Monday on the Moon

I spent nearly all of yesterday logging tapes about the Apollo XI moon mission.  I hadn't seen anything about the moon landing prior, the only thing that rung a bell was the classic "one small step for man...".   It was definitely interesting to see a new perspective - one from the late 60s, where mankind was taking its first attempts at expanding its influence past our atmosphere.  Plus they had no Internet, which is always weird to think about.

My roommate mentioned how alien life theorists classify sentient-life civilizations, from stage 1 to 4, based on how that civilization harvests energy for its own use.  Stage 1 civs harvest energy from their planet, stage 2, from their solar system, stage 3, from their galaxy, and so on.  The moon landing represents popping the bubble of stage 1, but we might actually be close to making strides in stage 2.

I read an article today about how some of the most capitalized entrepreneurs are investing in Planetary Resources, Inc., a company who aims to begin mining near-earth asteroids in the next couple decades.  It sounds illogical, but these asteroids are the homes of platinum and other platinum-like elements which we use in modern technologies like fuel cells, batteries and electronics. 

These elements are extremely rare on earth, which is part of the reason why these products are so expensive (and a big part of the reason why we don't have hydrogen fuel-cell cars yet, as the amount of these elements needed to produce one of these engines makes the venture not feasible).  However, scientists posit that most of these elements are so rare because they accumulated on the Earth's crust from asteroids-turned-meteorites pelting the surface over time.  And one of these near-earth asteroids is said to contain more platinum than the world as a whole mines in one year.

If Planetary Resources, Inc. goes public at any point, I would invest in it for sure. If anything, I'd want to help support a novel venture into Stage 2.  The article quotes some pretty high potential prices for the loads they could get from some of these asteroids, so I could enjoy some gains from that investment.  I'm thinking if it does work out, the prices won't stay high for very long because we'd simply have access to more of this rare material.