Yesterday, a group of billionaires, scientists and engineers announced what
could become the most important enterprise in human history since Columbus sailed West: an
asteroid mining company called Planetary Resources. They want to jump start
a completely new industry between the Earth and the Moon, one that will add
trillions of dollars to the world economy and ensure our prosperity for
centuries to come.
Is an amazing and lofty goal. One
that has the potential to change our world forever. One that is risky
and hard, but which they believe can be achieved within a decade. This video
offers a glimpse of how space mining will work.
The tycoons
Planetary Resources is backed by people with deep pockets, like Google's
Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, film maker James Cameron, Microsoft's former Chief
Software Architect Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot, Jr. among others.
The target
There are 9,000 asteroids near Earth. Of those, about 1,500 are within easy
reach using the same or less power than what was used to go to the moon.
The benefits
These asteroids are loaded with two things. Some of have a high content of
water ice, which could be converted into solid oxygen and solid hydrogen to
provide rocket fuel for exploration; in its un-altered form, it could help
support life in space. Harvesting water from asteroids will make space travel
really inexpensive, allowing for an industry to blossom in space.
Other asteroids are rich in rare metals, like platinum or gold. An abundance
of these metals will enable easier acces to
technology that is currently prohibitively expensive.
One small asteroid of, say, 50 meters in diameter could contain billions of
dollars worth of these metals, pure and ready for easy extraction. Likewise, an
icy asteroid of the same size could contain enough water to power the entire
space shuttle program.
The process
First, within two years, the company will send prospectors to
low-earth orbit. Called the Arkyd 100 series, these
machines will be cheap and networked together. They will track near earth
asteroids (NEA) and asses the possibility to reach them and mine them.
Within a decade, they will launch a swarm of prospectors with propulsion
capabilities. They will be the Arkyd 200 and 300
series. These will approach asteroids and analyze their composition.
After identifying the best candidates in terms of distance, speed, physical
stability, and composition, they will launch the actual mining spacecraft.
Some of them may be swarms that will grab asteroids and bring them closer to
Earth for mining. Others will be large containers that will engulf the
asteroids to move them and process them.
The Ultimate Goal
Eventually, Planetary Resources wants to start a new industry in space, one
that may become the main engine of humanity's future. The company believes many
others will follow its business model. The group of investors
believe that the search for resources is the only way for humans to move
forward and, in a few decades, space mining will be considered a normal
industry. They think that this may save Earth from its own destruction, since
we are quickly consuming our resources.
It sounds like science fiction, but the people behind PR are convinced they
can turn fiction into fact. And they are putting up the means to start it. I
want to believe they will be successful. Even while the road will be hard and
they may not succeed, I think others will end their task.
I look at these people and remember Kennedy's words during his famous Rice University
speech:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and
do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies
and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we
are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
One of the greatest things about virtualization is that you can give all your devs the same setup just by copying a VM to their physical machine.
Copying a vm to all of his devs *is* a violation of the MicroSnot EULA. If it was an Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS or the like, it is almost expected.
... and one of my jobs at the last place I worked was to create a VM with all the required software for the devs..
If that vm was a windows machine, you are a software pirate. (at least according to MicroSnot)
"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds