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There are hundreds of asteroids that have more wealth than the entire US federal debt. Consider all the precious metals ever mined on the planet. Now consider

There are hundreds of asteroids that have more wealth than the entire US federal debt. Consider all the precious metals ever mined on the planet. Now consider this is litterally scratching the surface of the total contained within the planet. Note, these dense metals will be concentrated toward the planets core, due to gravity. The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass, but it is all spread thinly and relatively easy to access.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass That seems...quite high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt "The total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon."
- m4rtink 6y ago
  I don't think the mass is as important as accessible mass - let's say you can mine up to 4 km deep (the deepest mine on Earth at the moment) & you can't easily do that any, there might be ocean, glacier, or even a city on top of the resource you want to mine. That limits you even further for terrestrial mining. Asteroid on the other hand are mostly just a few kilometers in size with a very few being bigger than tens of kilometers. That might quite possibly open much bigger mining volume than what's currently avalable on earth - rather than a big sphere with much stuff inaccessible due to being too deep, you now have millions of chunks floating around with a lot of stuff to dig through in the 4 km limit. No oceans, cities or glaciers to block you as well. And the arbitrary 4 km limit most likely does not really apply for asteroids - they are all long cooled down & the gravity is negligible so nothing should really limmmit you from digging hundreds of kilometers through Vesta looking for valuables. Also some findings indicate that processes that lead to dilution of minerals on earth might have taken place after asteroids formed, so it might be possible to find the stuff we look for in quite a pure and ready to use state.
nine_k 6y ago
Imagine that you deliver 100 thousand tons of gold, platinum, etc to Earth. How would the prices change? Inside the asteroid belt there's nobody to trade in gold with, at least not yet.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Well, it should enable many things that are currently prohibitively expensive due to the cost of materials. You know, people don't buy stuff (just) because it looks nice and shiny but to use to to do things. Aluminium used to be more expensive than platinum yet we survived it's price tanking & it made practical airplanes and drink cans possible!
microtherion 6y ago
There's still the minor detail of transporting it back to Earth in a cost effective way…
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Ideally you would use it for building up space infrastructure primarily. You might still ship some finished products back to Earth, that would be much more mass efficient. BTW, once you can have your payload trajectory intersect with Earth, you will get braking for free thanks to the atmosphere, effectively shaving half of the needed delta-v. Same thing on Mars.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> The asteroid belt easily holds our planet's mass That seems...quite high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt "The total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon."

m4rtink 6y ago
I don't think the mass is as important as accessible mass - let's say you can mine up to 4 km deep (the deepest mine on Earth at the moment) & you can't easily do that any, there might be ocean, glacier, or even a city on top of the resource you want to mine. That limits you even further for terrestrial mining. Asteroid on the other hand are mostly just a few kilometers in size with a very few being bigger than tens of kilometers. That might quite possibly open much bigger mining volume than what's currently avalable on earth - rather than a big sphere with much stuff inaccessible due to being too deep, you now have millions of chunks floating around with a lot of stuff to dig through in the 4 km limit. No oceans, cities or glaciers to block you as well. And the arbitrary 4 km limit most likely does not really apply for asteroids - they are all long cooled down & the gravity is negligible so nothing should really limmmit you from digging hundreds of kilometers through Vesta looking for valuables. Also some findings indicate that processes that lead to dilution of minerals on earth might have taken place after asteroids formed, so it might be possible to find the stuff we look for in quite a pure and ready to use state.

nine_k 6y ago

Imagine that you deliver 100 thousand tons of gold, platinum, etc to Earth. How would the prices change? Inside the asteroid belt there's nobody to trade in gold with, at least not yet.

m4rtink 6y ago
Well, it should enable many things that are currently prohibitively expensive due to the cost of materials. You know, people don't buy stuff (just) because it looks nice and shiny but to use to to do things. Aluminium used to be more expensive than platinum yet we survived it's price tanking & it made practical airplanes and drink cans possible!

microtherion 6y ago

There's still the minor detail of transporting it back to Earth in a cost effective way…

m4rtink 6y ago
Ideally you would use it for building up space infrastructure primarily. You might still ship some finished products back to Earth, that would be much more mass efficient. BTW, once you can have your payload trajectory intersect with Earth, you will get braking for free thanks to the atmosphere, effectively shaving half of the needed delta-v. Same thing on Mars.