6 ms·

Wouldn’t discovering a massive supply of gold on Mars instantly devalue it?

by frutiger 3y ago

paxys 3y ago
Not if you control how much you mine and bring home.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  OGIC "Organization of Gold Importing Corporations"
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  First I laughed, then I remembered it worked with diamonds.
colanderman 3y ago
Not if you are the first and establish exclusive control of the supply.
- lagniappe 3y ago
  Find out who that person is, and bring them water.
gus_massa 3y ago
The shipping and handling fees are astronomical. Sending gold to Mars is very expensive. Sending gold from Mars is even more expensive. In particular there are no oil deposits in Mars, so kerosene for the return rocket is very expensive. (Hydrogen and Oxygen are very expensive too.) Note that there is already a huge amount of gold in the oceans, but it's very diluted so it's too expensive to extract. You don't want to just know that there is gold. You want to know how much profit you would get after the gold bars arrive to Fort Knox.
- mattsan 3y ago
  What about generating methane and oxygen from Mars' atmosphere? I'm aware it would take a long time and a vast area of solar panels but say we set up a base there, would it be feasible? edit: this is assuming we're not allowed to set up nuclear reactors there
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Maybe not Mars, but if you're willing to go to Titan there are literal lakes of methane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      But then you'd have to bring the oxygen instead. To manufacture anything resembling normal rocket fuel you need at least oxygen + hydrogen. Preferrably oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, so you don't have to deal with cryogenic storage of hydrogen.
      - kwhitefoot 3y ago
        There is water on other satellites.
        gus_massa 3y ago
        But you need a lot of energy to split water. You can get a few bubbles with a battery, but to fill the rocket with oxygen you need a huge solar farm or something similar to power the electrolisis plant. Oxygen atoms are easy to find, sand and rust (and water) have a lot of them. The problem is isolating them to produce molecular oxygen that can be used to burn the fuel.
        kwhitefoot 3y ago
hackeraccount 3y ago
The thing I wonder about is this - what if there's a city on Mars that has a 10 ton block of gold. What's the price of gold on Earth? Is it the same as now? What if I could email someone on Mars and buy 50oz of gold? Could I sell it to someone here? What if it's cost prohibitive to move all of the gold to Earth? Or any of the gold to Earth? How refined does the Martian gold have to be before someone on Mars can say the own it? The answers to all of those are clear (or at least only marginally unclear) for materials that are intrinsically valuable but for the "store of vaule" as opposed to industrial use of something like gold it gets weird for me. I guess the answer to all of those questions is - whatever someone will pay.
- huthuthike 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones In Micronesia there was a practice of carving massive "coins" out of stone. These "Rai stones" were often too large to move. Yet individuals could "own" them and they were traded often for things of great value. I believe I even read an account of one that had sunk in a shipwreck, but the owners went on to trade it even though it was at the bottom of the sea. Just cause a physical item cannot be possessed physically doesn't mean it is valueless. However, for gold specifically, part of what makes it valuable is that it has some manufacturing uses and people like making jewelry out of it. There is no doubt a much larger supply of gold throughout the universe than on earth and it has no effect on the price here. So I think while you can buy and sell gold on another planet (provided people can widely agree on it's transfer of ownership), that would be a completely separate market from the terrestrial gold market.
tenpies 3y ago
Gold is probably also not valuable enough on a per volume or per weight basis to offset the transport costs. We'd need something much more valuable, although the usual go-to, diamonds, also wouldn't work since it's a highly controlled market. At that point you're in exotic materials territory. Maybe a natural source of Californium which on Earth is only produced in reactors or particle accelerators, and actually has industrial uses? Even if its price dropped substantially, we'd probably find new uses for the new supply and the stuff costs millions of USD per gram.

Wouldn’t discovering a massive supply of gold on Mars instantly devalue it?

paxys 3y ago

Not if you control how much you mine and bring home.

HPsquared 3y ago
OGIC "Organization of Gold Importing Corporations"
actionfromafar 3y ago
First I laughed, then I remembered it worked with diamonds.

colanderman 3y ago

Not if you are the first and establish exclusive control of the supply.

lagniappe 3y ago
Find out who that person is, and bring them water.

gus_massa 3y ago

The shipping and handling fees are astronomical. Sending gold to Mars is very expensive. Sending gold from Mars is even more expensive. In particular there are no oil deposits in Mars, so kerosene for the return rocket is very expensive. (Hydrogen and Oxygen are very expensive too.) Note that there is already a huge amount of gold in the oceans, but it's very diluted so it's too expensive to extract. You don't want to just know that there is gold. You want to know how much profit you would get after the gold bars arrive to Fort Knox.

mattsan 3y ago
What about generating methane and oxygen from Mars' atmosphere? I'm aware it would take a long time and a vast area of solar panels but say we set up a base there, would it be feasible? edit: this is assuming we're not allowed to set up nuclear reactors there
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Maybe not Mars, but if you're willing to go to Titan there are literal lakes of methane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    But then you'd have to bring the oxygen instead. To manufacture anything resembling normal rocket fuel you need at least oxygen + hydrogen. Preferrably oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, so you don't have to deal with cryogenic storage of hydrogen.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      There is water on other satellites.
      - gus_massa 3y ago
        But you need a lot of energy to split water. You can get a few bubbles with a battery, but to fill the rocket with oxygen you need a huge solar farm or something similar to power the electrolisis plant. Oxygen atoms are easy to find, sand and rust (and water) have a lot of them. The problem is isolating them to produce molecular oxygen that can be used to burn the fuel.
        kwhitefoot 3y ago

hackeraccount 3y ago

The thing I wonder about is this - what if there's a city on Mars that has a 10 ton block of gold. What's the price of gold on Earth? Is it the same as now? What if I could email someone on Mars and buy 50oz of gold? Could I sell it to someone here? What if it's cost prohibitive to move all of the gold to Earth? Or any of the gold to Earth? How refined does the Martian gold have to be before someone on Mars can say the own it? The answers to all of those are clear (or at least only marginally unclear) for materials that are intrinsically valuable but for the "store of vaule" as opposed to industrial use of something like gold it gets weird for me. I guess the answer to all of those questions is - whatever someone will pay.

huthuthike 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones In Micronesia there was a practice of carving massive "coins" out of stone. These "Rai stones" were often too large to move. Yet individuals could "own" them and they were traded often for things of great value. I believe I even read an account of one that had sunk in a shipwreck, but the owners went on to trade it even though it was at the bottom of the sea. Just cause a physical item cannot be possessed physically doesn't mean it is valueless. However, for gold specifically, part of what makes it valuable is that it has some manufacturing uses and people like making jewelry out of it. There is no doubt a much larger supply of gold throughout the universe than on earth and it has no effect on the price here. So I think while you can buy and sell gold on another planet (provided people can widely agree on it's transfer of ownership), that would be a completely separate market from the terrestrial gold market.

tenpies 3y ago

Gold is probably also not valuable enough on a per volume or per weight basis to offset the transport costs. We'd need something much more valuable, although the usual go-to, diamonds, also wouldn't work since it's a highly controlled market. At that point you're in exotic materials territory. Maybe a natural source of Californium which on Earth is only produced in reactors or particle accelerators, and actually has industrial uses? Even if its price dropped substantially, we'd probably find new uses for the new supply and the stuff costs millions of USD per gram.