Planetary Resources Does Davos

Fortune Magazine’s Stephen Gandel is over in Davos, Switzerland this week, hobnobbing with the rich, famous and brilliant attendees who meet to contemplate solutions to the planet’s many problems at the World Economic Forum.

He has an entertaining piece about bumping into Planetary Resources’ President (and Chief Asteroid Miner) Chris Lewicki at a wine bar. Apparently, their discussion didn’t go much deeper than a description of the company’s plans to mine water and other materials from the Solar System’s orbiting piles of rock.

After I asked a few more questions about his company—like “is there really a lot of demand right now for gas stations and bottle water in outer space?”—Lewiski told me to stop being a critic. Every industry, he said, has to start somewhere. Yes. Dream big. This is Davos, after all.

That’s funny. And pretty impressive. Most start-ups lack the funds and connections to attend such an exclusive gathering. But, if you’re backed by multiple billionaires that include Eric Schmidt and Larry Page from Google, that’s not really a problem.