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http://www.planetaryresources.com/2012/04/asteroid-mining-plans-revealed-by-planetary-resources-inc/

See also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0c9oZh4vTo

On some absolute scale (perhaps the long view), this is huge...

Love it, hope they are wildly successful. This could really be one of the most beneficial steps for human space flight since Apollo.

The doors that have blocked so much in past have been blown open by free thinkers who are not having government
roadblocks get in the their way. This is the future of space travel and I really hope this gets off the ground
sooner then later. Just had my son watch and and his eyes lit up knowing if he puts an effort into it, he could
become a part of the greatest challenge in history.

I am hoping to be an investor .


Bullet

It's about darn time. This kind of big thinking and innovation are what put men on the moon, and the fact that it's privatized and not just government run is also a good thing. Though I'll be curious to see how the FAA changes to fill the role of providing safety and oversight.

Kinda like the TSA, lets hope they keep their collective noses out of it.

Yeah, you're dreaming if you believe that. These guys could potentially drop an asteroid on a city if they screw up. There will most definitely be national and probably international oversight/regulation.

Edit: Just to be clear, that asteroid would explode with megatons of force - basically dropping a nuke wherever it lands.

Exactly what I was getting at, Speedo. Not to mention if there's going to be a manned component, it would be nice to have some kind of oversight for safety inspections, etc.

Something like this will obviously have huge political and economic implications. For example, the article mentions how one 500 meter asteroid with plantinum contains more platinum than has ever been mined in history. If that's the case, I can see the market for many precious metals being flooded and hence, massive price drops.

Then there's the question of sharing the wealth. Will this work similar to oil leases where the national government gets a certain percentage of the proceeds from the sale of these metals? Who or what determines which private companies can go into space and prospect for these asteroids?

This section from the article caught my attention,

"Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space. As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications,” said Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc."

But what if it costs the same amount of money to mine the asteroid as it has cost to mine all the platinum in earth's history?

Get your resumes ready, they are now hiring.

http://www.planetaryresources.com/careers/

I'm thinking when I retire I'll volunteer to work for them for free,
if they have any need of my skills. I really want to see this get moving.

Regarding safety of cargo deliveries, I would say the best bet will be to limit
individual deliveries to a few tons, with a ceiling on package density. That way
failures will vaporize before impact. I'm also a bit sceptical of the idea of
brewing your own H2-O2 fuel/propellant from the asteroid water content. That may not
be at all a dependable supply, at least in the volumes required, and you have the
alternatives of solar sailing and solar powered rail gunning to do a large portion
of the return velocity, without depending on found fuel. Keep the water-fuel for
manoeuvring and braking. I guess that will need more R&D, so they're sticking with
what they know for now, but I am doubtful they'll find the quantities they need.

Regarding market depression, it will take years if not decades to
get the volumes moving to have that impact. I did a bit of checking
http://www.nss.org/settlement/asteroids/RoleOfNearEarthAsteroidsInLongTermPlatinumSupply.pdf
and it seems that terrestrial platinum sources are <1ppm platinum
(but it's so rare and valuable that's worth mining), whereas meteorite
(and thence presumably asteroids) are as much as 68ppm. That's still
a wee tiny amount, and a major amount of processing required, and sorting
out the other heavy metals (which are currently quite valuable, but less
useful, so far more vulnerable to price deflation), most of which will have
to be done here, I would think. I would guess they would be looking at
just a primary in situ processing - a quick cooking to concentrate the
good stuff and boil off the silica - solar powered, and definitely worth
it to get the return shipping weight down.

Anyway, where I'm going with this is that platinum is incredibly useful.
It is almost as inert as gold, has a very high melting point, which two combine
to making it desirable, in fact in some cases necessary, for use as containers
when cooking up high melting point substances. It also has all those well known
catalytic properties. As the price comes down, demand will go up markedly,
which will slow price deflation very quickly.

As to all the rest of those weird lanthanides, I don't know much about them
beyond that they're rare and heavy, but perhaps interest in them will result
in unexpected new uses. (They are rare because they are heavy, which means they
sank to the centre of the earth when it was molten, and we wouldn't have even
as much as we have now if it weren't for the Period of Heavy Bombardment, which
brought in a small amount on asteroids, which retain the primordial elemental
distribution, thus the expectation there'll be lots to find out there.)