Space  

YouTuber ColdfusTion, looks at how certain billionaires' efforts to continue development of the space industry in a new video.  The piece examines Eric Anderson, Denis Tito,  Richard Branson and Elon Musk.

It is easy to be jealous of the world's billionaires, with their extravagant, luxury-filled lifestyles free of want and worry, but this image does not reflect the drive behind many of them, and their continued effort to push humanity forward.

The United States. hasn’t had manned spaceflight capability since it ended the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

In a new video from YouTuber ColdfusTion, the work of four billionaires continuing the race into space is examined.  The piece looks at Eric Anderson and Denis Tito, but presents more information on Richard Branson and Elon Musk.

Anderson serves as Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company that plans to revolutionize current space exploration and help ensure humanity's prosperity for generations to come.

Planetary Resources' first experimental satellite is presumed destroyed in the explosion of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket earlier this week, says its long-term development schedule won’t be thwarted by the incident.

Branson's Virgin Galactic has moved back the estimated launch dates for suborbital space flights from New Mexico so many times that company executives hesitate to offer new timelines, however Branson’s latest speculation is early 2015.

The company envisions a fleet of five rockets and two motherships, although the number depends on flight demand. To date, Virgin has taken deposits from more than 700 people to reserve seats, which cost $200,000 each.

SpaceX founder, Musk unveiled the commercial space venture’s second-generation space capsule earlier this year. The Dragon V2 space capsule will give NASA the ability to put up to up to seven astronauts into space for roughly $20 million a ride. That’s a fraction of the $71 million charged by Russia to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.

Related articles Fox Plans Billionaire Space Race TV Drama  Planetary Resource's Arkyd Almost Ready For Space Prospecting  The Overview Effect

Other billionaires involved heavily in space are Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace and Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Bigelow created Bigelow Aerospace with the express purpose of revolutionizing space commerce via the development of affordable, reliable, and robust expandable space habitats. Bigelow Aerospace's habitat will be flown to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket in 2015 for testing.

The more secretive Blue Origin, founded by Bezos, is developing technologies to enable human access to space at dramatically lower cost and increased reliability. "This is a long-term effort, which we’re pursuing incrementally, step by step," states the company. Blue Origin is focused on developing reusable launch vehicles utilizing rocket-powered Vertical Take-off and Vertical Landing (VTVL) technology.

SOURCE  ColdfusTion

By 33rd Square

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 Asteroid Mining  

In a recent Google Solve for X talk, Planetary Resources founders, Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson took the opportunity to describe the company's vision and plans.

Planetary Resources is establishing a new paradigm for resource discovery and utilization that will bring the solar system into humanity’s sphere of influence.

Using the technical principals and extensive experience in all phases of robotic space missions, from designing and building, to testing and operating the newly-formed company is working towards its mission of mining asteroids.

In a recent Google Solve for X talk, Planetary Resources founders, Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson took the opportunity to describe the company's vision and plans.

Diamandis showed a demonstration of the tremendous number of near-earth asteroids available to be mined.  As the image below shows, the opportunity is very large.

When describing  the LL Chondrite asteroid, the company projects the value of the platinum available from the space rock between $300 billion to 5.4 trillion US dollars.Tongue-in cheek, Diamandis states that that much platinum on earth would depress the market, so Planetary Resources' financing plan will be "to place put options on the market, announce the mission, finance it and go."

In the eyes of Planetary Resources, the tremendous investment required in asteroid mining is mirrored by the tremendous profits that may come from the endeavor.  Diamandis states that the phases for asteroid mining are the same as they are for mining projects on earth: detect, prospect, claim, mine and deliver.

Anderson wants Planetary Resources to be able to build hundreds and thousands of spacecraft per year to meet the goals of the company.  Anderson further wants to make asteroid mining an information technology, so that the industry can become exponential.

Interestingly, the name of the Arkyd probes that Planetary Resources is building is named after Arkyd Industires, a fictional company from Star Wars that makes the Imperial probe droids.  As asteroid mining is, in fact, the realization of a science fiction concept emerging into reality, this seems wholly appropriate.



SOURCE  Solve for X

By 33rd Square

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 Planetary Resources

Recently, Eric Anderson, co-founder of  Planetary Resources spoke at the NewSpace conference about the promising future of the company and what asteroid mining will mean to the global economy.

Since it was announced in April, Planetary Resources has been busy setting up the operation to mine asteroids in space.

According to the company, there are near-limitless numbers of asteroids and more being discovered every year. More than 1,500 are as easy to reach as the Moon and are in similar orbits as Earth. Asteroids are filled with precious resources, everything from water to platinum. Harnessing valuable minerals from a practically infinite source will provide stability on Earth, increase humanity’s prosperity, and help establish and maintain human presence in space.

The first lunch talk of NewSpace 2012 conference, company co-founder Eric Anderson talks about Planetary Resources and their plans for the future. —

Anderson serves as the CEO of Intentional Software Corporation, where he and his business partner, Dr. Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., have developed the “Intentional Knowledge Workbench” technology whose unique capabilities include drastically reducing the cost of encoding, processing, and utilizing knowledge. The Intentional Knowledge Workbench reduces costs & error incidences, accelerates innovation, and saves time in the development of software applications and other digital work products.

Anderson also serves as Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company that plans to revolutionize current space exploration and help ensure humanity's prosperity for generations to come. Planetary Resources is bringing the natural resources of space within humanity’s economic sphere of influence.

Mr. Anderson is also a co-founder of Planetary Power Inc., a renewable energy company created to help satisfy the ever-increasing energy needs of our world in the 21st century. Planetary Power’s unique technology enables highly-reliable, low-cost access to the Earth’s most plentiful source of energy -- the Sun. As Chairman of Planetary Power, Mr. Anderson hopes to assist in bringing access to affordable, reliable and clean energy to the global population.

Mr. Anderson’s philanthropic efforts are focused on the Planetary Security Foundation, an organization dedicated to informing and educating the public about nuclear weapons, the greatest risk facing humanity’s future, and developing strategies for how that risk can be eliminated.

SOURCE  SpaceVidCast

By 33rd Square

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