James Cameron Starting An Asteriod Mining Company?

After exploring the Mariana Trench, does James Cameron have his eye on the skies?

No one is really sure what Planetary Resources is quite yet, but all will be revealed during a conference call on April 24th, 2012. What we DO know so far is that it's a company backed by Cameron, a couple of Google executives, and some others, and that it will "create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'" Movies.com alerted us to Cameron's newest venture, and pointed us to The Verge, which speculates that Planetary Resources is actually going to be an asteroid mining company.

If this turns out to be the company's true goal, the potential implications are pretty astounding. No longer will space travel to asteriods be reserved for reviewings of Armageddon, but it will actually be a reality that will supposedly add trillions of dollars to our global GDP. What good will this do, you ask? Peter Diamandis, one of the leaders of the operation, gave a TED talk in 2005, saying he could finance mining a 20 trillion dollar asteroid if he had the chance. More interestingly, he says "everything we hold of value on this planet — metal and minerals and real estate and energy" are available in "infinite quantities."

It's crazy to think about what kind of effects something like this could have on the global economy, but it doesn't surprise me at all that Cameron is at the forefront of this sort of innovation. The guy has been on the cutting edge of exploration for years, and now that he's conquered Earth's deepest point, it's no wonder that he wants to take things to the next level. What do you think about the possibility of mining asteroids...for real?