America’s Rocket Man leads a new gold rush into space

Since childhood, Peter Diamandis had wanted to become a space miner. But could mining asteroids be profitable - or even possible?

"Since my childhood I've wanted to do one thing, be an asteroid miner," Peter Diamandis recently told Forbes. "So stay tuned on that one." This week, Diamandis and fellow space entrepreneur Eric Anderson pushed the launch button on the idea announcing a new company, Planetary Resources Inc, which plans to send robots to space to mine asteroids for precious metals.

At first sight, it seems a "quixotic quest" more redolent of sci-fi comics and Hollywood than real life, says The Wall Street Journal. But scientists have been mulling ways of mining "near-earth" asteroids for years. The process, while extraordinarily expensive, is thought to be technically achievable (see below). What's more, the duo have no shortage of cash behind them: backers include Google founders Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, film director James Cameron and a brace of Nasa scientist-astronauts.

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