4 ms·

Mostly by massively reducing the market price of minerals that are relatively easily obtained through space mining. Like, the total worldwide value of gold is

Mostly by massively reducing the market price of minerals that are relatively easily obtained through space mining. Like, the total worldwide value of gold is $7.5 trillion (at about 187,000 tonnes). If mining thousands of tons of gold becomes super cheap, the price of gold would crash even without actually doing the space mining, as people try to exit their gold positions in advance of space miners flooding the market.

mpweiher 9y ago
> worldwide value of gold is $7.5 trillion And what's the total value of worldwide assets? If I look at [1], I see that Blackrock by itself has $4.7 trillion under management, and the total "under management" is $139 trillion. Estimates from [2] give guesses of at least $1-2 quadrillion. So even if you manage to find so much gold that the existing value goes to zero, the impact seems limited to me. And I severely doubt you'd easily get that to zero. > (at about 187,000 tonnes) That's a lot of weight to (a) mine and (b) get to earth, and gold is certainly among the highest value-density you're going to get. Just theoretical availability does very little to prices, see Gold in Seawater[3]: "Ocean waters do hold gold – nearly 20 million tons of it." Currently, returning things to earth is sufficiently expensive that it is uneconomical to return satellites (costing on the order of $300m[4]) to earth, for example for repair. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_assets_under_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_assets_under_management [2] https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029233836AAnbTnr# https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029233836A... [3] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html [4] https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite10.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite10.htm
- candiodari 9y ago
  Minerals, however, do not decompose. A 100 block of gold you could just throw at a specific location and then re-"mine" after the somewhat violent landing, nothing will be wrong with it, aside from significant melting at the edges. (and in the "nothing wrong with it" assessment, the same cannot be said of the landing site, but there are plenty of places where that wouldn't be a great issue, e.g. one of the huge deserts like the Sahara, Inner Russia/China or Australia). Note that to an extent you can control the blast. So a 100 ton "mining ball" would not nearly have the same impact energy as a 100 ton asteroid, and even compared to the average meteorite it would be on the extreme slow end. There's a "minimum" blast that's essentially unavoidable, but it's not that huge, only a few square kilometers, and slowing things down to that speed is not hard if you take your time. Only if you want to return things intact do you need to go through the expensive process. Obviously doing the above method with an astronaut would be frowned upon. It's also been studied what happens if you want to go further. If you're willing to wait ~10 years, returning near-earth things to earth by crashing into it is incredibly cheap. If you're willing to wait ~100 years, from almost any point in the inner solar system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo... In the longer term I would argue that the economy will move to space. For most production processes weightlessness, and vacuum environment (not to mention infinite expansion space and infinite energy) would help a lot.
UncleEntity 9y ago
Like I was arguing in my other comment, the benefits of gold being a readily available material are "the unseen" in this equation...

mpweiher 9y ago

> worldwide value of gold is $7.5 trillion And what's the total value of worldwide assets? If I look at [1], I see that Blackrock by itself has $4.7 trillion under management, and the total "under management" is $139 trillion. Estimates from [2] give guesses of at least $1-2 quadrillion. So even if you manage to find so much gold that the existing value goes to zero, the impact seems limited to me. And I severely doubt you'd easily get that to zero. > (at about 187,000 tonnes) That's a lot of weight to (a) mine and (b) get to earth, and gold is certainly among the highest value-density you're going to get. Just theoretical availability does very little to prices, see Gold in Seawater[3]: "Ocean waters do hold gold – nearly 20 million tons of it." Currently, returning things to earth is sufficiently expensive that it is uneconomical to return satellites (costing on the order of $300m[4]) to earth, for example for repair. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_assets_under_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_assets_under_management [2] https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029233836AAnbTnr# https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029233836A... [3] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html [4] https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite10.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite10.htm

candiodari 9y ago
Minerals, however, do not decompose. A 100 block of gold you could just throw at a specific location and then re-"mine" after the somewhat violent landing, nothing will be wrong with it, aside from significant melting at the edges. (and in the "nothing wrong with it" assessment, the same cannot be said of the landing site, but there are plenty of places where that wouldn't be a great issue, e.g. one of the huge deserts like the Sahara, Inner Russia/China or Australia). Note that to an extent you can control the blast. So a 100 ton "mining ball" would not nearly have the same impact energy as a 100 ton asteroid, and even compared to the average meteorite it would be on the extreme slow end. There's a "minimum" blast that's essentially unavoidable, but it's not that huge, only a few square kilometers, and slowing things down to that speed is not hard if you take your time. Only if you want to return things intact do you need to go through the expensive process. Obviously doing the above method with an astronaut would be frowned upon. It's also been studied what happens if you want to go further. If you're willing to wait ~10 years, returning near-earth things to earth by crashing into it is incredibly cheap. If you're willing to wait ~100 years, from almost any point in the inner solar system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo... In the longer term I would argue that the economy will move to space. For most production processes weightlessness, and vacuum environment (not to mention infinite expansion space and infinite energy) would help a lot.

UncleEntity 9y ago

Like I was arguing in my other comment, the benefits of gold being a readily available material are "the unseen" in this equation...