Today’s news is about space mining and just how some people think it can be done.
If Deep Space Industries has its way, there’ll be a small robotic lander on a nearby asteroid in just three years. That’s the lastest phase of the California-based asteroid mining company’s plan to bring about an outer space real estate boom by creating a resource supply chain off Earth.
“Our thirty year goal is to build cities in space,” Deep Space Industries CEO Daniel Faber told Gizmodo. “You need a lot of raw materials from asteroids to enable that.”
Deep Space Industries hasn’t chosen a target for its first prospecting mission. “We have a list of targets, but we haven’t picked a specific one yet,” Faber said. “We’d like to send prospectors to a bunch of them.”
Landing on an asteroid also allows Deep Space Industries to lay claim to its resources — sort of. While no company, government, or individual can own a celestial body under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, in principle, companies shouldn’t interfere with each others’ space-based activities, Faber said.
This is all very interesting to us. While we have never thought about adapting our earthmoving equipment to mine up in space, we would love to see what that entails! Until then, we will go about selling our machines to licensed contractors with general contractor’s insurance who have normal earth dirt to move.
*To read the complete story, visit http://gizmodo.com/this-mining-company-plans-to-land-on-an-asteroid-in-thr-1785112235.
