[autonomous]

Rick Tomlinson, DSI chairman, said: "This is a very interesting and amazing time ... we believe we sit in a sea of resources that is so infinite it is almost impossible to describe."

The company believes materials harvested from asteroids can be used to build complex metal parts for use in space infrastructure and to fuel and equip spacecraft, bringing down the cost of missions to Mars.
From 2015 a fleet of "FireFly" spacecraft, weighing just 55lb each, will whizz into space to explore any passing asteroids for signs of useful materials such as industrial metals, platinum-like metals, water and silicon.
Within a decade Deep Space Industries, the company behind the project, hopes to be able to harvest passing asteroids for metals and other building materials for use in space projects such as building communications platforms and solar power arrays.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9818734/Worlds-first-fleet-of-asteroid-prospecting-spacecraft-launched.html

3D maps of 500,000 asteroids with estimated value:
http://www.asterank.com/3d/

[SeaGypsy]

I smell Ponz.

[Econ101]

This is an amazing but not unexpected announcement. It's a natural and necessary step to move outward and help supply the world. It's going to be expensive to put this infrastructure in place but the future gains are beyond imagination. Public dollars diverted from wind and solar boondoggles would most certainly be better invested in these promising ventures.

[autonomous]

Investors shrug at pie in the sky plans to mine asteroids, moon

Deep Space Industries lacks the deep pockets needed to reach for the stars, and fiscal needs may be a bigger challenge than technical ones.

“It needs serious, deep pockets, execution backing the vision, and far more than PowerPoint designs and pretty pictures to realize this fantastic future of abundance for the human race,” said Bob

And Deep Space Industries won't be alone in the asteroid belt: Planetary Resources Inc. announced a plan last April to mine asteroids too, backed by the bulging wallets of Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot, Jr., James Cameron and others.

"Planetary Resources is definitely a great example of ‘Having a healthy disregard for the impossible,’ ” Page said. The company said it was extraordinarily busy this week, in an announcement described as a “mining update from the factory floor.”

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/26/investors-shrug-at-pie-in-sky-plans-to-mine-asteroids-moon

[SeaGypsy]

Big names don't play Ponzi schemes? Righto then.
Watch how quick these guys pull out when they don't get the small fry.

[autonomous]

The proposed scheme of launching a fleet of tiny exploratory spacecraft probably has little to do with extracting valuable minerals and more to do with property rights or "staking a claim."

Nemitz sued NASA and the U.S. government over his property rights to asteroid433 Eros, a claim he made about 11 months before NASA landed its NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft on the space rock in February 2001. The claim was based in the first tenth of property law, which is ownership before actual possession. Centuries of law, Nemitz said, recognizes that a common law claim to something can be valid prior to possession.

"Everybody knows that possession is nine-tenths of ownership," Nemitz told SPACE.com. "The primary purpose of the lawsuit was to get an official determination from the U.S. government about property rights in space. The secondary goal was to move forward the international conversation about that topic," he told attendees of the School of Mines meeting.

In the coming years, it's reasonable, normal and perfectly sound to make claims in space, Nemitz said. For an asteroid, plant a claim marker on the object, say, with a radio beacon. On the other hand, don’t go to the moon and claim the whole moon, perhaps just a 50,000-acre slice, something that is economically viable in size, he said.

If you do that, eventually a regime of property rights will be invented, will be adopted, and probably grandfathered in within previous claims…because it will be the people that have those claims that will be clamoring to make a regime for property rights," Nemitz said.

http://www.space.com/16515-space-mining-asteroid-legal-issues.html

So as a small investor you can hold title to a piece of an asteroid!

[Econ101]

So what would we be prospecting/mining for? Not iron, nickle, or silica which we have in profusion. Gold? We have enough for plating etc. I'm thinking it must be energy or phosphorus. We will fly home methane and fertilizer from neptune?

If copper, gold etc, one of these metals were avialable in a more pure and easier to use form it may be cheaper to go to the asteroid than to prospect on earth, try and get permits to open new mines, deal with government regulations, pay mineral owners and deal with surface disputes, etc, not to mention fabricating with an inferior raw material.

[Tanada]

For a little light reading peruse the Outer Space Treaty, anyone who launches an object into space or who allows a launch from their territory is subject to the treaty, which includes the provision that everything in space is common. No territorial acquisitions are allowed, no claims of territory are recognized and all facilities are mutually open to inspection under the treaty.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Outer_Spa ... ty_of_1967

[autonomous]

The US has a history of ignoring treaties when it doesn't like what they say.

Eric Anderson, co-founder of Planetary Resources, doesn't see a problem: "Our analysis shows we have an unequivocal right to mine asteroids. Nothing in the Outer Space Treaty prevents that." He doesn't agree that asteroids, especially those in the 50- to 500-meter size range, are "celestial bodies." Meteorites are fallen asteroids, he says, and they are not regarded as celestial bodies.
Some even see the treaty as irrelevant to asteroid mining. "The Outer Space Treaty is a paper tiger with no teeth," says Michael Gold, a lawyer specializing in commercial spaceflight in Washington D.C. "It's unenforceable and any state can pull out of it with a year's notice. I expect mining capability will trump the law in any situation."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428670.200-who-owns-asteroids-or-the-moon.html