Christie's Set To Auction Space Rocks For Out Of This World Prices (networkworld.com)

coondoggie quotes a report from Networkworld: It's not everyday you could have the opportunity to buy a piece of space -- but Christie's London auction house will on April 20 offer about 80 meteorite pieces and a bunch of space-rock paraphernalia to go along with them. The collection -- consisting of a variety of space rocks from private and public collections -- is expected to sell for over a million dollars at the auction. The Valera Meteorite may be the most famous rock in the collection as it is purported to have killed a cow.

Comments

I have a space rock to auction

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a space rock for sale. It's a lot larger than the average they have on auction, so bid accordingly.

Specs:

- mean radius: 6,371.0 km (3,958.8 mi)
- mass: 5.97237x10^24 kg (1.31668x10^25 lb)
- mean density: 5.514 g/cm^3 (0.1992 lb/cu in)

It orbits somewhere around the star called Sol. Buyer collects.

Re:I have a space rock to auction

[shortscruffydave]

I'll take two. Can I get one of them gift-wrapped?

Re:I have a space rock to auction

[wonkey_monkey]

The pound or pound-mass (abbreviations: lb, lbm, lbm, [1]) is a unit of mass

Try again.

Re:I have a space rock to auction

[jratcliffe]

You'll have to ask Christo for a price quote.

Re:I have a space rock to auction

[malditaenvidia]

I'll give you 'bout three fiddy.

Re:I have a space rock to auction

[hcs_$reboot]

You should have sold the Moon, that'd have been more credible!

The million-dollar meteorite

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, for that kind of cash I'll purport to have killed a cow too.

Re:The million-dollar meteorite

[arglebargle_xiv]

I had a quick look at the catalogue and it's all famous meteorites. Non-famous ones are available for very little (heck, I have about a dozen of them sitting on a shelf). It's sort of like the difference between hiring George Clooney vs. Shlomo Gefiltashlep to do a bar mitzvah.

Re:The million-dollar meteorite

[Anonymous Coward]

For a bar mitzvah you need to butcher a cow, not seduce it. The meteorite wins hands-down over George Clooney here.

Re:step right up ladies and gentlemen

[Coisiche]

A cow? Boring. Show us one that killed a human.

You want a rock that killed a cow?

[sabbede]

I'll sell you two for a tenth of what they're looking for. That's right, a $2,000,000 value FOR ONLY $100,000!!!

Re:Uhhhh

[Cyphase]

They're really raffle tickets. The Vogons are coming, and YOU could be the lucky winner who gets to hitch a ride with the dolphins! Don't wait!

slashdot, ive got a deal for you.

[nimbius]

I hadnt paid close attention, but it seems like matter from space is far more popular than I'd assumed. In light of the recent Christies auction, im prepared to auction a nearly endless supply of unique matter formed from the very carbon from the stars that formed this galaxy. thats right...

Space turds.

Im prepared to offer one a day and while I understand this may sound extraordinarily generous to some I ask you to please hold your applause. I can ratchet this up to 4 auctions per day using exotic manufacturing facilities like taco trucks and even common run-of-the-mill local festivals and carnivals. And if im granted access to Arbys beef-and-cheddar technology augmented with arbys "sauce" then the skies the limit. So dont wait, slashdot. reserve your ancient space turd now.

Re:step right up ladies and gentlemen

[pscottdv]

No... a god!

This says more about the buyers than the rocks.

[duckintheface]

The value (as with most things) lies not in the rocks but in the attitude of the buyers. The rocks are deemed as special because they came from another place and have a documented history (killed a cow). But that is the perception of a buyer with a very Earth-centric view. In fact, Earth is a big rock in space and every clod on it's surface is a "space rock".

Once we become a space-faring civilization, this rarity value attached to non-Earth rocks will seem very quaint. Since almost all the matter in the universe is "non-Earth", it will be Earth rocks that will have the value of the rare.

Re:This says more about the buyers than the rocks.

[MightyYar]

Are you the same, angry AC that posts every time someone talks about inhabiting other planets or are there actually more than one of you?

I know this is flamebait, but it's like a broken record.

Re:This says more about the buyers than the rocks.

[MightyYar]

It seems pretty arrogant to assume you know all about the future. The main limit boils down to energy, and there are certainly energy technologies awaiting an engineering solution. I'd be surprised if we ended up with a permanent base on Mars in my lifetime, but not shocked to my core. I would be shocked if a larger colony ended up there, but in 1000 or 10,000 years? The only thing that would shock me about that is living to see it.

Re:This says more about the buyers than the rocks.

[amicusNYCL]

Any rational look at reality will show that space is a dead end. There will NOT be this glorious ascension of "we" into the heavens. OK? Sinking in yet?

That conclusion seems a little bit ridiculous. Humanity is, what, about 200,000 years old? It took us about that long to develop the ability of controlled powered heavier-than-air flight, in 1903. Then in the 40s we figured out how to split the atom. And by the 1960s we had landed manned space craft on the moon. So it took us ~200,000 years until we figured out and had the ability to build an airplane, and then less than 70 years after doing that we were standing on the moon, and by now we have sent space craft to every planet. Yes, "we". I'm referring to members of Homo sapiens sapiens; I'm making a wild assumption that you're also a member of that group even though I only have circumstantial evidence.

If we can land multiple manned spacecraft on the moon, then the path from there to building a structure on the moon is not that far off. Maybe 50, 100, 200 years. Not long at all. Once we can build 1 structure on the moon then we can build 10, and we can link them and have them perform the various functions necessary to sustain human life (harvesting energy, food, water, etc). So the idea of a self-sufficient base or city on the moon is probably within the range of a few hundred years. That's a drop in the bucket. And if we can do that on the moon, then why can't we do it on another planet like Mars? What, will that take another 500 years or so of further development and testing? Big deal. If we can build a base like that on another planet, then what's stopping us from building bases on the moons of all of the outer planets? Another few hundred years? Then, with the experience of being able to build self-sufficient structures to house humans on nearly every kind of habitable solid area in the solar system, then why can't we build a large ship to do the same purpose, but as it travels through space instead of being stuck on one body? And if we can build a large ship capable of sustaining a human population, then why can't we send that ship to another star?

It took us 200,000 years to reach heavier-than-air flight, and then less than 70 years for a man to stand on the moon. The only thing between "us" and a permanent settlement around another star is time. Maybe it will take another 10,000 years, who knows? About 11,000 years ago we were just figuring out how to cultivate agriculture, and now we're powering nations with nuclear energy while we talk to each other on the internet. Are you located in the building next to me, or are you halfway around the world, or at a research station in Antarctica? I can't even tell, because all of us can communicate with each other.

The planet Mars has 13 artificial satellites in orbit, 9 vehicles have safely reached its surface (Opportunity has been operational on the surface for over 12 years now, by the way), and you don't think that we're ever going to be able to build a city anywhere other than the Earth. Your sense of rationality is highly skewed.

Re:This says more about the buyers than the rocks.

[gstoddart]

Once we become a space-faring civilization, this rarity value attached to non-Earth rocks will seem very quaint.

What a strange way of thinking of it ... so we have a Venn diagram, and then it's Earth and non-Earth. That's a little too simplistic.

In your scenario, we'll have Earth, Mars, Venus, Alpha Centauri, Vulcan, Ceti Alpha V, and what have you. But they'll all be boring because they're "not Earth".

They may not be universally valuable, but like people collect souvenirs, they'll have some sentimental attachment. Or they'll be sufficiently rare as toe have a degree of uniqueness.

Even if we were space faring, a rock from the furthest planet in the universe is worth more than the one you're standing on, because it's harder to get another one.

The reality is, there's a relatively small amount of material we call "non-Earth" which we can access. You're right, they are deemed special because they come from someplace else, and not everybody can have one.

But you'd have to be a space faring species who can instantaneously travel anywhere in the universe to say that rocks from further away and harder to get won't have some cachet to them.

It's not like we'd become a space faring civilization (assuming we ever actually do before we go extinct) and suddenly all sense of distance and place of origin disappears.

But you sounds jaded about space rock to an extent that seems to imply you figure you'll have access to rocks from the entire universe within a few weeks. Right now, here on planet Earth, in any meaningful sense of the word ... "space rocks" are very rare, and to people who really want them, quite valuable.

But it will always be true that the further away it's from, and the harder to get it is, the more value people will assign to it.

Re:step right up ladies and gentlemen

[justthinkit]

Please click the Network World link because of course meteors and computer networks are practically the same thing.

Is this how desperate content sites have become?

TWEET!

Re:step right up ladies and gentlemen

[RogueyWon]

I hadn't realised that "killing a cow" was such a value-booster. I spy a business opportunity here.

Buy up items which could conceivably be used to kill a cow: shovels, pickaxes, trampolines (that one needs a bit of creativity) and so on. Use them to kill cows, then re-sell at a profit.

What could possibly go wrong?

Earthly rocks are from the same stars

[rmdingler]

Earthmen routinely pay $5000US per gram for some of them.

Re:Uhhhh

[Quirkz]

1) A rock that hasn't had all that yucky life stuff on it for the last 3 billion years.

OR

2) Long odds that it'll crack open and reveal it's a space egg, so you can be the first human to be eaten by alien life.

Who knows? Not me.

[stud9920]

Can we meet face to face ?

Re:Uhhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Showing off how rich they are.

If killing cows matter that much...

[GuB-42]

Buy cheap meteorite, find cow, kill cow with meteorite (tricky but doable), you now have a $2M meteorite.
Who said the cow had to be killed by the fall.

Re:If killing cows matter that much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I can't resist:

Meteorites are for cows ... You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOO! MOOOO! Moo cows MOOOO! Cow say... OUCH!

And The Cow ...

[Toad-san]

is going for how much?

Dumbest investment ever.

[dsmatthews9379]

The Australian outback is full of space rocks, and given the rise of automated solar powered vehicles it is only a matter of time before somebody figures out how to harvest them on a huge scale for very little cost. http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016...

Re: This says more about the buyers than the rocks

[amicusNYCL]

So what? The reason we aren't routinely sending manned missions outside of Earth orbit only has to do with politics, not technology. We are technically capable of doing things that there is little political will to fund. Maybe once China starts getting itself established on the moon then the US will decide to take a more active role again in the name of "pride" or some shit, when it should really be done now for its own sake.

All of this is to say that over the next 1,000 years nearly anything is possible. Maybe we'll nuke ourselves into oblivion. Maybe we'll settle another solar system. Maybe somewhere in between. Technical limitations are the least of our worries. Politics and war will always be a threat to progress long before we hit any technical block that we can't pass.