Well this feels as if “the future” really has arrived.  

The lobbying firm K & L Gates (Bill Gates’ father’s former firm) secured former Congressman Burt Gordon (D-Tennessee) and tasked him with

“monitoring" NASA's asteroid-related activities and looking for an opportunity to form a partnership between the U.S. government and Planetary Resources.

Former Congressman Gordon was for many years chairman of the U.S. House Science Committee which had oversight of NASA while the budget and mission dwindled. The lobbying group has alerted Congress it will be advocating on behalf of Planetary Resources Inc., specifically

“on issues related to quarrying the celestial bodies, but not on any particular legislation.”

K & L Gates also handled lobbying for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and SpaceX.

Because nothing says “the future” more than an asteroid mining company planning some good old fashioned Congressional lobbying.

The possibilities of asteroid mining flooding the market with large amounts of a formerly rare metal make the economics iffy, yet Planetary Resources Inc is headed forward. And heavy hitting investors Larry Page (Google CEO), moviemaker James Cameron, and a retired US Air Force Joint Chiefs of Staff General, among others, are headed forward. All of them want to keep an eye on Congressional actions that might help or hinder their new enterprise.

Dreams of harvesting minerals from space have been kicking around in science fiction and elsewhere for years when Planetary Resources announced last April they planned to undertake asteroid mining. However, international laws governing ownership and rights to commercial exploitation remain ill defined and uncertain.  

The high-minded U.N.'s Outer Space Treaty of 1967 states that the use of outer space shall be for the benefit of all mankind, but any specific application to private ownership and mining is under question.

[…], it is clear that there is no international regime explicitly governing asteroid mining. "Planetary Resources are in a rather grey zone," says Joanne Wheeler, a lawyer on the U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Wheeler. "This is no legal certainty over whether they can do it or not."

So this is “the future”: wealthy investors, congressional lobbyists and mining rights … well, space-rock mining rights. But didn’t I read that in “the future” everyone would have jet transportation packs, or maybe it was just Tang? That must be a different future.