• floo@retrolemmy.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    The only thing is a real value in the Cosmos are the things that we would normally have to pay millions or billions of dollars to bring that far, but that we could easily mine there instead.

    Air, water, food, fuel

    No giant asteroid sized gold nugget could offset that systematic cost.

    • burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 days ago

      I agree with you for now, but I’m intrigued by asteroid mining. Asteroid sample return missions demonstrated that it’s possible in small quantities. Dropping launch and satellite costs could make it economically viable to mine and refine metal-type asteroids for terrestrial or deep space use and reduce terrestrial mining and pollution. Astroforge has been working on demo missions, and Karman+ is a new startup in the same space.

    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      8 days ago

      Food is the only real concern. There’s so much ice that air and water can be made on site. And fuel can come from the sun. If we’re talking about collecting space nuggets

      the thing is, gold isn’t really even very useful. especially once we start looking at the exotic elements in those space rocks