Pacific Rim acquired a firm that already had an exploration permit, a sort of phase-one permit in the mining world that allows companies to explore an area and determine whether mining would make sense there.
And then something that they would call the boost-phase missile defense, which would be ways of shooting down missiles when they're at their sort of most vulnerable phase of flight.
Particularly noteworthy in this regard, is the decision to all but cancel the promising Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor technology at the very moment that the Israeli government and the Western European Union (among others) are recognizing the indispensibility of the sort of boost-phase defense afforded by such a system.
