Google execs, director Cameron in space venture

[MorningSong]

Now this surely makes the film "Avatar" an agenda "in plain sight", IMO...

SAN FRANCISCO, Apr. 20, 2012 (Reuters) — Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and billionaire co-founder Larry Page have teamed up with "Avatar" director James Cameron and other investors to back an ambitious space exploration and natural resources venture, details of which will be unveiled next week.he fledgling company, called Planetary Resources, will be unveiled at a Tuesday news conference at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, according to a press release issued this week.

Aside from naming some of the company's high-profile backers, the press release disclosed tantalizingly few details, saying only that the company will combine the sectors of "space exploration and natural resources" in a venture that could add "trillions of dollars to the global GDP." The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Planetary Resources will explore the feasibility of mining natural resources from asteroids, a decades-old concept.

"This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources,'" according to the press release.

Planetary Resource was co-founded by Eric Anderson, a former NASA Mars mission manager, and Peter Diamandis, the commercial space entrepreneur behind the X-Prize, a competition that offered $10 million to a group that launched a reusable manned spacecraft. Other notable investors include Charles Simonyi, a former top executive at Microsoft, and K. Ram Shriram, a Google director.

The venture will be the latest foray into the far-flung for Cameron, who dived last month in a mini-submarine to the deepest spot in the Mariana Trench. The plot of his 2009 science fiction blockbuster film, "Avatar," concerned resource mining on alien planets.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre...-google-space/

[ViralSpiral]

Planetary Resources is a company that was founded in 2012 to expand Earth's resource base. As of April 20, 2012, only a list of major investors and advisors is known; a number of the project's backers are notable for their entrepreneurship and interest in space, exploration, and research. Some also have previous involvement in space research. It is speculated that Planetary Resources is "looking for ways to extract raw materials from non-Earth sources," as the means by which it would (as stated in its press release) "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP."There is speculation they are looking into mining asteroids, with one source reporting anonymous verification of that claim.


Type Private
Industry Asteroid mining
Founded (April 24, 2012)
Headquarters Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Key people

• James Cameron (Investor)
• Charles Simonyi (Investor)
• K. Ram Shriram (Investor)
• Ross Perot, Jr (Investor) ??
• Lorne Gershman (Shareholder)
• Gaal Wehliye (Chief Strategist)

Wikipedia source

[noprophet]

Wonder if this is cohesive with the fact that the director of DARPA just "left" for Google.

[divine_moments_of_truth]

This is real interesting but I don't see anything to sinister, just mining meteors. 10 years down the road however...

Max

[bluestflame]

a little contradictory of mr cameron considering the whole film was about the exploitation of another planet for its resources ...

[MorningSong]

Maybe they want to start with Vesta?

Dawn Reveals Secrets of Giant Asteroid Vesta
25 Apr 2012
(Source: NASA/JPL)

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/dis...?News_ID=39563