Once upon  time in the old west, all you needed to be an old-time prospector was a mule, a shovel, a pan to sieve your Gold out, running water for sieving and your provisions to last you while you were on-site, prospecting for gold.

In California in 1848, gold was discovered which started the California gold rush and if you were one of the first there you were eventually classed as a 49er, one of the first to prospect in 1849.

There are still people out there, making some sort of living as gold prospectors, but it’s not an easy life.

Now however, as with many things these days, prospecting has gone hi-tech. In fact, prospecting is out of this world as you can see from this video.

Deep Space Industries (DSI) is a company set up to mine asteroids in our solar system. There are a lot out there and it’s estimated that if these objects in orbit around our Sun can be harvested, someone’s going to make a lot of money.

So, for mule substitute spacecraft and for old-timer substitute scientist… and there isn’t a sieve in sight. Seems to me the romance has gone out of prospecting.

Tom Kane (c) 2016
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