Posted on 06/12/2018 10:14:02 AM PDT by Red Badger
The world’s first trillionaire won’t come from cryptocurrency or some clever new app – he or she will become rich from asteroid mining. _____________________________________________________________________
That’s what bankers Goldman Sachs reckon, anyway – and several companies are now vying to be the first into space.
NASA estimates that the total value of asteroids out there could be up to $700 quintillion – equivalent to £75 billion each for us here on Earth.
Several companies are now buidling the machines which will take us there – including Deep Space Industries, which is building a steam-powered thruster for spacecraft, the Guardian reports.
British company AMC (Asteroid Mining Corporation), hopes to send tiny spacecraft out to grab platinum (common in asteroids, and very pricey on Earth) and then use the metal to finance bigger missions.
American companies such as Planetary Resources – backed by Titanic director James Cameron – are already planning to send robotic vehicles to mine precious metals and rare resources from asteroids.
Some have predicted that the mineral wealth is so vast it could destroy our world’s economy.
NASA’s Psyche mission is set to launch in 2022 – and will target a metal-rich asteroid known as 16 Psyche, estimated to be worth £8,000 quadrillion.
Christian Schroeder of the University of Stirling says, ‘Asteroids crossing Earth’s orbit may become convenient targets for mining operations, providing materials that are running out on Earth.’
Psyche principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe said earlier this year that the 124-mile wide asteroid would be worth the astronomical sum if we could somehow drag it back to Earth.
Elkins Tanton said, ‘Even if we could grab a big metal piece and drag it back here … what would you do?
‘Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource – kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately – and protect your market? What if you decided you were going to bring it back and you were just going to solve the metal resource problems of humankind for all time? This is wild speculation obviously.’
Supply/demand is missing from this analysis.
That’s the good news. The bad news is a loaf of bread would then cost a $1,000,000.
Thus a happy meal at Micky D’s would be a million bucks ?
Yep
Idiots. If everyone had this much, it would have the worth of gravel. Stupid socialists.
Everyone will have gold toilet seats, and porcelain sinks will be a luxury item :P
I guess the idea of scarcity eludes these idiots???
Pie in the Sky. the cost alone would be monumental. I never understood the concept of populating other planets without oxygen and other such minutiae that is critical to infrastructure. Unless the gold mining operations were all robotic it just doesn’t seem plausible to me, at least with the technological level that we are currently experiencing.
In my limited and under-experienced (MBA,EE) humbled opinion (absolutely devoid of astronautics), I think we are at least a 100 years away from reaching anything remotely close to that lofty goal. Maybe a 150 years. Yet, everyone’s talking like it can happen tomorrow, we’re stalled reaching Mars at this juncture. And all of this stuff costs lots of money that we probably should prioritize to taking care of what’s wrong with our planet and populations that need bolstering.
why are they called hemorrhoids and not asteroids?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Financial_Fable
Scrooge McDuck is running a farm, employing his nephews as farmhands. While Huey, Dewey and Louie enjoy working, Donald Duck is tired of labour and quits the job, joining his lucky cousin Gladstone Gander in searching for luck and money.
Scrooge keeps all his money in a corn crib at the farm. When a cyclone hits the crib, the cash is spread all over the area. Scrooge is not upset, knowing that if he and his young nephews keep working, they will get the money back soon enough.
Meanwhile, Gladstone is demonstrating his unbelievable luck, holding out his hat and asking for some money to land in it. Two million of Scrooge's dollars then fall down from the sky and land in the hat. The two cousins decide to spend the money on traveling, and drive to the local village to buy gas. When they arrive, they learn that money has been raining over the villagers too, and now that everyone is a millionaire, no one is working anymore. Therefore, they cannot buy gas, or take the bus, or even buy good shoes so that they can walk to a town where they can buy something. Donald gives up, and returns to his uncle, where he gets his job back, while Gladstone gives Donald his million and goes fishing. Scrooge informs him that if he wants to eat eggs for breakfast, they cost a million each.
Eventually, all the new millionaires go to Scrooge's farm to buy food and perhaps get a job. With the prices having drastically increased — an egg now costs one million dollars, as does a ham, and a cabbage costs two million — Scrooge soon gets all of his money back, and everything is back to normal.
Analysis
The message of the story has been described as politically right-wing. Ed Natcher of Prism Comics wrote that Barks "wrote from a socio-economic viewpoint that was somewhat to the right of Ayn Rand" and that the story could make "any Bush blush with envy at its conservative credentials". Donaldist Jon Gisle called the story "a classic defence of the capitalistic system".
Gunnar Bårdsen, a Norwegian professor of economics, has pointed out the similarities between the story and Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman's 1969 theories of "helicopter money".
Barks himself called "A Financial Fable" a "story of easy riches" and said that the message of the story surely would get him "in a cell in a Siberian gulag someday."
Sounds like Rob Waugh skipped Economics in skool.
-—yes-—starting with the energy expenditure to get “stuff” into space and then the fact that you need to get it back down makes all of this silly—
Transportation costs are absent in the analysis...
If everyone is a millionaire, no one is a millionaire.
I don’t
see the savings unless someone has some sort of
technology that will make mining asteroids much less
expensive than earth metals and minerals.
See, “Cowboys and Aliens”.
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