Thanks Red Badger. Hate to be cranky, however, although I'd like to say, in before the idiots, it's not true.
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Posted on 07/17/2015 1:58:36 PM PDT by Red Badger
You could end up selling gravel at a higher price than platinum.
People smart enough to figure out a way to get the platinum down to earth and savvy enough to raise the capital to do so, are going to understand the importance of controlling the market. Enough will be released to stimulate new uses for the metal and perpetuate its demand, but not so much as to flood the market. Think De Beers, and count on it.
Outstanding post, ElkGroveDan!
There IS intelligent life on planet earth, after all. Just not in the media.
Hey, I have a full set of McDonalds Teeny Beenies from 1996 that would beg to differ. One day those stupid toys are going to make me a millionaire.
You’ll need a lot of tractors, big ones. What kind of beam were you going to use? Softwood?
No doubt the price would go down, but Platinum has real industrial value and a lot of technologies are limited in application because of the cost of Platinum. Remember that Aluminium was once a precious metal until we figured out how to efficiently extract it and now it a common cheap and disposable thing in our lives, Imagine the economic growth if Platinum could realize a similar cost reduction.
Or wrapping sandwiches with it.
I just looked it up...
What is platinum used for?
-jewellery
-wire and vessels for laboratory use
-thermocouple elements
-electrical contacts
-corrosion-resistant apparatus in dentistry
-platinum-cobalt alloys have magnetic properties
-coating missile nose cones, jet engine fuel nozzles
-the metal, like palladium, absorbs large volumes of hydrogen, giving it up at red heat
-in the finely divided state platinum is an excellent catalyst (such as the contact process for producing sulphuric acid). Also as a catalyst for cracking oil and as a catalyst in fuel cells and in catalytic converters for cars
-platinum anodes are extensively used in cathodic protection systems for large ships and ocean-going vessels, pipelines, steel piers
-platinum wire glows red hot when placed in the vapor of methanol - acting as a catalyst to convert the alcohol into formaldehyde. This phenomenon has been used commercially to produce cigarette lighters and hand warmers
-sealed electrodes in glass systems
-laboratory vessels, corrosion-resistant equipment
-dentistry
-currently fashionable use in antipollution devices in cars
-cis-platin, [PtCl2(NH3)2], is an effective drug for certain types of cancer such as leukaemia or testicular cancer
-platinum/osmium 90/10 alloy is used in implants such as pacemakers and replacement valves
If they captured it, mined the platinum thus creating a surplus amount of platinum on Earth....wouldn’t the price of platinum plunge to near zero thus making the whole episode worthless????
“Asteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass within 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) from Earth on Sunday - 30 times closer than our nearest planet.”
And about 6 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.
“Introduce 100 million tons and it will be 10 cents a pound.”
Correct, that’s only 20 billion.
Actually, it would be best to bring it into orbit around Earth, but that too would be an immensely difficult task ... and dangerous if a mistake is made calculating the energy needed to divert it into orbit.
Platinum spark plug cores? No, I have a platinum pickup with platinum wheels.
If it were to be possible to capture this asteroid in Earth orbit and then redirect it to impact The Mall in Washington D.C., it's value would be worth a lot more than $5.4 million.
What conversion rate are you using? I wouldn't ask if you had wrote $5.4 Trillion.
Thanks Red Badger. Hate to be cranky, however, although I'd like to say, in before the idiots, it's not true.
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Precisely. The price of the metals would plunge, unless they hoarded it off planet and kept it off the market the way DeBeers does with diamonds.....................
That would be a very heavy truck!...........................
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