It’s 2035 and Earth’s population has grown dramatically. People are desperate to find alternatives to the dwindling natural resources needed to keep the global

It’s 2035 and Earth’s population has grown dramatically. People are desperate to find alternatives to the dwindling natural resources needed to keep the global economy functioning. We have bled the Earth dry. ... In January 2035, a US company becomes the first to successfully mine minerals from space and transport the cargo back to Earth. The haul contains huge quantities of gold and platinum, although it is only a fraction of the resources from the asteroid. The price of gold falls by 50 per cent. That's anticlimactic. If you were to make a list of "dwindling natural resources needed to keep the global economy functioning" I don't believe that gold would make the top 20. Neither doubling its supply nor halving it would have much impact on the aggregate provision of goods and services within the terrestrial economy. Platinum group metals are more interesting from an industrial standpoint. Though automobile exhaust system catalysts currently account for the lion's share of industrial palladium demand, and I expect that demand driver to already be past its peak by 2035. There are no doubt other things we could and would use PGMs for if they were significantly less expensive and more abundant. Fuel cells, though they will always have certain disadvantages compared to batteries, would probably be significantly more widespread by now if the cost of platinum were comparable to e.g. silver.