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If we captured an asteroid we would immediately double or triple the world's supply of metals like platinum. They simply are not plentiful for us on the crust.

If we captured an asteroid we would immediately double or triple the world's supply of metals like platinum. They simply are not plentiful for us on the crust. I like to believe that we can achieve this within our lifetime. Having the price of certain rarer metals come down significantly would be amazing!

aeturnum 6y ago
Are there projects that required more rare metals than exist on earth? I agree that it would be nice to have more things, but I'm skeptical of the numbers working out. The Apollo program brought back ~850lbs of moon rocks and cost ~$150bn. Obviously the primary purpose of the program wasn't mining, but I think what I said above applies. It might work out and we might get a lot, but we should make investment choices with the assumption that it won't. If we are ever in a situation where civilization makes asteroid mining work or it falls apart it would be very bad because asteroid mining is hard! It's likely easier to use platinum more efficiently.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  From the top of my head making all wires out of gold you would get much better conductivity & avoid the issues copper has with oxidation. I'm sure there are examples for other currently expensive materials. Also aluminum used to be super expensive and only used for jewelry until it became dirt cheap and is used for about anything.
zeristor 6y ago
Come down siginificantly? So much depends on demand, one of the more sophisticated analyses I've seen realised that Nickel (at the time) was a good bet since it was fairly expensive and in high demand. Also people hold gold as a store of value, if it becomes cheap then they might as well sell that too. Sure we could start using gold as ship ballast...
- freeqaz 6y ago
  Very much so! But the idea is fascinating. What if the price of platinum was on par with aluminum? What kind of products could exist that simply can out today? This[0] article puts it into perspective just how much metals exist out there. Seems like most of the precious metals we have access to are from previous asteroid collisions. There is a theory that the last age ~12k years ago was from an asteroid impact, and that it can be traced due to changes in platinum levels. Whoever figures out how to mine metals from space rocks is going to have an interest problem to face. They can't just dump it all onto the market -- they'll have to pull a move similar to the diamond industry. Stockpile it and constrain supply (because of their monopoly) to keep the prices high enough to make a profit from the (risky) endeavor. One can dream :) 0: https://strangesounds.org/2019/06/asteroid-16-psyche-gold-metal-value-mining-nasa-video.html https://strangesounds.org/2019/06/asteroid-16-psyche-gold-me...

aeturnum 6y ago

Are there projects that required more rare metals than exist on earth? I agree that it would be nice to have more things, but I'm skeptical of the numbers working out. The Apollo program brought back ~850lbs of moon rocks and cost ~$150bn. Obviously the primary purpose of the program wasn't mining, but I think what I said above applies. It might work out and we might get a lot, but we should make investment choices with the assumption that it won't. If we are ever in a situation where civilization makes asteroid mining work or it falls apart it would be very bad because asteroid mining is hard! It's likely easier to use platinum more efficiently.

m4rtink 6y ago
From the top of my head making all wires out of gold you would get much better conductivity & avoid the issues copper has with oxidation. I'm sure there are examples for other currently expensive materials. Also aluminum used to be super expensive and only used for jewelry until it became dirt cheap and is used for about anything.

zeristor 6y ago

Come down siginificantly? So much depends on demand, one of the more sophisticated analyses I've seen realised that Nickel (at the time) was a good bet since it was fairly expensive and in high demand. Also people hold gold as a store of value, if it becomes cheap then they might as well sell that too. Sure we could start using gold as ship ballast...

freeqaz 6y ago
Very much so! But the idea is fascinating. What if the price of platinum was on par with aluminum? What kind of products could exist that simply can out today? This[0] article puts it into perspective just how much metals exist out there. Seems like most of the precious metals we have access to are from previous asteroid collisions. There is a theory that the last age ~12k years ago was from an asteroid impact, and that it can be traced due to changes in platinum levels. Whoever figures out how to mine metals from space rocks is going to have an interest problem to face. They can't just dump it all onto the market -- they'll have to pull a move similar to the diamond industry. Stockpile it and constrain supply (because of their monopoly) to keep the prices high enough to make a profit from the (risky) endeavor. One can dream :) 0: https://strangesounds.org/2019/06/asteroid-16-psyche-gold-metal-value-mining-nasa-video.html https://strangesounds.org/2019/06/asteroid-16-psyche-gold-me...