Voyager - The Interstellar Mission. Mars To Stay. Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled. A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — has announced plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.
Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system. "If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. Private Spaceship Builder Wants to Go to Mars — To Save Humanity. A private spaceflight company is dead serious about taking astronauts to Mars, saying that the very survival of humanity depends on settling other planets.
Space Exploration Technologies — better known as SpaceX — was founded primarily to help humankind establish a lasting presence beyond Earth, according to millionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO and founder. Such expansion is necessary to safeguard our species over the long haul, he added. "Ultimately, the thing that is super-important in the grand scale of history is, are we on a path to becoming a multiplanet species or not? " Musk said during a talk Monday (Aug. 1) at a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in San Diego.