The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

i think i covered this topic with actual numbers not long ago. The comment "the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower" is complete BS. Putting a rocket launched vehicle into the vicinity of an asteroid is relatively easy and cheap. Putting the necessary equipment on an asteroid to extract and process material would not be cheap or simple. In addition, mining an asteroid would not be a matter of launching and parking 1 extra-terrestrial vehicle on a random asteroid. Not all asteroids are identical and mining a homogenous asteroid would be no more intelligent or economic than mining your backyard.

Then there's the part about making use of the mined material. What's the point of have a refined chunk of Pt a few million km's from Earth? I suspect it would be more intelligent and economic to mine iron or nickel from a random asteroid than Pt - but Pt sounds way more sexy so it gets trotted out for the easily enthralled public (since we all need the occasional distraction from the trumpian antic of the day - a concept crying for an acronym)

Pt is becoming just another commodity metal whose technological applications are being supplanted by other materials and technologies so anyone foisting asteroid mining on investors is more of a con-man than an investment visionary. Whoever wrote Armageddon wasnt in the same league as Jules Verne.