In them thar hills

There was an old saying that to get rich in a gold rush, don't be a prospector, sell the necessary tools, equipment, and supplies to the gold miners.  Opportunity knocks in Seattle;

Instead of the Klondike, the big money now is in asteroids floating nearby, just waiting for adventurous miners who can get their hands on the right tools and transportation.

Planetary Resources — the space-mining venture that surfaced Tuesday — claims there are tens of billions of dollars' worth of precious material just waiting to be scooped up by swarms of robotic mining satellites it will assemble in Bellevue [Washington].

....That means that even if the prospectors return empty-handed — which they admit is a real possibility — this region still would be their outfitter and home port. It also builds on the cluster of bleeding-edge space ventures in Boeing's shadow funded by local tech billionaires.

Planetary Resources' president, former NASA Mars mission leader Chris Lewicki, said Seattle is turning into the "Silicon Valley of space."