Eric Anderson (Space Adventures), Peter Diamandis (X prize founder), James Cameron (Films) and Larry Page (Google co-founder) amongst others today founded Planetary Resources, a company to mine asteroids.
The plan is to identify suitable targets, head over, grab them, move them to earth orbit (possibly one of the earth/moon lagrange points, and then break them up for parts in orbit. Valuable metals could be returned to earth in re-entry shells made of asteroidal rock, and water ice could be captured and elecrolysed into rocket fuel or air, or simply used as thermal reaction mass.
Alteratively the materials could be used in orbit. The rule of thumb for launch costs is that it costs about $10,000 to get one pound (~400g) to orbit. The plan seems to be to initially bag something in the range of a seven meter diameter asteroid and bring it back. A hypothetical 7 meter diameter spherical asteroid would weigh over 150 metric tons if made of water ice.
Comments
My first impression was a little more Bruce Willis than reality but this sounds awesome! Finally, industry have come up with a way of monetising space.
I speak for my generation when I say: "awesome"
Not in the throw away vernacular of modern times, but the real, root meaning.