Astronomy / Space The golden asteroid that could make everyone on Earth a billionaire

lysan

lysan
Whether it was the Big Bang, Midas or God himself, we don’t really need to unlock the mystery of the origins of gold when we’ve already identified an asteroid worth $700 quintillion in precious heavy metals.
If anything launches this metals mining space race, it will be this asteroid--Psyche 16, taking up residence between Mars and Jupiter and carrying around enough heavy metals to net every single person on the planet close to a trillion dollars.
The massive quantities of gold, iron and nickel contained in this asteroid are mind-blowing. The discovery has been made. Now, it’s a question of proving it up.
NASA plans to do just that, beginning in 2022.

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https://www.rt.com/business/462703-golden-asteroid-everyone-billionaire/
 

Remus

Remus
Talk about a gold nugget!

Nothing better than some good old Au to motivate the Americans for some space faring !

Just tell them not to forget to restock in limpets! ^^

PS: meanwhile, where was that diamond planet again ?

Edit: Russia Today? I remain skeptical about this info.
 
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Chris Simon

Chris Simon
When (if) we start mining asteroids, one of two things will happen:

1) The resources will remain in hands of a couple individuals who will hoard the stuff and release only enough the keep the prices high to fill their pockets.
(We have this situation with diamonds, right now. Diamonds are abundant and we can make synthetic ones, but because the whole diamond market is in the hands of one company that managed to convice the whole population that they are precious and because they hoard them and only release small amount, they remain insanely pricey, although from the yield perspective they are worthless)

2) The newly mined ore will flood the market and gold will lose value completely, becoming an economic equivalent of gravel.

In either of these cases, no ordinary person is becoming a billionaire.
 
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Asmodeus

Asmodeus
When (if) we start mining asteroids, one of two things will happen:

1) The resources will remain in hands of a couple individuals who will hoard the stuff and release only enough the keep the prices high to fill their pockets.
(We have this situation with diamonds, right now. Diamonds are abundant and we can make synthetic ones, but because the whole diamond market is in the hands of one company that managed to convice the whole population that they are precious and because they hoard them and only release small amount, they remain insanely pricey, although from the yield perspective they are worthless)

2) The newly mined ore will flood the market and gold will lose value completely, coming an economic equivalent of gravel.

In either of these cases, no ordinary person is becoming a billionaire.
I suspect 2 would probably be the outcome.
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Click to expand...
 
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metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Yep, all this would do is devalue gold (are you paying attention FD?), not make everyone millionaires. Would be interesting to see the people with gold investments and holdings scramble. The system designed to keep the 1% at 1% is a lot more resilient than that, they've got it covered.
 

Morbad

Morbad
amigacooke said:
Surely what will sustain the price of these commodities is the cost of extraction and transport?
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Still can't escape supply and demand. If it's cheaper to get the materials from Earth, there is no incentive to get them from space. Extraction for profit cannot begin until it can be done profitably and as extraction gets more economic, prices will fall purely due to the increased supply that becomes available...with some latency possible if one entity manages to secure a monopoly.
 

amigacooke

amigacooke
Morbad said:
Still can't escape supply and demand. If it's cheaper to get the materials from Earth, there is no incentive to get them from space. Extraction for profit cannot begin until it can be done profitably and as extraction gets more economic, prices will fall purely due to the increased supply that becomes available...with some latency possible if one entity manages to secure a monopoly.
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Indeed, but the cost of going to an asteroid are not low, so only those with access to capital will be able to play that game at all. So it's a game for governments, wealthy individuals, private limited companies or the Co-op :)
 

Northpin

Northpin
Where all that gold / heavy metals are coming from? All that i read about this asteroid mentions only a pretty mundane iron-nickel composition.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Morbad said:
Still can't escape supply and demand.
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For gold and diamonds we already do that excessively. Both are overabundant for all practical uses; industrial diamonds come by the bucket, and we can make better bling stones than anything DeBeers could hope to offer from their slave pits with nothing but a carbon source, electricity, and a bit of time, and productive uses for gold require so ridiculously tiny amounts that way over 80% go into bling and bullion.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Morbad said:
Impractical demand is still demand.
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But you'd kill that demand hard by increasing supply beyond control. People want the stuff because it's perceived rare, if you told them that there was suddenly more of the stuff available than has been refined over the entire course of history they'd lose interest because they couldn't offset themselves from the plebs any more.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Northpin said:
Where all that gold / heavy metals are coming from? All that i read about this asteroid mentions only a pretty mundane iron-nickel composition.
Click to expand...

Mundane nickel-iron asteroids often contain very high concentrations of precious metals relative to the surface of the Earth.

This asteroid is 140 miles in diameter. It's iron and nickel content alone, if it could be sold at current prices (obviously it can't, but this is just for scale purposes) is dozens of trillions of dollars. Relative to the nickel-iron content, the precious metals are a small portion, but still far greater than what's been extracted by humans thus far.

Shadowdancer said:
But you'd kill that demand hard by increasing supply beyond control. People want the stuff because it's perceived rare, if you told them that there was suddenly more of the stuff available than has been refined over the entire course of history they'd lose interest because they couldn't offset themselves from the plebs any more.
Click to expand...

Yes, tight supply itself certainly drives demand for status symbols.
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
amigacooke said:
Indeed, but the cost of going to an asteroid are not low, so only those with access to capital will be able to play that game at all. So it's a game for governments, wealthy individuals, private limited companies or the Co-op :)
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Well, things get cheaper as technology and procedures evolve. (Unless you're nVidia, of course)
Right now, btinging back 10 grams of asteroid back to Earth costs about 80 million. Maybe there will be day when getting a tonne will be under 60M and at that point it will be cheaper and somebody is going to do it
 
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