Going platinum

摘要

Can reality trump art? That was the question hovering over the launch on April 24th, at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, of a plan by a firm called Planetary Resources to mine metals from asteroids and bring them back to Earth. It sounds like the plot of a film by James Cameron-and, appropriately, Mr Cameron is indeed one of the company's backers. The team behind the firm, however, claim they are not joking. The company's founders are Peter Diamandis, instigator of the x Prize, awarded in 2004 to Paul Allen and Burt Rutan for the first private space flight, and Eric Anderson, another of whose companies, Space Adventures, has already shot seven tourists into orbit. Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, respectively the chief executive and the chairman of Google, are also involved. So, too, is Charles Symonyi, the engineer who oversaw the creation of Microsoft's Office software (and who has been into space twice courtesy of Mr Anderson's firm). With a cast-list like that, it is at least polite to take them seriously.