Google billionaires Eric Schmidt and Larry Page have decided to provide funding for an interesting space exploration start-up named Planetary Resources. The new company, which is focused on natural resources and space exploration, plans to mine natural resources from asteroids and add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.
In addition to the Google executives, the startup will also be funded by Microsoft’s former Chief Software Architect Dr. Charles Simonyi, Perot Group Chairman Ross Perot Jr., and Avatar movie director James Cameron. According to a recent press release, the new venture will be formally announced at the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Tuesday morning. The press release also promised to redefine natural resources and create a new industry:
“The company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.
Although the idea of asteroid mining seems closer to Cameron’s popular movie Avatar than reality, this determined group believes that the investment will pay off and that a single asteroid could produce trillions of dollars of natural resources.
Michio Kaku, a physics professor at the City University of New York indicated a belief that entrepreneurs and privatization may be able to accomplish what the government cannot:
“I think private enterprise will boldly go where governments fear to tread. And I think the space program has been in purgatory in the last few years. NASA is an agency to nowhere. So, we need private enterprise, especially people with deep pockets to help jump start the program and maybe mining the heavens is just the ticket.”
Even though Google has invested company money to develop enhanced reality glasses, driverless cars, and the top-secret Google X lab, Page and Schmidt have decided to invest their own money to fund this wild start-up.
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