Google pair back plan to lasso asteroids and mine them for precious metals
Seattle-based Planetary Resources company aims to turn science fiction into fact using unmanned rockets and moon baseIt sounds like the start of a science fiction or disaster movie, or both. An enormously rich corporation plans to start "lassoing" asteroids near the Earth, taking them to the moon to be mined and broken up, and returning the most valuable metals – including gold, platinum and rhodium – back to our planet for use in batteries and other products.But this is real: on Tuesday, Planetary Resources, a company based in Seattle with billionaires including former US presidential candidate Ross Perot and Google's Eric Schmidt and Larry Page among its investors, said it plans to mine "near Earth asteroids" within 10 years.The scheme will cost billions of dollars and could take decades to come to fruition, say independent experts – but they also say that it offers an amazing chance for humans to...
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