By now just about everyone is aware of the potential threat posed by Near Earth approaching Asteroids. But, compared to human life-spans, large impact events are relatively few and far between. And on much shorter timescales, these same objects could provide the raw materials to drive intriguing new industries to benefit people on Earth. At least, that’s the value proposition of the new venture known as Planetary Resources Inc. To Peter Diamandis byte: “Valuable Resources on Asteroids” VO-1 VO-2 Despite the name, Planetary Resources’ primary intention is NOT to mine asteroids and bring their precious materials back to Earth – though that’s not completely out of the question – but rather the main goal is to give Humanity many of the substances and much of the energy sources to settle the Inner Solar System: To Tom Jones byte “Space Settlement” VO-3 Beyond helping to find and plot the paths of Near Earth Objects that could threaten civilization, Planetary Resources intends to soon make good use of a few of them. At first, to fuel spacecraft; a dramatic cost savings over lugging an equivalent mass of fuel up out of the deep “gravity well” of Earth: To Eric Andersen byte: “Using the Resources of Space to Explore Space” VO-4 You might call this venture the microprocessor revolution of space development; a dramatic reduction in the size of a space program needed to achieve an important result. And that’s exactly what the founders of Planetary Resources hope to achieve: To Peter Diamandis: “Planetary Resources mission is to gain access to the natural resources of space…… {through}… small teams are now able to do what only governments and large corporation could do before.” VO-5 This is likely to be a long and fascinating effort. Stay with us at SPACE.com for full coverage of what may become one of the most important business and human stories of this young century. I’m Dave Brody