AP Photo

Like the summer movie season, the summer news cycle sometimes starts early. Case in point: A spate of stories about the prospect, literally, of a space mission to mine asteroids. Planetary Resources - a privately-held company boasting backers like legendary movie director James Cameron, and what the press eagerly dubbed “tech tycoons” Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Google and former Microsoft exec Charles Simonyi - is taking aim at going where no man has ever gone before in the quest for intergalactic resources.

And why not? James Cameron found Unobtanium under the Hometree on Pandora; his aim to help Life imitate Art via asteroid mining is a bracing tonic. Especially now, when so many of us in the Washington, DC area just watched space shuttles being...