There happened something quite interesting regarding my CAJ topic. Chris Lewicky, the Chief Engineer of Planetary Resources announced at the annual FiRe (the Future in Review Conference) in Utah that they decided to reduce their efforts in terms of mining for metals on asteroids and shifted their focus towards mining water. At the conference he explained different ways of how the company could mine for hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in order to produce space fuel out of these components. Lewicky also announced that the number of suitable NEAs is growing rapidly. Three new near-Earth asteroids are discovered every day.
In an interview, co-founder Eric Anderson made clear that he did not give up his idea but that mining for water is the company's main goal now. The reason behind the decision to scale back the space-mining mission is attributed to insurmountable technical hurdles and great costs. Although the company has some very wealthy donators and is not dependent on financial aid from governments or other organizations, the project is not financially worthwhile.
The advantage of mining water is that it could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen and used as propellants. If it would be possible to construct "gas stations" on asteroids, satellites, which would normally burn up when they run out of fuel and get back to Earth, could be used more often. Mr. Anderson admitted that it is "more sexy to talk about [...] bringing something back to Earth" but that this goal is more difficult and cannot be realized by now. Moreover, it is important that there are already gas stations or other fuel depots on asteroids because the machines which could mine for minerals also need fuel. Eric Anderson does already have a tight schedule for his new project. Test launches should start by the end of this year and the first telescopes should be send to asteroids in 2016.
Here is the BBC World Service Podcast about the FiRe and Lewicky's talk: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01z6f5n
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