I have the complete Carl Barks Library, reprinting every story he ever did.
Posted on 06/12/2018 10:14:02 AM PDT by Red Badger
The world’s first trillionaire won’t come from cryptocurrency or some clever new app – he or she will become rich from asteroid mining. _____________________________________________________________________
That’s what bankers Goldman Sachs reckon, anyway – and several companies are now vying to be the first into space.
NASA estimates that the total value of asteroids out there could be up to $700 quintillion – equivalent to £75 billion each for us here on Earth.
Several companies are now buidling the machines which will take us there – including Deep Space Industries, which is building a steam-powered thruster for spacecraft, the Guardian reports.
British company AMC (Asteroid Mining Corporation), hopes to send tiny spacecraft out to grab platinum (common in asteroids, and very pricey on Earth) and then use the metal to finance bigger missions.
American companies such as Planetary Resources – backed by Titanic director James Cameron – are already planning to send robotic vehicles to mine precious metals and rare resources from asteroids.
Some have predicted that the mineral wealth is so vast it could destroy our world’s economy.
NASA’s Psyche mission is set to launch in 2022 – and will target a metal-rich asteroid known as 16 Psyche, estimated to be worth £8,000 quadrillion.
Christian Schroeder of the University of Stirling says, ‘Asteroids crossing Earth’s orbit may become convenient targets for mining operations, providing materials that are running out on Earth.’
Psyche principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe said earlier this year that the 124-mile wide asteroid would be worth the astronomical sum if we could somehow drag it back to Earth.
Elkins Tanton said, ‘Even if we could grab a big metal piece and drag it back here … what would you do?
‘Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource – kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately – and protect your market? What if you decided you were going to bring it back and you were just going to solve the metal resource problems of humankind for all time? This is wild speculation obviously.’
“you need to get it back down”
Eh ... just fly over the Earf and throw it out the window. That rerenty-friction nonsense only applies to spacecraft, right? :-P
Yes it's free except that instead of paying for extraction and reprocessing costs you merely have to pay shipping costs.
Exactly the very story I thought of, too!! I credit my thrifty ways to reading Uncle Scrooge comics as a kid. I still read them, and have many issues stored in boxes in the closet.
Yup, failure to understand basic economics. If gold were the most common thing on earth, it would be worse less than mud. Soda cans would be made from the stuff, to be thrown away. Worthless. It’s why these grand ideas to mine asteroids to get rich are all dicey at best. Better to mine them to get useful things that are rare here so we can build / make things, not to make everyone billionaires.
Then a small Coke will cost $1,000,000.
I have the complete Carl Barks Library, reprinting every story he ever did.
Well, the space elevator is vaporware. We don’t possess the materials capable of withstanding the stresses that would be put on the cable.
A space station and multi stage rockets to get stuff up to it is real technology, the R & D is already done, so the costs to implement are known quantities.
Steering a 124 mile wide asteroid toward earth. What could go wrong?
Double Ditto to your comments. Last year I spent the most interesting plane ride of my life sitting next to a former air force office that now was in charge of managing grant money for NASA. He was flying back to Houston from a visit to Dartmouth College among other institutions.
He was specifically involved in funding to find solutions to your:
2. effects of micro gravity on the human body.
3. the damage that cosmic radiation does on the human body.
Under number #2 the biggest problems were bone loss and changes to your eyeballs. People become near sited in space and shorter. Plus you have muscle loss. At Dartmouth they were working on measuring the effects of low gravity on your eye balls.
Under number #3 he told me of a fabric that was being tested that had 10x the tensile strength of Kevlar. It was millimeters thick. He also told me of other college/university grants he monitored that were working on materials that could block radiation with a very light mass/thickness.
Many of these experiments end up on the International Space station.
Goldman, Sachs. Supposedly THE premier investment banking firm on the PLANET.
Yet they hire someone who apparently skipped all of their Economics classes, particularly the part about how increased supply leads to lower prices...and allow him to publish an utterly absurd report like this on their letterhead.
Methinks that GS isn’t all that its cracked up to be.
“Gold has so many unique qualities, that I would expect the same thing to happen if it became more affordable. “
I don’t challenge that cheaper and far more abundant gold would produce lots of opportunities and wealth...but this report is Class A Crapola.
Here ya go. ALL Disney comics here scanned into PDF files. This is the US page.
http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Uncle-Scrooge-1953
“Under number #3 he told me of a fabric that was being tested that had 10x the tensile strength of Kevlar. It was millimeters thick. He also told me of other college/university grants he monitored that were working on materials that could block radiation with a very light mass/thickness.”
Here’s US 24 - The Twenty-four Carat Moon.
http://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Uncle-Scrooge-1953/Issue-24?id=57871#3
“and in most clothing.”
He told my wife and I the material they were testing was as thick as the nylon on my wife’s insulated ski jacket. The other practical use for the material was battlefield injuries. Especially gun shot holes.
I checked out his credentials after we got off the plane in Atlanta. He was a retired Lt. Colonel from the US Air Force. He was a pilot, navigator and bombardier. He also trained to be a astronaut for the shuttle, but was never picked. He was in mission control. Now he oversees the grant money that NASA gives to colleges and universities. We are now friends on Linkedin.
Mining, agriculture, and processing to upgrade a raw material create wealth. Two out of three done by robotics should work on an asteroid.
Even comic book writers in the ‘80s understood this. An alien turned an office building into gold, thinking he was helping. The government ended up dumping it it the Mariana Trench (or some equivalent thereof).
Stupid old Spider-Man, meanwhile, had taken a now-gold memo pad from a trash can in the building. He felt so guilty he put it with the other gold and allowed it to be disposed.
I see logistics problems with this proposal.
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