Planetary Resources has raised $21 million
The competition heats up: Planetary Resources, the company that claims its goal is to mine asteroids, has raised $21 million to build and launch an Earth resources satellite.
They plan to create a 10-satellite constellation to provide this data commercially.
While everything this company is doing will eventually make asteroid mining easier and more effective, nothing they are doing now has anything to do with mining asteroids. Their first project was to build a prototype orbiting telescope to look for asteroids. This second project will sell data about the Earth.
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The competition heats up: Planetary Resources, the company that claims its goal is to mine asteroids, has raised $21 million to build and launch an Earth resources satellite.
They plan to create a 10-satellite constellation to provide this data commercially.
While everything this company is doing will eventually make asteroid mining easier and more effective, nothing they are doing now has anything to do with mining asteroids. Their first project was to build a prototype orbiting telescope to look for asteroids. This second project will sell data about the Earth.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Mr. Zimmerman wrote: “While everything this company is doing will eventually make asteroid mining easier and more effective, nothing they are doing now has anything to do with mining asteroids.”
Strangely, attacking the goal from the flank seems to be the way to go, right now, in order to fund long range plans in commercial space.
Elon Musk made his money with internet innovation, which paid for starting a commercial space company — which is providing launch services in order to pay for the goal of a future manned colonization of Mars.
Bigelow made his money in real estate and now has a company that is likely to provide us with many of our future space-based research laboratories.
Planetary Resources is doing a similar end-around. It is financing its goal to mine asteroids with more immediate commercial sales: information.
On a Mars-related note, and at the risk of changing discussion on this page away from Planetary Resources:
It seems that SpaceX is planning on using supersonic retropropulsion with its Dragon flight to mars, in a couple of years, and will attempt to put Dragon on the surface of Mars.
http://www.spacenewsmag.com/feature/why-nasa-is-hitching-a-ride-on-red-dragon/
“But what’s in it for NASA? The answer might be summed up in two words: supersonic retropropulsion, a landing technology that the agency increasingly sees as critical to its own Mars goals.”
As you may recall, in a previous post Matt pointed us to a SETI talk on landing Red Dragon on Mars, and the speaker talked about supersonic retropropulsion. It looks like SpaceX is planning to do this with their upcoming unmanned Mars expedition and NASA wants to hitch a ride with some experiments.
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/dragon-to-go-to-mars-in-2018/#comment-883097
It seems that this is part of the payoff for NASA in getting information from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reentry and landing experiments.
“NASA has since gotten some data on supersonic retropropulsion, thanks to SpaceX. NASA monitored several Falcon 9 first stage landing attempts, as the stage’s initial reentry burn takes place in conditions similar to the Martian atmosphere. … Red Dragon will allow a full-up test of supersonic retropropulsion on Mars. [Mars program engineering manager at NASA’s JPL Rob] Manning said NASA hopes to get more information on just how effective that approach is, and uncover any interactions between the spacecraft and atmosphere that can’t be studied in terrestrial tests.”