Planetary Resources plans to take rocks floating aimlessly in the solar system and turn them into valuable commodities.
That catalogue is a good start, but Planetary Resources plans to go further.
Planetary Resources thinks it can find enough of the stuff in asteroids to offset the massive cost of getting to it.
FORBES: It's Official: Planetary Resources Announces Plans to Mine Asteroids
Tuesday's announcement comes nine months after the unveiling of a similar project by Planetary Resources, a company led by space tourism pioneers Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis.
Planetary Resources plans to use near-earth asteroids as stepping stones to exploring the rest of the solar system by using their water to both support life and propel rockets.
FORBES: It's Official: Planetary Resources Announces Plans to Mine Asteroids
One of the big goals of asteroid mining startup Planetary Resources is the mass production of space telescopes for both its prospecting missions and to sell to customers.
The other firm in the mining race, Planetary Resources, has backing from several billionaire investors, including Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, software executive Charles Simonyi and filmmaker James Cameron.
Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis chatted with us, telling us why the company made the unusual decision to put its first orbital optical telescope up for grabs on Kickstarter.
The company, known as Planetary Resources, is also backed by space tourism pioneer Eric Anderson, X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, Ross Perot Jr, son of the former US presidential candidate, and veteran astronaut Tom Jones.
Despite the early financial support from wealthy investors and the backing of well-known space-exploration researchers, Planetary Resources faces many technical questions and uncertainties about costs and the technology required to extract materials from asteroids.
Now, Planetary Resources has officially unveiled its plans.
FORBES: It's Official: Planetary Resources Announces Plans to Mine Asteroids
Cheap access to space has been "the sort-of Holy Grail" for decades, "and we're not much closer to that than we were 50 years ago, " said Hertzfeld, who is also an adviser to Planetary Resources.
That plus the news of the vastly larger 1012 DA 14 which has just gone sailing past (in a near miss that in astonomical terms is hardly a miss at all) leads to the hope that Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources get going with their idea of mining asteroids pretty sharpish.
FORBES: Meteorites Are The Universe's Way Of Telling Us We Need More Than One Planet To Live On
It will be our smart choices for investments in space technology and strategic collaborations between the public and private sectors that will leverage the value of the Moon and its asteroid-rich resources to safeguard our planetary home for future generations.
FORBES: The Moon is a Natural Platform for Asteroid Mining, Detection and Deflection
Mr. Lewis, whose 1997 book, "Mining the Sky, " helped popularize the idea of extracting natural resources from asteroids, said Planetary's president already owns a small firm that builds spacecraft.
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