No one can accuse James Cameron of not thinking outside the box.

This board’s favorite film-making billionaire has ideas that could be described as innovative, sure, but most seem to be downright zany (“Titanic 3D,” anyone?). Some of his ideas are out of this world, even.

With his latest crack-pot idea, though, we’re starting to think he can, in fact, see the future.

As if taking a page out of his own book (we’ll get to that in a minute), Cameron’s latest crazy-guy venture is the creation — along with Google billionaires Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson — of Planetary Resources Inc., a startup with the seemingly fictional goal of mining asteroids for such typically Earth-bound resources as gold, platinum or water.

Sound familiar?

Let’s back up a little. You remember “Avatar”? Well, for those of you who didn’t spend nearly three hours on the fictional world of Pandora, it’s like “Dances With Wolves” (or “The Last Samurai” or countless other movies) but in space.

Without spoiling too many plot points, the premise of the movie centers around the people of Earth trekking to Pandora for the mining of Unobtainium — our favorite fake mineral name of all time.

People of Earth mining in space?

It is one thing to take events of the past and put them to film. Cameron knows that well, having done it with “Titanic” and … well, that’s really it.

It’s another thing to extrapolate about the future from the possibilities of science fiction and dystopian visions like he did in “The Terminator” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

But, to take the events of film and put them into reality? Well, that’s another thing all together.

Well played, Mr. Cameron.

We enjoyed his trips to the Mariana Trench and to the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. We will probably enjoy the news about his exploration of extraterrestrial worlds.

The main thing is that Cameron’s plan is to use the universe to better our lives by thinking outside the box. Space exploration is a great thing in its own right; like any other area of research, it is the acquisition of knowledge.

The only avalanche of inadequacy under which we could ever be buried is failing to want an adventure.

That adventure may not be space exploration. It might not be broad-based reforms of questionable policy. It might not even come from the government.

But it will exist, and it will come from American people. And it will come from their ambition to boldly go — maybe where no man has gone before, maybe not.