Deep Space Company plans to start surveying in 2015 with 'firefly'

If this belongs in the breaking new forum, by all means transfer it there.

I just came across this article that left me scratching my head.

SEEMINGLY not content to dig up our planet for its mineral resources, start-up company will start mining near-earth asteroids for its rock riches by 2015. Deep Space Industries - launched yesterday - announced its plans to fly a small 25kg spacecraft called "Firefly" to an as-yet unidentified asteroid by 2015. The spacecraft - which is said to be roughly the same size as a laptop - will begin to harvest metals and water within the decade, the company said.

See full story here .
Deep Space asteroid mining on the cards

Now the reason why I'm scratching my head is ..........
That they can use off the components to part up something simple and workable on a shoe string budget, I'm sure most of these guys have been plucked from NASA, Boeing, Lockheed and others, maybe same salaries and such.
It just astounds me why can't NASA do this ? Because of the risk of having their budgets slashed again ? By not letting the bigger boys take the large portion of the tax payer cake ?

Maybe where looking at the next weyland corporation in the making with Deep Space.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

already posted link above.

Originally posted by crackerjack
If this belongs in the breaking new forum, by all means transfer it there.

I just came across this article that left me scratching my head.

SEEMINGLY not content to dig up our planet for its mineral resources, start-up company will start mining near-earth asteroids for its rock riches by 2015. Deep Space Industries - launched yesterday - announced its plans to fly a small 25kg spacecraft called "Firefly" to an as-yet unidentified asteroid by 2015. The spacecraft - which is said to be roughly the same size as a laptop - will begin to harvest metals and water within the decade, the company said.

See full story here .
Deep Space asteroid mining on the cards

Now the reason why I'm scratching my head is ..........
That they can use off the components to part up something simple and workable on a shoe string budget, I'm sure most of these guys have been plucked from NASA, Boeing, Lockheed and others, maybe same salaries and such.
It just astounds me why can't NASA do this ? Because of the risk of having their budgets slashed again ? By not letting the bigger boys take the large portion of the tax payer cake ?

Maybe where looking at the next weyland corporation in the making with Deep Space.

edit on 24-1-2013 by crackerjack because: (no reason given)

I broached this too, private Vs government space exploration

I'm of the opinion NASA is uncompetitive.