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X Prize's Diamandis Ties Together Space Mining, Virgin Galactic

Peter H. Diamandis, who heads the X Prize Foundation, the Marina Del Rey-based organization which runs a series of prizes designed to encourage the development of technology to benefit society, has just tied together two of the efforts he's involved in, after spaceship developer Virgin Galactic said Wednesday that asteroid mining venture Planetary Resources are now working together. Virgin Galactic--the firm backed by Sir Richard Branson, which is developing vehicles to deliver people, and now cargo, to space--is an offspring of SpaceShipOne, the first privately built vehicle to reach space, and the recipient of the $10M Ansari X Prize. Planetary Resources, which has the backing of folks like James Cameron, Google's Larry Page, and Microsoft's Charles Simonyi, was co-founded by Diamandis.