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Asteroid Resources Could Make Science Fiction Dreams and Nightmares a Reality
MarkWhittington writes "With two private companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, proposing to set up asteroid mining, the prospect of accessing limitless wealth beyond the Earth has caused a bit of media speculation about what that could mean. The question arises, could asteroid resources be used to create the greatest dreams — and perhaps the worst nightmares — of science fiction?"
Something might happen... or not.
They completely left out the notion of a Dyson Sphere in this horribly written "article".
Now, I still think the idea of mining an asteroid is - well a long time off.
But, the reason for doing so would be that the incentive to mine an asteroid is insanely high - for instance, supplies on earth run low and the price is through the roof, many factors of what it is today.
Then you have the economic incentive to build a space ship and dig for that substance on another planet.
Much like deep sea drilling for oil. If oil is $5 a barrel, there isn't much incentive to build massive platforms to drill. At $100 a barrel, the incentive is there. Investment seeks the highest rates of returns.
If you found an asteroid that could provide every human 1000 pounds of platinum and could easily mine it - platinum isn't going to stick to $1000+ an oz, it would be insanely cheap.
Wealth based on what? Real estate, or other things that are both durable and widely used? Nope. Precious metals. But, what good is gold or platinum if everyone has a brick or two of it lying around? Some things will become more affordable (meaning the wealth of everyone will go up) because once-precious metals will find their way into products in ways that actually improve them, but overall not much will change even if we manage to start bringing home tons and tons of some metal that is only valued because it's rare.
We tend to have a naive feeling that we understand the solar system, that it is really just like Earth, but with craters or whatever. It isn't, and we don't.
Given that the vast majority of those naive people will never ever have any impact on space activities, I really don't see the point of the observation. Instead, you should be asking what people who actually plan to do anything in space have as their understanding of space.
Their basis is the laws of physics, which so far have shown to work just the same on Earth as in space. And they've done a lot of remarkable stuff in space that requires more than a ignorant human's understanding of space in order to perform.
NASA's Near Earth Object Program's website, quoting the 1990s-era book "Mining the Sky," suggests that there is in the asteroid belt alone enough wealth to provide everyone on Earth $100 billion.
Except that, you know, if gold were as abundent as steel it would also be $0.06/pound scrap value so that's not actually true. So you go bring back a bunch of iridium, it's not worth thousands of dollars per pound anymore either. One asteroid alone could hold enough of a rare material to up the worlwide supply by 10x or 100x or who knows. That would single handedly crash the market before the company could even get a chance to sell it. So then they'd have to be a big, evil monopoly and artificially slow down the flow of supply like oil or Nintnedo Wiis so the price stays high and everyone hates that.
One of the major concerns that isn't mentioned is what happens to earth-bound mining companies and their markets when these trillions of dollars of minerals arrive?
Yep; Heinlein's Future History already covered this; DeBeers and their lobbying efforts made it illegal to import moon diamonds. The same will happen to gold and platinum from asteroids. Banned for public health reasons because of all the solar radiation that's contaminating them.
"We"?
Why must morons project their own ignorance to everyone? It's like an opposite Dunning-Kruger effect - they find something hard to comprehend, so they assume it is equally hard for everyone, and attribute any expression of knowledge or enthusiasm as naivete.