Planetary Resources Kickstarter Meets Its Initial Goal

From the same page:

"New demand has recently strained supply, and there is growing concern that the world may soon face a shortage of the rare earths.[19] In several years from 2009 worldwide demand for rare earth elements is expected to exceed supply by 40,000 tonnes annually unless major new sources are developed. "

"As a result of the increased demand and tightening restrictions on exports of the metals from China, some countries are stockpiling rare earth resources."

Also, I did not say that there aren't many of them. I said there are considerable difficulties in mining them. Which is probably the main reason why China is the supplier no.1 . There is a lot of stuff dispersed amongst the oceans, too, it is just unfeasible to extract it (yet).

There is nothing wrong with pursuing asteroid mining, just like there isn't anything wrong with trying to come up with new technologies to extract rare earths better, or make collection from elements in the ocean more practical. I firmly oppose this view that just because X does not either immediately yield any gains or has no 100% guarantee of suceeding it is pointless. If you think the invested money could be used elsewhere better, why not yank money off yet another weapons development project, which cost orders of magnitude more than three asteroid mining programs?

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/0Ke-zrPU3Ss/story01.htm

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