When chunks of crystallized carbon are more common that beach sand, what will they be worth?
“When chunks of crystallized carbon are more common that beach sand, what will they be worth?”
The same as a bucket full of sand.
Nail on the head, sir!
What a lot of people who talk about getting “valuable” stuff from Space totally overlook, or just don’t address,(for whatever reasons) are the supply demand cost substitution elasticity, (etc., etc.) effects/equations.
We are just not going to mine & refine Gold (for example) on Mars, and ship it back to the Earth.
“Resources” are going to have to present themselves to us in the Realm in which they are required to keep us alive, and we will have to learn new ways to extract what we need, in situ.
(The economy of the Earth, for all practical purposes, is a closed system.)
Oxygen and Water, for example, are far more ‘valuable’ in Space, than is a whole asteroid made up of Platinum.
The Moon for example, has water-ice, and from H2O you can make hydrogen and oxygen, ‘precious metals’ are also present, but they can’t be readily, easily, and extracted less costly than on Earth, for immediate us in place.