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NASA planning mission to an asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion
- danielvf 10y agoThe staggering supposed worth is beacause of the shear size of the asteroid, not the preciousness of its contents. Iron ore is only worth about 4 cents per pound on earth. There's just a lot of it.
- brianwawok 10y agoAnd they forget what would happen to the price of iron if the supply went up 100000x .
- planteen 10y agoYeah exactly. That's why I hate articles like this.
- scarmig 10y agoBecause USA Today is driving me insane with its "relatable" dollar figure without talking about size or composition... "16 Psyche is one of the ten most-massive asteroids in the asteroid belt. It is over 200 kilometers in diameter and contains a little less than 1% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. It is thought to be the exposed iron core of a protoplanet... Radar observations indicate that Psyche has a fairly pure iron–nickel composition." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche
- IndianAstronaut 10y agoThe purity of it seems like it would allow for easier manufacturing in space. Thus you can build components, especially the larger bigs, without having to expensively send them up from the earth's surface.
- aniijbod 10y agoYou're on a trajectory beyond a 64 bit number of dollars there.
- foxyv 10y agoNASA sending probe to Earth, a planet that is worth roughly (All of the money ever). They plan to exploit it for resources that will be used, in part, for space exploration.