NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – A Texas billionaire financing space robots, mining near-earth asteroids for platinum and gold, may sound like the plot line to the latest 3-D adventure movie, but it isn’t.

According to Eric Anderson, co-founder of Planetary Resources, thanks to investors like Ross Perot the mining of asteroids is a reality.

At a press conference held at Seattle’s Museum of Flight Anderson said his company expects to take the project from concept to completion in a matter of months.

“Phase 1 is to fully develop our technology base and start with our initial line of spacecraft, which we will be launching within 24 months.”

Planetary Resources focus is on robotic space exploration.

The way Anderson explained it, “This company is about creating a space economy beyond the earth. It’s about building real hardware. It’s about doing real things in space to ‘move the needle forward.’”

Other A-list Planetary Resources investors include Google CEO Larry Page, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and space-faring software executive Charles Simonyi. Filmmaker James Cameron has also signed on as a senior adviser.

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