Krpton Radio Newswire A smegged Editorial by Senior Editor, PK
Smoke’em a Kipper, They’ll Be Back For Breakfast!
I’ve been extremely busy lately, laying shipwrecked and comatose with goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes. I awoke to a fully stocked mango juice bar, and the news that James Cameron and others were going to be launching an asteroid mining company. My first thought was “smeg, which one is going to be Rimmer?”. Although on a more serious note, this is a very important time in human history, people seen as pioneers in important industries are joining forces to help humanity explore space and possibly bring millions of new jobs to a struggling world economy.
I’m sure many of us had thought it would be faceless monolithic corporations who would be launching the space race; looking for those precious materials we’re having trouble getting enough of on our own planet. And as many others have pointed out, the incredible irony of James Cameron, the man who made a film about humans being the ultimate space bastards and trying to conquer an inhabited planet for its resources, would be part of this.
Planetary Resources Inc., is the flagship company under which Cameron with known partners Peter Diamandis, Google members Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Ram Shriram; Charles Simonyi a former Microsoft Exec, and Ross Perot Jr., will be operating. I personally think they should have gone with Jupiter Mining Corporation, but their loss. Admittedly other media outlets have already done some extensive coverage on this already, and the more important details which haven’t been released yet will be disclosed at a major press conference on April 24th.
Many scientists have been quick to point out that while the initial goals of Cameron and his space buddies are laudable, the shear technical challenge of building a mining ship (or whatever apparatus they’re intending to use) and taking on the hazards of space exploration of the kind that Planetary Resources hopes to achieve will cost billions, if not trillions up front just to get off the ground. Not to mention that while the company is hoping to bring trillions of dollars in revenue to our planet’s economy, this venture could take anywhere from 10-20 years to fully develop.
However like any huge business venture, the “experts” who are usually on the outside looking in with little details will speculate wildly about what they think will happen. So for now, I think we should all just lean back and wait for the details to come out on their own. For all we know, Cameron and friends may have much more planned out already than we know about. Out of all this, something more important has come to my mind, the fact that the ones leading this quest to finally get us into continued space exploration, are like us.
They’re the dreamers, the nerds, the geeks, the ones like us who are obsessed with making that sci-fi dream of yesterday become the reality of tomorrow. I’ll always be realistic in my expectations of what these people can do, but I’m not going to let that stop me from dreaming about what they could actually make happen. And while I’m like some, and kind of wishing that the next major space venture would be launching a real life Enterprise, or Star Wars type craft, something that might end up like Red Dwarf is all that much sweeter to my twisted sense of humor.
Stay tuned to SCIFI.radio, as we’ll be updating you with more details as they become available!
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Links:
- Planetary Resources, Inc.
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