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Seems low to me. It seems quite plausible for SpaceX to be able to complete a space mining operation given their current operations and runway. If you can bring
by ipnon 2y ago
Seems low to me. It seems quite plausible for SpaceX to be able to complete a space mining operation given their current operations and runway. If you can bring a trillion dollar rock back to Earth or at least LEO every few years, that's quite a valuable company.
- WalterBright 2y agoWhen Spain looted the New World of gold and transported it back to Spain, it did not make Spain wealthy. It simply resulted in a lot of inflation.
- fragmede 2y agoI'd like to think we've learned a thing or two since the 16th century.
- WalterBright 2y agoSadly, nope. Every nation on the planet still tries the same thing - printing money in the doomed hope it will make the nation wealthy.
- akie 2y agoCountries sometimes print money to pay their debts because it’s easier than earning the money to pay their debts.
- oezi 2y agoMost national central banks are well aware and aren't printing money at will. But certainly some monetary easing can generate quite some wealth.
- WalterBright 2y agoThey are printing deficit money when they have inflation, because that's the fundamental cause of inflation.
- imtringued 2y agoAs opposed to a lack of money being a friction that prevents a country from being wealthy? It is very easy to point out how an economy with perfect information and perfect cooperation has zero demand for money, but reality works very differently.
- kaptainscarlet 2y agoYeah, a trillion dollars of gold from soace will definitely crash the gold market
- WalterBright 2y agoI always laugh at the size of Smaug's gold hoard in the Hobbit movie. Unleashing even a fraction of it would make all the gold in Middle Earth worthless.
- rasz 2y agoThey could sell fuckton of gold options before announcing the mission.
- nick7376182 2y agoHowever it did make some Spaniards wealthy
- WalterBright 2y agoSome Spaniards, yes. Not the country.
- adriancr 2y agoSpain as a country was one of the most powerful and largest of that time period. So of course the whole country benefited. As for some spaniards profiting, of course, it was still feudal, aristocracy profited.
- matthewbauer 2y agoIt definitely made Spain extremely wealthy.
- WalterBright 2y agoThe actual wealth in an economy is the value of goods and services. Money is not a good or a service. Increasing the amount of money does not change the value of goods and services, it just devalues the money (inflation).
- aeternum 2y agoGold and money does not make people rich. Companies like SpaceX that bring new technology to humanity do. Somehow Europe lost sight of that and the US seems to be on the same path.
- tsimionescu 2y agoSpain now had way more wealth the its neighbors, relatively speaking, even if it didn't have more wealth than before. In a world of mercenary armies and continental trade, that matters a lot. Sure, maybe the mercenaries are now asking for double what they asked before, but they're asking your neighbors for double too, and your neighbors didn't also get a huge injection of gold. Also, gold wasn't used to build things, so it contributes very little to wealth (jewelery and decorations notwithstanding). Having a huge injection of iron or uranium or tritium or helium or lithium or other rare and sought-after elements today would be an entirely different story. Of course, the whole idea of bringing an asteroid to earth to mine is pure sci-fi at this moment, so this is all moot.
- chii 2y agoThose resources already exist on earth, for which it'd be cheaper to just mine it out of the ground, than to spend the energy to bring ore back (then spend the same amount as earth mined ore to process!). The one thing those asteroids have going for it is that it's already in space - so if you were planning on building a space station, space ship or something of that nature, you might be better off mining in space to produce the materials for it (and save the launch costs, for the one time cost of launching space mining and manufacturing plants).
- yuppiepuppie 2y agoI don’t disagree. Someone above said bytedance is valued similarly which I find really surprising given the value-prop of the two companies couldn’t be further away from each other. One tries to suck time and energy away from humanity while the other tries to expand our human capacity beyond our planet. If I were a betting man, I’d wager SpaceX to be valued more in the long run.
- psunavy03 2y ago> If you can bring a trillion dollar rock back to Earth or at least LEO every few years, . . . you'd destabilize the world economy, and your trillion-dollar rock would either no longer be a trillion-dollar rock, or else your trillion dollars won't buy nearly as much as it would have before.
- pokstad 2y agoThat depends. Right now we have a scarcity mindset with regards to certain materials. A trillion dollar rock could open up new use cases we never imagined before because it was too cost prohibitive.
- fragmede 2y agoif they have to settle for destabilizing the world economy and having only a $50 billion rock, I think SpaceX will be alright.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoMaybe if they ever get anywhere close to asteroid mining their value will go up. They’re closer than anyone else, but they’re still very far away from that. When Starship is making regular flights, and making regular flights beyond Earth orbit, they’ll be in a position to start thinking about asteroid mining. Tho I think Moon operations will take up enough of their time, they may not spend much time looking at mining. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe they’ve talked much about mining on their roadmap.
- readthenotes1 2y agoThe naysayers for your comment seem to believe that you mean a trillion dollars worth of minerals will be delivered to Earth immediately when they get the asteroid into orbit.
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoWhat could you make with unlimited palladium?
- tsimionescu 2y agoHow is there so much sci-fi wishful thinking so pervasive here? How do you even imagine that any technology could safely move an asteroid to LEO every few years (and probably have it crash into the Earth a few years after that)? Nevermind a technology that we would develop in the next 100-500 years? I would be willing to bet that SpaceX will be long gone as a company before the first successful (cash-flow positive) asteroid mining operations will begin long in our future. And that it will barely be a memory by the time we start bringing asteroids closer to the earth to mine them, if that ever happens. They will of course have made some serious contributions to this future, but this is waaaaay beyond anything we'll see in our lifetimes, and companies just don't tend to live that long.