THE MARKETS

The future is really here, people. We already got the doors that open doing swooooosh and now we are getting asteroid miners. For real. A group of billionaires and former NASA scientists will announce the first asteroid mining company in history. The group of investors and scientists on board this enterprise is impressive: ...including Google's Larry Page & Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.; film maker & explorer James Cameron; Chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Microsoft's former Chief Software Architect Charles Simonyi, Ph.D.; Founder of Sherpalo and Google Board of Directors founding member K. Ram Shriram; and Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group Ross Perot, Jr. According to Planetary Resources, the name of the company, they "add trillions of dollars to the global GDP" and "help ensure humanity's prosperity." There are no details yet, but if they are going to do it, you can be this is doable. Harnessing the resources of asteroids is not crazy proposition. And you don't have to travel to the asteroid belt to grab them. There are many passing near Earth that may be accessible. In fact, there are already plenty of plans on scientists and engineers' drafting board. Needless to say, and despite the fact that it will probably take some years to achieve their goals, this is all extremely exciting. If they are successful, this could indeed solve many of our material needs. We will be covering the press conference live. It will be held in the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Tuesday, April 24 at 10:30am PDT.