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Metal-rich, potato-shaped asteroid could be worth $10 quintillion (2022)
- hammock 4y agoOpportunities of unfathomable scale like this are so intriguing, because the solution is not limited by cost - only by our technological abilities
- SN76477 4y agoExcellent point.
- seizethecheese 4y agoYes and this is only a clear and dramatic example. In theory, this actually applies to everything.
- smaddox 4y ago> the solution is not limited by cost I'm not so sure... The valuation seems a bit absurd to me. Using the same valuation system, what would be the valuation of Earth? Cost of extraction and transportation is still (and always) a consideration. Would the asteroid be significantly cheaper to mine than metal-rich veins on Earth? Even given hypothetical technology, could we not apply the same technologies to mine the same metals here on Earth cheaper? I don't know the answers to these questions, but they're interesting to ponder.
- hammock 4y ago>Using the same valuation system, what would be the valuation of Earth? Google says Earth is worth $5 quadrillion. So this one asteroid is four or five orders of magnitude more valuable than everything we’ve ever known
- joshspankit 4y agoIs that just the reductive cumulative value of the raw materials?
- danjoredd 4y agoIs there even that much money in circulation?
- withinboredom 4y agoThere doesn't need to be, and if you tried to sell it all at once, you'd destroy the economy by making that resource totally worthless.
- bilsbie 4y agoSource?
- s5300 4y agoIt’s a little bit outdated at this point, but Mansa Musas’ journeys.
- mtoner23 4y agoFTX
- robbiep 4y agoThat’s how economics works. For real world examples, look at Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage (0) https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/mansa-musa-musa-i-mali/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/mansa-musa-m... (1)
- mc32 4y ago10 Quintillion at current scarcity. If we were to lasso it down to Earth, then the metals would become "too cheap to meter" and not worth 10 Quintillion.
- GordonS 4y agoRight, but whoever did that would control supply - like OPEC, they could therefore control scarcity.
- mtoner23 4y agonot if it's a us company, a monopoly that hurts consumers is illegal
- labster 4y agoHaha, great joke 10/10.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoMonopolies are not illegal. Abusing a monopoly is illegal. Selling inventory in limited quantities is not abuse of a monopoly, unless you are colluding with competitors to do so.
- GordonS 4y agoI'm guessing a company worth a quintillion can get away from just about anything.
- DamnYuppie 4y agoUnless like diamonds you limit their availability to actively prop up the prices. A contrary opinion would be that Gold isn't exactly scare on this planet and we keep mining more of it and it isn't exactly cheap. As of this writing it the spot price is $1,922.40 USD.
- chongli 4y ago
- kyoob 4y agodibs
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 4y agoA better criteria would be usefulness. Presumably some metals have more enduring useful valueness & don't just instantly become uninteresting if we suddenly boost the quantity
- huslage 4y agoThat number makes no sense. How do you value a rock in space like that?
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago1. It says it could be. It's not based on anything concrete, we don't even know what the core consists of, it's just a guess. 2. Based on the guess, the reporter probably took the suspected mass and multiplied it with the current price of the suspected metals. This is what the Business Insider "journalist" did, which she cites regarding another asteroid. 3. Yes, none of this makes any sense, especially the part where we assign a dollar value to something completely out of reach and which if we did somehow get to, would certainly affect the current price, by A LOT. But hey! 4. Don't be a conspiracy theorist. Believe all science reporting!
- scotty79 4y agoYou multiply rock composition by mass of the rock and then by current Earthly price of the materials the rock consist of. As you said, nonsense.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y agoIf we captured the asteroid and crashed it into Earth the exercise would be detrimental to folks on Earth and not valuable. This is a bit like gesturing at the sun and saying it has 10 quintillion dollars worth of energy. "Yes' but..."
- withinboredom 4y agoThis is why if we ever got mining rigs in space, they wouldn't ever be allowed to bring the space rocks near Earth or even change the orbit of a space rock. All it takes is one pissed off crew to accelerate one of those space rocks towards Earth and we're all gone. Or, if we did bring the space rocks back to earth, one single accident.
- scotty79 4y agoI don't think stable near Earth orbits are that fast. Last year (I think) huge volcano erupted violently in the middle of pacific ocean and we don't really feel it in any way. Dropping a rock from orbit and dissipating orbital speed plus potenial energy of the rock in the atmosphere and in the ocean might be perfectly reasonable for the sizes of the rocks we might even dream of controlling
- withinboredom 4y agoIt's 140 miles across, it only needs to brush up against our atmosphere at orbital speeds to wipe out entire cities. Also, it has to be decelerated when coming into Earth's influence. If it the thrusters were to break down or something go wrong -- bam, Earth gone.
- scotty79 4y agoI think the volcano that erupted last year was perfectly capable of wiping out a city (Two orders of magnitude stronger than Hiroshima nuke). So, we'd "just" need to be super careful to not drop it on any city.
- Ekaros 4y agoKinda stupid calculations. You shouldn't discount of getting the stuff to Earth or even any usable orbit. Not to mention the process of extracting and refining. Everything is really about the margins. Not to even mention the supply lowering the price you get. Like oceans contain lot of gold, like 700 trillion worth. Now, there is slight problem that getting it out of water cost more. And same is probably for any medium term future true with asteroids.
- yowzadave 4y agoI agree that the $10 quintillion value is dumb--but it's not the cost of getting it to earth that determines its value. I.e., if it cost you $9 quintillion to get it here, it's not like you could say $10 quintillion - $9 quintillion = $1 quintillion in profit. The limiting value of the asteroid would be the total addressable market for those materials. I.e., if the total addressable market for nickel on Earth is $63B, it doesn't matter how much of it you bring back, your haul won't be worth more than $63B.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoI feel like there was a Netflix movie with this plot
- djcannabiz 4y agoif you find it, do tell it sounds like a good watch edit: you meant don’t look up, i was thinking sci-fi for some reason
- fnordpiglet 4y agoWell I mean the asteroid smashing robots and the end scene were definitely sci-fi
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y agoAll these asteroids makes one feel like a merchant in the 1600s: if only they could have the tons of pepper, cardamom, ginger, and so forth. Nowadays you throw away spices because "they smell fishy, maybe they went bad". Perhaps by the 2400s they will laugh at the idea that gold was ever considered "precious".
- rwmj 4y agoI hope so because it's both cool and useful. (If you've ever held any substantial quantity of gold you were probably surprised at just how heavy / dense it is.)
- joshspankit 4y agoIt wasn’t a crowd-winner, but I particularly enjoyed that episode of The Twilight Zone
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y agoYou are referring to The Rip Van Winkle Caper [1] episode (S2E24). Gold, like gold, but that car design certainly was something else [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rip_Van_Winkle_Caper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rip_Van_Winkle_Caper [2] at 1:26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj5Dfd0U0E8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj5Dfd0U0E8, from Wikipedia: "The futuristic car carrying the couple who find the dying Farwell is a leftover prop, somewhat modified, from MGM's 1956 film Forbidden Planet{[3]}.[citation needed]" [3] Forbidden Planet, also one of the greats, in the 23rd century, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
- joshspankit 4y agoYes that one exactly. To anyone who’s interested in this comment thread: check out the episode.
- robust-cactus 4y agoI mean making the price of iron and other materials crash has value in and of itself. All of a sudden a $100M skyscrapper could cost half as much or something. Yet the end value of the product would still be worth just as much.
- theideaofcoffee 4y agoI'm always puzzled by the (ever-predictable) reaction that some of these stories get: "well, if you try to sell that on the current market you'll kill it forever!1" or "it won't be worth that when you get it here and try to unload it all!11" Who cares? You're deliberately being obtuse, yes, we know how Econ 101 works. The idea, at least in my mind, is to open up things that were limited by the resources that it could provide that were previously scarce. More manufacturing of things with needs for precious metals, more building with iron and that iron refined into steel, more overall resources available to make shit with etc etc. I would think the results of that would be worth far more than the nominal value.
- Octokiddie 4y ago> In August 2022, NASA will send a space probe to an asteroid dubbed 16 Psyche that resides in the Main Asteroid Belt between planets Mars and Jupiter. The article is from last year. The launch was delayed and has not yet taken place: > In June 2022 NASA found that the late delivery of the testing equipment and flight software for the Psyche spacecraft did not give them enough time to complete the required testing, and decided to delay the launch, with future windows available in 2023 and 2024 to rendezvous with the asteroid in 2029 and 2030, respectively.[18] > On October 28, 2022, NASA announced that Psyche was targeting a launch period opening on October 10, 2023, which would correspond with an arrival at the asteroid in August 2029. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(spacecraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(spacecraft)
- kristianp 4y agoNASA’s Psyche mission has been delayed until October this year apparently. Are asteroid ores easier to extract chemically than terrestrial ores? I think I read somewhere that in order to mine asteroids we'll need to have major space based industry first.
- gremlinsinc 4y agoI'm wondering if an army of drones (self reproducing ones) could potentially go up there (maybe 5 or so) setup a small 'drone factory' to begin making drilling drones, and delivery drones and then send it all to a staging area on the moon to be shipped back to earth the most economical way.
- withinboredom 4y agoHighly recommend playing Universal Paperclips (it's a free text-based in-browser game, check it out).
- Ekaros 4y agoI think we are quite a far away from self replicating factory on earth. One we just dump what ever pure raw materials in and get replicating parts out of other end... Doing it in space is even further. To even simplify scenario, take a empty infinite size warehouse on Earth. What would be all the processes and machinery we would need for some sort of output from even refined raw materials.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThe comments here more than dispose of this nonsensical figure, but it bears on the subject of the trust people have in the "media" (one of our other topics today): I looked in vain in this article for any skepticism about their figure. Like, what would actually happen to prices if there were suddenly that much nickel available. But no. That would detract from the click-bait value.
- klyrs 4y agoQuestion for the Kerbal nerds: I want to land this 140-mile diameter sphere of iron on the moon. A soft landing, please. You have 10 years, timer starts when the asteroid's thrusters fire up. How much fuel do we need?
- withinboredom 4y agocan you use the asteroid itself as fuel?
- floxy 4y agoIf you are patient and can do enough math, I think you may only need a negligible amount of fuel. If it is all done with gravity assists. I once read a paper (that I can't currently locate) with the premise (I think) of crashing one of the icy moons of Jupiter into Venus for terraforming. And you start out with a small "pebble" and do gravity assists in a chain reaction on successively larger and larger asteroids in the asteroid belt. I guess this would also be dependent on there being a sufficient amount of various sized of asteroids distributed throughout the belt which are mapped pretty precisly. And you might need various "error-correcting" trajectories of other bodies as well to account for various measurement errors. And you also need to make sure that none of the left-over asteroids subsequently crash into earth.
- klyrs 4y agoI know this theory, and that's why I put a time limit of 10 years! There's a whole community of people who play around with orbital simulators, and I'm curious if we can get some realistic-looking numbers on what such an endeavor would require. Because, of course the next question is "where are you going to find all of that fuel" and I'm guessing that the answer is probably something like "a 40-mile asteroid rich in hydrocarbons."
- sys32768 4y agoWhen they get it here and begin to examine it and mine it, they discover there is an ancient alien in the center which seems to have some sort of weaponry, and then begins to peck its way out. After much debate, nations of the earth decide to combine resources to put the asteroid back into orbit and detonate it. A controversial scientist with terminal cancer, played by Tom Hanks, stays behind above the earth to steer it further into orbit, then arms the detonation device just as the alien frees itself. What emerges is a hauntingly beautiful and stunningly complex being. Hanks, certain of his death but filled with wonder, leaves his shuttle in his space suit to get a closer look at the being. Just before the nuclear device explodes, Hanks connects with the being through light and begins to smile and cry with joy and regret. Then everything explodes. Nothing of the alien or Hanks remains, just bits of asteroid. Ten years later, listening stations on earth begin to pick up a strange pattern of signals from space. You fill in the rest: -DNA code of Hanks that somehow reveals the cure for cancer. -Morse code for the opening lyrics to the song Age of Aquarius -Math formulas and theories that revolutionize science -Morse code for "They know about Mickey Mouse. I'm not sure how, but they keep asking me about him."
- quantified 4y agoIs this the first ChatGPT comment I've read on HN, at long last?
- sys32768 4y agoGiven the popularity of ChatGPT, I accept the compliment!
- hindsightbias 4y agoDaniel Suarez's sequel to Delta-V is just out.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoThe minerals are only valuable because they are rare and/or hard to get. The moment they become plentiful they stop being valuable. If tomorrow, someone found a deposit of pure gold metal the size of mount everest that could easily be extracted - the price of gold would be affected.