Peter Diamandis of the Xprize gets big billionaire backing for asteroid mining

Back in Feb, 2012, Peter Diamandis was talking about asteroid mining. In about 5 days, he and his co-founders will make an announcement where he has the financial backing of several billionaires.

UPDATE – The Near Earth Asteroids have thousands of trillions in metals. One asteroid Amun has over thirty times all of the metal that has ever be mined in human history

Join visionary Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.; leading commercial space entrepreneur Eric Anderson; former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki; and planetary scientist & veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, Ph.D. on Tuesday, April 24 at 10:30 a.m. PDT in Seattle, or via webcast, as they unveil a new space venture with a mission to help ensure humanity’s prosperity.

Supported by an impressive investor and advisor group, including Google’s Larry Page & Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.; film maker & explorer James Cameron; Chairman of Intentional Software Corporation and Microsoft’s former Chief Software Architect Charles Simonyi, Ph.D.; Founder of Sherpalo and Google Board of Directors founding member K. Ram Shriram; and Chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Group Ross Perot, Jr., the company will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. This innovative start-up will create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources’.

Peter Diamandis created the Xprize and it appears he gained the support of many of his Xprize board of trustees for his asteroid mining venture.

The X Prize Foundation is a ­mini-industry, with 50 employees. It is ­holding competitions in education, global development, energy and the ­environment, life sciences and space and undersea exploration (see box, p. 76). Its board of trustees crackles with ­celebrities: director James Cameron; Huffington Post cofounder Arianna Huffington; inventors Dean Kamen and Kurzweil; Craig Venter, the entrepreneur and biologist who raced the U.S. government to decode the human genome; Indian billionaire Ratan Tata, who ­presides over the world’s fifth-largest steel empire; Larry Page; Tesla Auto’s Elon Musk.

The website should have information starting on April 24, 2012

Ross Perot Junior is the only son of Ross Perot (who ran for president). Ross Perot Junior has a net worth of about $1.5 billion.

Google’s Larry Page is worth about $19 billion.
Google’s Eric Schmidt is worth about $7 billion.
K. Ram Shriram has a net worth of about $1.6 billion.
James Cameron has a net worth of about $700 million.
Charles Simonyi has a net worth of about $1 billion.

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