3 ms·
Bringing stuff down from space is not that expensive with reusable systems like Starship, and this is even more true if you don’t need to soft land it i.e., spr
by jessriedel 2y ago
Bringing stuff down from space is not that expensive with reusable systems like Starship, and this is even more true if you don’t need to soft land it i.e., spray an ablative on a huge rock of precious metals and redirect it to Earth. The delta V costs are quite small. There’s no fundamental physics barrier here.
- teractiveodular 2y agoThe going rate for a ton of iron ore is under $100. Pack 100 of those into a Starship, and your gross revenue will be a cool $10,000.
- jessriedel 2y agoIron is not precious. Marked to market, 100 tons of platinum is worth $3.2B. That’s a bit more than half the annual world production, so the price would fall significantly, but still easily be more than $1B.
- lucubratory 2y agoExactly, and people complaining that the price would fall so it wouldn't really be "that" valuable are missing the forest for the trees. Having a hundred times more platinum available to our civilisation (and platinum being a hundred times cheaper) because there are 200 shiploads of it coming down a year is going to drive innovation & utility in ways we can't even predict yet. Same goes for every other precious metal we can get in abundance from asteroids.