Planetary Resources, the company working to mine asteroids for precious metals, has just announced a plan to put everyone in space, virtually, via a new space telescope.
There's one simple reason why we don't have space telescopes the size of yo momma (like, kilometer-sized) in orbit right now, and that's because they're just too big and too fat to launch. A company called Tethers Unlimited has received a pile o' cash from NASA to figure out how to build giant structures in orbit instead.