Leaving aside the not insignificant economic and safety concerns, I'm interested in the technical feasibility of extracting minerals from asteroids in useful quantities. On earth, we extract minerals concentrated by geological and biological processes [wikipedia.org] that are unlikely to have occurred on an inert asteroid.
What do we know about the distribution of minerals within asteroids, what more do we need to know in order to design machines that can extract these minerals, and what can you speculate about how those ma
Sure, but when you're talking about quantities like that, it crashes the market. Who can buy a quadrillion dollars' worth of anything?
That's not a reason not to do it, of course. But as far as capitalism goes it's kind of a catch-22. It's expensive because it's rare, but spend $100 billion getting an asteroid full of it and it's now so common as to be worthless. So in my question I wanted to avoid those kinds of questions. I'm just curious about the machines.
Sure, but when you're talking about quantities like that, it crashes the market. Who can buy a quadrillion dollars' worth of anything?
Shhh... don't say that... or the copyright cartels will have to explain how they've lost more to piracy than the next 100 years of the economic output of planet Earth. Stock valuations will have to be reconsidered. Executive bonuses recalculated.
There are business models which rely heavily on made up projections of value.
Business models!! Don't go messing with business m
Well yes, obviously if some company captured that asteroid and dumped that much platinum on the world market at dirt-cheap prices, the price would crash (to whatever price they sold it at). But they'd probably limit the supply of the material (since they have so much of it relative to anyone else) to keep the price from crashing too much, plus they'd still make tons of money selling it. And don't forget, their acquisition costs would be huge (no one's captured an asteroid before), so they're not going to
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
-- Sagan
Asteroid Mining (Score:5, Interesting)
Leaving aside the not insignificant economic and safety concerns, I'm interested in the technical feasibility of extracting minerals from asteroids in useful quantities. On earth, we extract minerals concentrated by geological and biological processes [wikipedia.org] that are unlikely to have occurred on an inert asteroid.
What do we know about the distribution of minerals within asteroids, what more do we need to know in order to design machines that can extract these minerals, and what can you speculate about how those ma
Re: (Score:2)
From what I read, we recently just missed an asteroid that was estimated to have a quadrillion dollars' worth of platinum in it.
Re:Asteroid Mining (Score:2)
Sure, but when you're talking about quantities like that, it crashes the market. Who can buy a quadrillion dollars' worth of anything?
That's not a reason not to do it, of course. But as far as capitalism goes it's kind of a catch-22. It's expensive because it's rare, but spend $100 billion getting an asteroid full of it and it's now so common as to be worthless. So in my question I wanted to avoid those kinds of questions. I'm just curious about the machines.
Re: (Score:2)
Shhh ... don't say that ... or the copyright cartels will have to explain how they've lost more to piracy than the next 100 years of the economic output of planet Earth. Stock valuations will have to be reconsidered. Executive bonuses recalculated.
There are business models which rely heavily on made up projections of value.
Business models!! Don't go messing with business m
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for having my back. Almost got myself in trouble in there.
The Emperor's clothes are beautiful, the Emperor's clothes are beautiful, the Emperor's clothes...
Re: (Score:2)
Well yes, obviously if some company captured that asteroid and dumped that much platinum on the world market at dirt-cheap prices, the price would crash (to whatever price they sold it at). But they'd probably limit the supply of the material (since they have so much of it relative to anyone else) to keep the price from crashing too much, plus they'd still make tons of money selling it. And don't forget, their acquisition costs would be huge (no one's captured an asteroid before), so they're not going to