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The VW engines produce less nox per mile than a gasoline engine, but more per gallon

Inaccurate. NOx is measured per mile, not per gallon, and Diesel engines produce more NOx per mile.

http://www.technology.matthey....
https://www.dieselnet.com/tech...
somewhat less technical: https://www.quora.com/Why-does...
http://www.livescience.com/522...

Or the news articles that went around last month about the asteroid that just buzzed by with $5 trillion worth of platinum on it.

Clearly no RoI there.

If you ever managed to mine that platinum, it wouldn't be worth $5 trillion any more. It's a commodity. The market would collapse. Gross demand for platinum in 2013 was only about 260 metric tonnes.

The only stuff likely worth sending to Earth would be gold, platinum, and other largely worthless materials

Your disdain for precious metals is as touching as it is naive. People have valued them for centuries and millenia — and not without reason. Gold is resistant to corrosion, suppressive of bacteria, beautiful, and easy to work. Pure gold is soft, but addition of trivial amounts of alloys solves that problem (when it is a problem) easily. Ask any dentist — golden crowns are still the best, even if one might prefer something else for front teeth.

Platinum is, probably, even more useful. I'd expect, that if we find a use for the serious amounts of what you call "really valuable stuff" (iron, nickel, copper) in space, we'll also need all the platinum and gold we can find there.

How would cheap platinum help anyone?

http://www.platinum.matthey.com/applications/ It's also used in 02 Sensors and spark plugs (for longevity)

The future of materials lies in making ever more sophisticated and better materials, not in making raw materials orders of magnitude cheaper

True, but you still need access to the most basic elements in the universe. Having them in abundance makes them cheaper. Having them cheaper opens up a whole vista of economic opportunities to invest R&D for new products based around said elements.

like to imagine a future where diamond is as cheap as glass. Or where I can insulate my house with aerogel. Or cables are made of carbon-nanotubes, or spider silk.

Clearly the problem with the aforementioned is lack of R&D and production that scales economically, not the need for raw materials. The brick wall here is pure knowledge. Solve that, and you can rest assured knowing such products will be available soon.

To complain about this. Asimov himself had begun the work of integrating the Robot stories with his Foundation/Galactic Empire stories. All kinds of prequels and sequels were written by the master himself and by other authors and this is just more of the same. Details here.

Now, here is my question. In the original I Robot stories, the robot's positronic brains were made out of something referred to as Platinum-Iridium sponge. As this is written, Platinum is $1325/troy oz. and Iridium is $425. Aren't you grateful that real computers are made out of silicon. Was any adjustment of technology made in the subsequent Robot stories?

Huh? High grade manufactured silicon is already worth more than its weight in gold or platinum. If replacing the silicon with gold was useful, people would be doing it already (at least on high end chips).

To complain about this. Asimov himself had begun the work of integrating the Robot stories with his Foundation/Galactic Empire stories. All kinds of prequels and sequels were written by the master himself and by other authors and this is just more of the same. Details here.

Now, here is my question. In the original I Robot stories, the robot's positronic brains were made out of something referred to as Platinum-Iridium sponge. As this is written, Platinum is $1325/troy oz. and Iridium
is $425. Aren't you grateful that real computers are made out of silicon. Was any adjustment of technology made in the subsequent Robot stories?

2) platinum can be, and is, recycled. petrol can't [in any meaningfull way, AFAIK - and I'm a Chemical Engineer].