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April 25th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Several scientists not involved in the project said they were simultaneously
thrilled and wary, calling the plan daring, difficult – and very pricey.
They do not see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold
worth nearly $1,600 an ounce. An forthcoming NASA mission to return just 2
ounces (60 grams) of an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1 billion.
But the entrepreneurs behind Planetary Resources Inc. have a track record of
profiting off space ventures. Diamandis and co-founder Eric Anderson and
pioneered the idea of selling rides into space to tourists, and Diamandis’
company offers “weightless” aeroplane flights.
Investors and advisers to the new company include Google CEO Larry Page and
Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and explorer and Cameron, the man behind the
blockbusters “Titanic” and “Avatar.”
Anderson says the group will prove naysayers wrong. “Before we started
launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a
pie-in-the-sky idea,” Anderson said. “We’re in this for decades.
But it’s not a charity. And we’ll make money from the beginning.”
The mining, fuel processing and later refuelling would all be done without
humans, Anderson said.
“It is the stuff of science fiction, but like in so many other areas of
science fiction, it’s possible to begin the process of making them reality,”
said former astronaut Thomas Jones, an adviser to the company.
The target-hunting telescopes would be tubes only a couple of feet (less than
a metre) long, weighing only a few dozen pounds and small enough to be held
in your hand. They should cost less than $10 million, company officials said.
The idea that asteroids could be mined for resources has been around for
years. Asteroids are the leftovers of a failed attempt to form a planet
billions of years ago. Most of the remnants became the asteroid belt between
Mars and Jupiter, but some pieces were pushed out to roam the solar system.
Asteroids are made mostly of rock and metal and range from a couple of dozen
feet (7 meters) wide to nearly 10 miles (16 kilometres) long. The new
venture targets the free-flying asteroids, seeking to extract from them the
rare Earth platinum metals that are used in batteries, electronics and
medical devices, Diamandis said.
Water can be broken down in space to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for
rocket fuel. Water is very expensive to get off the ground so the plan is to
take it from an asteroid to a spot in space where it can be converted into
fuel. From there, it can easily and cheaply be shipped to Earth orbit for
refuelling commercial satellites or spaceships from NASA and other countries.
In the past couple of years, NASA and other space agencies have shifted their
attention from the moon and other planets toward asteroids. Because
asteroids don’t have any substantial gravity, targeting them costs less fuel
and money than going to the moon, Anderson said in a phone interview.
There are probably 1,500 asteroids that pass near Earth that would be good
initial targets. They are at least 160 feet (50 meters) wide, and Anderson
figures 10 per cent of them have water and other valuable minerals.
“A depot within a decade seems incredible. I hope there will be someone
to use it,” said Andrew Cheng at John Hopkins University’s Applied
Physics Lab, who was the chief scientist for a NASA mission to an asteroid a
decade ago. “And I have high hopes that commercial uses of space will
become profitable beyond Earth orbit. Maybe the time has come.”
Diamandis and Anderson would not disclose how much the project will cost
overall. By building and launching quickly, the company hopes to operate
much more cheaply than NASA.
Harvard’s Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center, said getting
drilling equipment into space and operating safely sounds “expensive
and difficult.”
“It would be awfully hard to make money on it,” Spahr said.
Richard Binzel, professor of planetary science at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, said the effort “may be many decades ahead of its time.
But you have to start somewhere.”
Source: AP
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