People who the dramatic footage of a Meteor crashes in Central Russia Urals DA14, an asteroid, now flying from Earth have seen may be a little uncomfortable at the thought, 2012. This does not include Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson.
The two men are the co-founder and co-Chair of the Seattle-based firm of planetary resources, Inc., and for them, an asteroid is not the stuff of the modern disaster films. Rather represent the next stage of the extraction of valuable resources.
Water and metals consist of asteroids, and each time, when it comes from the Earth, is outside the opportunity to preserve their resources. The aim of the company is the development of spacecraft and to analyze asteroids by me.
Sounds maybe like a futuristic fantasy, but it is not. The company already has the support of such heavyweights as Larry page and Eric Schmidt of Google and "Avatar" Director James Cameron and according to Diamandis, the first mission will take place in 20 months.
The prospecting and mining of asteroids rely on the use of the company's extremely light Arkyd series spaceships, which Diamandis, referred to as "the Smartphones of spacecraft." He said that they orbit of the Earth continue to recognize and analyze asteroids that come near enough. You will then be with asteroids with the correct properties dock extract the desired materials and return to Earth.
"Our core business on these asteroids as a resource for the benefit of mankind, with three main selling points, looking," he said. "The first is many of these asteroids are rich in water, and water is precious for hydrogen and oxygen, which is rocket fuel." "Has a 75-meter asteroid, when it suddenly rich enough water on board to all 135 space shuttle missions fuel."
The second category is platinum group metal-rich asteroids. He said "a single 500-meter LL Chondrite more Platinum than has been mined in the history of mankind,". "Our goal is to asteroids, correspond to its orbit, brochure with cameras and imaging systems, to identify clearly what they are made, and determine the percentage of Palladium, Platinum and gold to go."
The third category is the asteroid with the potential to hit the Earth. "Of the millions of asteroids out there orbiting the Sun, some small percentage actually comes close to the Earth," he said. "A thousand or so are about a kilometer in size, the size, which killed the dinosaurs." If you develop asteroid mining capability, can change their trajectory and to divert these asteroids almost for free. It is a side effect."
Diamandis said that this ability very close to reality. "We have contracts with [Defense Advanced research projects Agency] DARPA and NASA, and we develop highly autonomous systems," he said. "We fly hundreds of spacecraft this decade, and we do, prospecting in about five years."
Time will tell whether planetary resources lands of humanity from extinction-level event store or to increase mine just enough precious metals to the gross domestic product of the country.
Monday, March 4
There are gold (and Platinum) in them thar asteroids
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