mission, to go out and get one.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u2019s very much in line with the invitation for next week\u2019s news conference, which says the new company&nbsp;\u201cwill overlay two critical sectors \u2013 space exploration and natural resources \u2013 to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.\u201d It adds, \u201cThis innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of \u2018natural resources\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The mission of the venture, the invite says, is \u201cto&nbsp;help ensure humanity\u2019s prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stay tuned for more details as they unfold, and we\u2019ll be attending the news conference next week at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve been digging up details this week about a Seattle-area startup&nbsp;that is&nbsp;developing robots to explore space, led by the former flight director for NASA\u2019s Mars Rover missions, along with some of the biggest names in commercial spaceflight, and backed by investors and advisers&nbsp;including Google\u2019s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, along with filmmaker James Cameron. What [&hellip;]<\/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":[4820,21],"class_list":["post-19747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-planetary-resources","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19747"}],"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=19747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}