A new bill was signed by US president Barrack Obama enabling private space exploration companies to own whatever material or resources they would be from space, such as materials from an asteroid. Though this idea is quite futuristic if not fictitious, more and more space exploration companies are enticed by it. NASA wanted to extend Solar System Civilization through asteroid mining; a new bill known as Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act was signed to Support the space explorations and future missions. According to scientificamerican;
"There are resources that support operation and human activity in space, there are resources that support manufacturing in space and then maybe there are resources that are important enough and valuable enough to bring those resources back to Earth."
The idea of asteroid mining if indeed successful would somehow lessen the budget for sending necessary materials and resources in spaces such as fuel and water. In sense, this move could cut the budget intended for those space missions by making an asteroid a make shift refilling station. This method was clearly explained by Thomas Kalil, deputy director for policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during a Google Hangout last Tuesday. Kalil stated via scientificamerican that;
"If we could image a future in which more and more of the matter and energy we're using in space comes from space, that would enable us to create a solar system civilization-to extend human presence into the solar system not just to visit but to stay."
Though the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act and the goals behind it are so promising, still there are further studies to be made. One question that lies behind the background would be the process of transporting those resources such as palladium and rhodium that are scare here on earth but highly concentrated in asteroids. Guess we would just have to wait for further updates about the planned space missions.