• BakerBagel@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    8 months ago

    Asteroid mining is incompatible with current capitalism. Say you harvest an asteroid with 100,000 of platinum in it. You in theory now have trollions of dollars in platinum for the $40 billion you spent harvesting the asteroid, only you have now quadrupled the amount of platinum in the economy, crayering the price and totally ruining your company. It’s obviously a net good for humanity as a scarce resource is now abundant, but it is bad for capitalism because the ones who finaced the work are the biggest loser.

    • Saigonauticon@voltage.vn
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      8 months ago

      No you’ve got it backward. The mining is a cover. You look for celestial bodies that require only a small delta-v to redirect to a collision event.

      It’s a proper hostage situation, once you’ve got the infrastructure to replicate it more cheaply than people can defend against it.

        • Saigonauticon@voltage.vn
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Oh yeah. I’d consult on that for sure. Tricking Silicon Valley to invest in something that then holds Earth hostage instead. Fun plot.

          …although I bet they’d still invest if you just told them. As long as the financials work.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      I did some googling and math. Global platinum market is 8 million oz a year. Current spot price is ~$900. That’s $7T per year. They would have a monopoly and be able to shut down all mines by undercutting the price selling at say $800/oz. If it cost $40 Billion to mine the asteroid, that means it would take 7 years to pay back the cost.

      7 year payback is short for businesses. Commercial Solar is installed despite having a 10 year payback.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      I think if mining economy worked like that, Saudi Arabia would have gone bankrupt by cratering the price of oil.

      • BakerBagel@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Oil jas constant demand and the Saudis have so much of it that it costs them very little to drill for it and store it. And digging a new well doesn’t immediately flood the market with 4x the annual production of oil.

        I’m not arguing against asteroid mining. I am saying that it is fundamentally impossible under our current capitalist system. That’s why there has been zero advances in the concept in iver a decade.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          They don’t have to sell all the platinum immediately. Just like DeBeers has mountains of diamonds they keep locked up in warehouses to keep the price controlled.