Breaking: Private company does indeed plan to mine asteroids... and I think they can do it

Planetary Resources, Inc. is not your average startup: its mission is to investigate and eventually mine asteroids in space! Last week, the company issued a somewhat cryptic announcement saying they "will overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP". I predicted this meant they wanted to mine asteroids, and yes, I will toot my own horn: I was right. They're holding a press conference Tuesday morning to officially announce they're going asteroid hunting. The company had a pretty fierce amount of credibility right off the bat, with several ex-NASA engineers, an astronaut, and planetary scientists involved, as well as the backing of not one but several billionaires, including a few from Google... not to mention James Cameron. The co-founders of Planetary Resources are Peter Diamandis -- he created the highly-successful X-Prize Foundation, to give cash awards to incremental accomplishments that will help achieve technological breakthroughs, including those for space travel -- and Eric Anderson, X-Prize board member and Chairman of the Board of the Space Spaceflight Federation. These are very, very heavy hitters. Clearly, they're not screwing around. So what's the deal?