3 ms·

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/06/05/golden-asteroid-mission-is-back-on-track-says-nasa/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/202

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/06/05/golden-asteroid-mission-is-back-on-track-says-nasa/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/06/05/go... You sure about that? Here's just one asteroid made of mostly gold, nickel, and / or iron that's supposedly worth many times more than the entire global economy. Pretty sure that anything we have here on Earth also exists "out there" in much greater abundance than we could ever possibly imagine here on our finite little speck of a planet (except maybe "life", which we only have absolute proof of here on Earth).

adrian_b 2y ago
In the whole Earth the abundances of the elements are similar to the averages of the Solar System, with the exception of some volatile elements, most of them being non-metals, which have been lost in space during the condensation of the Earth and also later. However the Earth is made of layers with different chemical compositions and many elements are concentrated in layers that are too far from the surface to hope that we will ever reach them. So in the accessible part of the Earth, close to the surface, those elements are seriously depleted. Some asteroids, unlike the Earth, have never been melted. In that case their composition is homogeneous, similar to the averages of the Solar System. Other asteroids are broken parts from the cores of bigger planets, so they have a composition like in the Earth at very high depths. However, in the latter kind of asteroids the useful metals are dissolved as tiny percentages in an iron-nickel-cobalt-germanium alloy. This will make their extraction incredibly energy-consuming. On Earth such metals have been separated during millions of years from their surrounding minerals and they have been accumulated as native nuggets or metallic sulfides that are very easy to process for their final separation and purification. With the alloy that exists in planet cores and asteroids nobody has demonstrated an efficient separation method yet. The laboratory methods used for such separations use huge amounts of water and acids and they will be impossible to implement on an asteroid. Carrying raw metal from asteroids, which is almost completely iron, would also increase the costs tremendously. So it is absurd to even consider asteroid mining before demonstrating a method that can extract the metals from iron at the mining sites and with a minimum consumption of energy and of non-recyclable reactants.
yowzadave 2y ago
> gold, nickel, and / or iron that's supposedly worth many times more than the entire global economy You hear these statements sometimes about asteroid mining, and they betray a misunderstanding of the way economies work. The reason gold/etc. is expensive is because it is scarce. If we suddenly have an abundance of these materials, then they will be cheap. The intrinsic value of these metals is not worth multiples of the global economy.
- DennisP 2y ago
  For precious metals that doesn't necessarily mean it's not worth going to get them in large quantities. Aluminum used to be more precious than gold. Now we make airplanes out of it.
  - nsxwolf 2y ago
    Soda cans too!
  - beerandt 2y ago
    It's a pretty good example with the difference being energy to retrieve vs energy to refine. Even with/if there's a 'flood the market' eventuality, you'd have approx multiple generations for the market to grow and mature, improving the associated technologies along the way, and wealth generated orders beyond the Carnegies Rockefellers and Vanderbilts combined.
- dhosek 2y ago
  I’ve had an idea for a sci fi story lurking in the back of my head of an earth-based cartel sabotaging space mining to preserve the value of their precious metals. The catch is being able to communicate the economics in a way that’s both accurate and entertaining.
  - blooalien 2y ago
    As long as you double-check it's work, you could always ask an LLM for help with some of that, maybe? I'd install something local like Ollama or somesuch and download one of the larger more popular more recent models and give it an appropriate system prompt related to being a "writing assistant" or something like that. Then bounce ideas off it and maybe throw a few related articles at it for "context" to work with. It's one of the things a lotta recent LLMs are actually useful for and somewhat good at.

adrian_b 2y ago

In the whole Earth the abundances of the elements are similar to the averages of the Solar System, with the exception of some volatile elements, most of them being non-metals, which have been lost in space during the condensation of the Earth and also later. However the Earth is made of layers with different chemical compositions and many elements are concentrated in layers that are too far from the surface to hope that we will ever reach them. So in the accessible part of the Earth, close to the surface, those elements are seriously depleted. Some asteroids, unlike the Earth, have never been melted. In that case their composition is homogeneous, similar to the averages of the Solar System. Other asteroids are broken parts from the cores of bigger planets, so they have a composition like in the Earth at very high depths. However, in the latter kind of asteroids the useful metals are dissolved as tiny percentages in an iron-nickel-cobalt-germanium alloy. This will make their extraction incredibly energy-consuming. On Earth such metals have been separated during millions of years from their surrounding minerals and they have been accumulated as native nuggets or metallic sulfides that are very easy to process for their final separation and purification. With the alloy that exists in planet cores and asteroids nobody has demonstrated an efficient separation method yet. The laboratory methods used for such separations use huge amounts of water and acids and they will be impossible to implement on an asteroid. Carrying raw metal from asteroids, which is almost completely iron, would also increase the costs tremendously. So it is absurd to even consider asteroid mining before demonstrating a method that can extract the metals from iron at the mining sites and with a minimum consumption of energy and of non-recyclable reactants.

yowzadave 2y ago

> gold, nickel, and / or iron that's supposedly worth many times more than the entire global economy You hear these statements sometimes about asteroid mining, and they betray a misunderstanding of the way economies work. The reason gold/etc. is expensive is because it is scarce. If we suddenly have an abundance of these materials, then they will be cheap. The intrinsic value of these metals is not worth multiples of the global economy.

DennisP 2y ago
For precious metals that doesn't necessarily mean it's not worth going to get them in large quantities. Aluminum used to be more precious than gold. Now we make airplanes out of it.
- nsxwolf 2y ago
  Soda cans too!
- beerandt 2y ago
  It's a pretty good example with the difference being energy to retrieve vs energy to refine. Even with/if there's a 'flood the market' eventuality, you'd have approx multiple generations for the market to grow and mature, improving the associated technologies along the way, and wealth generated orders beyond the Carnegies Rockefellers and Vanderbilts combined.
dhosek 2y ago
I’ve had an idea for a sci fi story lurking in the back of my head of an earth-based cartel sabotaging space mining to preserve the value of their precious metals. The catch is being able to communicate the economics in a way that’s both accurate and entertaining.
- blooalien 2y ago
  As long as you double-check it's work, you could always ask an LLM for help with some of that, maybe? I'd install something local like Ollama or somesuch and download one of the larger more popular more recent models and give it an appropriate system prompt related to being a "writing assistant" or something like that. Then bounce ideas off it and maybe throw a few related articles at it for "context" to work with. It's one of the things a lotta recent LLMs are actually useful for and somewhat good at.