So, today, the “internet was blowing up” with the news regarding a $20,000,000 investment in the asteroid mining company, KARMAN+ who have “raised $20 million in seed funding led by Plural and Hummingbird. The funding, which included participation from HCVC, Kevin Mahaffey (Lookout), co-founder Teun van den Dries and angel investors, will be used to develop its first technology demonstration mission and customer missions, expected in 2027.”
Aside from being a different company, why is this such a big deal? LAST month, AstroForge made a similar announcement, which I wrote about here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2025/01/mining-asteroids-part-27-future-marches.html
Then there’s Open Asteroid Impact, whose plan is to send robots into space to mine the asteroids: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2024/04/mining-asteroids-part-21-startling.html
While this still smacks of Science Fiction. The generally recognized SF story detailing asteroid mining was “The first mention of asteroid mining in science fiction apparently came in Garrett P. Serviss' story Edison's Conquest of Mars, published in the New York Evening Journal in 1898. Several science-fiction video games include asteroid mining.”
Needless to say, this came out around the same time as the the works of Jules Verne started to appear.
“So what?” you say.
Well, Jules Verne might not have gotten a lot of the DETAILS spot on – FROM EARTH TO THE MOON; TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA; AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS; JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH…and others (though he DID hit one or two of the nails on the head in PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.) However, Humans have landed on the Moon, dived 20,000 leagues under the sea; easily gone around the world in eighty days; though the whole “journey to the center of the Earth” thing doesn’t really work out as the planet isn’t hollow…
What’s to stop this 21st Century version of Humanity from seriously mining the asteroids? Hmmm?
Today’s Source: (Multiple reports!) https://techfundingnews.com/karman-plus-asteroid-mining-technology-funding/ ; https://www.karmanplus.com/techcrunch-karman-digs-up-20m-to-build-an-asteroid-mining-autonomous-spacecraft/; https://spaceinsider.tech/2025/02/21/karman-raises-20-million-to-mine-asteroids-to-supply-the-space-economy/; https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/asteroid-mining-startup-raises-20m-usd ; https://www.finsmes.com/2025/02/karman-raises-20m-in-seed-funding.html ; https://payloadspace.com/karman-raises-20m-for-asteroid-mining-demo/
Foundational Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)
Noted Resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission
Interesting Stuff The Might Apply To Mining Asteroids: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgej7gzg8l0o
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