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Where do you want to explore?What do you want to develop? |
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| SpaceDev SpaceDev, Inc. is a public corporation (OTC trading symbol: SPDV) engaged in near-term commercial space exploration, and the long-term development of space. SpaceDev's first in a series of space exploration ventures is its Near Earth Asteroid Prospector (NEAP), the first private spacecraft to leave earth orbit and the first to visit and land upon another planetary body. Space
Development
Institute |
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| Dr. Jeff Kargel |
"SpaceDev promises to launch the world's premier
commercial space resource
exploration mission in a search for that vital commodity, water. If they are
successful, I don't harbor a single doubt that SpaceDev will be written into the
history books alongside such names as the Virginia Company of London and Hudson's
Bay Trading Company. Following the trail blazed by SpaceDev's Near Earth Asteroid
Prospector will be the asteroid platinum miners and the planetary colonists, who
may leave the bonds of Earth on the fuel produced by SpaceDev from the water found
by NEAP." "It is the place of a forward-looking nation to challenge the frontier, as America so often has, and the place of a forward-looking Capitalist nation to make a buck doing so. But far more than a company or a nation will ride with NEAP-- it is the fate of Mankind." |
| Dr. John Lewis |
"We have recently become aware that Earth is embedded
in a great swarm of
comets
and asteroids, which ceaselessly cross and re-cross Earth's orbit about the Sun.
Some are made of
natural
stainless steel, others are extinct comets, rich in water ice and hydrocarbons:
some
are strong, and some are weak. But all those that threaten Earth are accessible,
both for purposes
of self-defense and for economic exploitation, using existing space technology,
such as that used in the SpaceDev Near Earth Asteroid Prospector. The stick that
threatens us with global annihilation is also a carrot of unprecedented proportions." "The smallest known Earth-crossing iron asteroid, Amun, contains trillions of dollars worth of precious and strategic metals. Others contain enough potential rocket propellants to fuel an ambitious program of Solar System exploration for millions of years to come. With NEAP, for the first time in human history, we have the means to explore these bodies, determine their physical and chemical properties, and visit them. NEAP signals the beginning of a development of greater long-term significance for mankind than the European discovery and exploration of the Americas. We are on the threshold of controlling resources vast enough to support, not billions, but quadrillions, of people: a million Earths of resources and room. NEAP is pioneering the way to open the Infinite Frontier for the benefit of all humankind." |
| Tasha O'Neill | "NEAP is a project with a wide range of appeals to
the student, scientist,
engineer and entrepreneur alike. It is a bold endeavor that not only reaps
resources from space and generates wealth for Earth, but also supplies raw
materials for space manufacturing and creating space colonies." "Konstantin Tsiolkowski identified the asteroids as the ultimate great resource of materials in space. Jim Benson and his team of scientists are in a position to make use of it for humankind." |
| Dr. Steve Ostro |
"NEAP is the first major step
toward the utilization of space resources and the industrialization of the solar
system. As a privately funded commercial enterprise, it marks the dawn of a space
"gold rush" with tremendous positive long-term importance to human civilization." "Earth exists amidst a swarm of millions of tiny worlds that include the cheapest destinations of space missions, as well as the most accessible resources essential to prolonged human activity in space. Ultimately, these worlds will belong to, and enrich, whoever gets there first." |
| Mark Sonter |
"The Near-Earth Asteroids will be the company-making ore
bodies of the 21st
century:
they will be the Klondikes, the Wiwatersrands and the Permian Basins, they will
beget
the Incos, Kennecotts and the Standard Oils." "Jim Benson's Near Earth Asteroid Prospector will, like Clementine, show that groundbreaking space activities need not cost the Earth nor take a decade to accomplish. The information NEAP will generate will bring us very much closer to the day when major industrialization of space begins, and humanity starts to move out into the solar system." |
Contact SpaceDev: [email protected]
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