Although it sounds like a theme for a science fiction movie, a group of billionaires and former NASA employees have announced the foundation of the first asteroid mining company. They claim to add trillions of dollars to the worlds GDP and to help ensure that the human race will survive.
This new venture could change space travel forever. One of the reasons that space exploration has come to a grinding halt is the huge cost that is associated with leaving the grasps of Earths gravity. You need to be traveling at a whopping 25,000 miles per hour (or 7 miles a second) to escape the clutches of our big blue marble. How do you get moving to that speed? Fuel. Rocket fuel to be exact. It takes about $10,000 USD to get a pound of anything into space.
How does mining asteroids reduce the cost of space travel you ask? Not only can the metals extracted from near earth asteroids be smelted and processed in space, but asteroids contain a surprising amount of frozen water. If the ice where to be melted and shipped off to a fueling station that is in orbit around the earth. This water can not only be used to sustain life on long missions but could even be converted into rocket fuel!
All in all, this sounds like an amazing venture and I for one can't wait to see where this company is going to take us!
For more information head over to their website.
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