Article by Investment U
Planetary Resources, Inc. announced it has very real plans to begin scouring the cosmos for its first mineable asteroid in the next 18 to 24 months.
It was only a month ago Hollywood Director James Cameron emerged from the bottom of the Mariana’s Trench, setting a world-record for the deepest solo dive by any human in history.
Today, he’s already getting involved in another adventure… mining asteroids in outer space. I’m not even kidding.
And he’s not alone…
Along with Cameron, former Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and current CEO Larry Page, as well as Ross Perot Jr. and others, are backing a privately owned company called Planetary Resources, Inc.
And on Wednesday, the company announced it has very real plans to begin scouring the cosmos for its first mineable asteroid in the next 18 to 24 months.
“To Infinity… and Beyond!”
Some Investment U readers may be familiar with Planetary Resources Co-Founder Peter Diamandis. Chief Investment Strategist Alexander Green has mentioned and recommended Diamandis’ book Abundance a handful of times over the past few months.
You can see why in this presentation he made below at the TED 2012 Conference. Diamandis reiterates a message that Alex has conveyed many times over – that the mass media is in the business of scaring you. However, in all reality things are never as bad as they are made to seem:
But getting back to mining asteroids…
For Diamandis, Planetary Resources started off as a childhood dream.
At a news conference at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, he said, “Since my early teenage years, I’ve wanted to be an asteroid miner. I always viewed it as a glamorous vision of where we could go.”
I know a lot of us had some pretty outlandish dreams as kids. But I’d never even heard of an asteroid miner until Diamandis said it.
Perhaps the most incredible thing though, despite there not ever having been an asteroid miner since the beginning of time, Diamandis has never given up on this dream.
He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and his graduate degree in aerospace engineering.
From there he went on to serve as CEO of a number of space related start ups. He even co-founded Space Adventures in 2004, a leading space tourism company. I could go on and on, too, but I think you get the picture.
Today, Diamandis is teamed up with Eric Anderson – considered the first to successfully introduce the idea of space tourism.
And together, the two not only have the know-how to turn his dream into a reality, they’re already masters at raising and making money.
Planetary Resources’ Eight-Year Plan
According to Planetary Resources, there are over 1,500 asteroids that are as easy to get to as the surface of the moon.
And as James Cameron told Voice of America:
“We’re going to be a resource-depleted planet that’s going to be voracious for metals and rare earth minerals and things like that… there’s logic to getting [resources] from asteroids because you don’t have to lift them out of a gravity well – like, mining on Mars doesn’t make sense, mining on the moon makes very little sense, because you have to lift everything out of a gravity well to get it to Earth.”
Looking ahead, by 2020, Planetary Resources expects to have the world’s first gas station fully operational in outer space. And you can bet they’ll want to start mining not too long after that.
We’ll see what happens.
Good Investing,
Mike Kapsch
Article by Investment U
