Dig gold from meteors

A crowd of robotic miners will be taken to space to explore and exploit platinum, gold, iron, nickel, sulfur . in meteorites not far from Earth.

>>>The meteorite mining company was born

That scenario was unveiled by an American company, supported by renowned director David Cameroon and leading managers of Google and Microsoft. Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis said on April 24 that he wants to "turn spatial resources into what is available to humanity" , and add trillions of dollars to global assets. In addition to minerals, robots can exploit water on meteorites, which are thought to play a key role in making jet fuel for deeper exploration into space.

The first step will be to bring a telescope into space within the next 18-24 months to determine which minerals can be mined. Acknowledging this project is extremely difficult, Mr. Diamandis tried to bring together a team of well-known investors: Google founders - Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Titanic Cameroon filmmaker, former Director Microsoft - Charles Simonyi, son of former US presidential candidate Ross Perot.

This is not the first time people dream of exploiting extraterrestrial resources. Soviet rocket specialist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who looked at the idea in a book about space exploration, or moon film producers in 2009 imagined such a future. The US Air and Space Administration (NASA) has even studied the feasibility of "capturing" a small meteorite, despite concerns that such technology could be "weaponized." Scientists at the Keck Space Research Institute in California (USA) assessed that pulling a larger meteorite to the moon's orbit to harvest is feasible, but requires a cost of $ 2.7 billion. Former NASA astronaut Tom Jones, Planetary Resources adviser, said the company is trying to build 'a low-cost spacecraft capable of constantly flying to near-earth meteorites'.

A 500-meter-wide platinum meteorite has reserves comparable to the whole platinum mined in the history of the earth. More than 1,500 of the nearly 9,000 near-earth meteorites in the form can reach the moon, considering the amount of energy needed to make the journey.'Our mission is not only to expand the resource base of the world, but also to increase the access and understanding of people to the solar system and the earth, by creating useful systems and cheap , ' AFP quoted Planet Resources chief engineer Chris Lewicki as saying.

However, expert Jeff Kargel of the University of Arizona (USA) warns that the project is interesting but 'too difficult' . According to him, the first step - launching a space telescope - is easy, but mining and bringing minerals to the earth will be a big challenge. However, if done, it will bring long-term benefits and can completely change the global economy.