It's possible gold has twenty years or less of being high value left.
In 20 years florida and NYC may be underwater.
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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In 20 years Flordians won't have teeth.
They can replace them with gold teeth for rock bottom prices!
Ah, yes, the notoriously accessible and inexpensive field of launching rockets, landing said rocket on a giant sized bullet so a robot can go drill in it for weeks to dig up thousands of pounds of rock, lifting the robot that now weighs significantly more off of the giant bullet, and safely returning it to our larger, slightly slower bullet.
But the plummeting price of gold from the abundance would make the asteroid mining commercially nonviable. As an aside, only 7.16% of the gold demand in the world is actually for technology: https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-industry-sector-share/
There are many many more materials than just gold that could be extracted from asteroids.
But sure, establishing the infrastructure to make it commercially viable is a huge investment and won't be commercially viable for a while. (Think about missions like Hayabusa that cost hundreds of millions to bilLions, but retrieved "just" a couple of gram of material.)
I suspect asteroid mining won't be profitable unless we are able to use the materials to build stuff in space. It costs so much to launch stuff into space that a ton of say iron is going to be worth much more there than on earth. Whether we'll ever reach that stage is anyone's guess but I hope so.
Just need to make sure the mining machine is durable enough and can launch itself from asteroids, because launching from asteroids with their low gravity is a lot easier than from earth, so a single earth launch can mine from multiple asteroids and send stuffs back.
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I'm skeptical about the feasibility of transporting heavy metals through space. Also, diamond were never scarce, it was all literally market manipulation.
Yes, if diamonds were rare I wouldn't have a diamond tipped drillbit set and several diamond saws. "Blah blah" quality ... sure ... but rare is rare.
Eh they are already moving a good clip relative to the earth, nudging them in this direction would be the easier part of the equation. Stopping them when they get here is probably where you want to focus your energy... No pun intended
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Diamonds are rare on the surface of the earth, and their discovery therefore costs on the average much labour-time. Consequently, they represent much labour in a small volume of space. Jacob doubts that gold has ever paid its complete value. This holds true even more for diamonds. According to Eschwege, by 1823 the complete yield of the eight-year old Brazilian diamond-diggings had not yet amounted to the value of the 1½ year average product of the Brazilian sugar or coffee plantations. Given more richly laden diggings the same quantum of labour would be represented by more diamonds and their value would sink. If one succeeds in converting coal into diamonds with little labour, then the value of diamonds would sink beneath that of paving stones.
-- Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1
I swear at times Marx had a time machine.
If the price of gold plunges one day, it should already plunge today. In other words, the probability for success of those mining operations is low.
Why should it already plunge today? The demand/supply is still the same.
But it will not be the same when asteroid mining increases the supply tenfold.
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Beltalowda
It's good to see diamond mining being replaced by artificial diamond manufacturing, which appears to be better envitonmentally and socially.
But I wouldn't compare diamonds to gold. Because gold is an element that can't be manufactured (without a particule accelerator and an insane amount of energy).
Asteroid mining is still science fiction.
Right? Diamond is a crystal of Carbon. Its synthesis was a challenge, required high pressure, but sounde doable from the beggining.
Now, transmuting one element into other (gold)... That's atomic energy right there. A whole new level.
The rocket equation wants to have words with you.
Have we even confirmed there are asteroids made of gold yet?
Surely there exists a better source. Not clicking on Fox News.
Here is an archived snapshot I found of the Fox article
At the bottom it says the story originally ran in The Sun, here is a snapshot of that page as well.
I followed the other user's snarky DDG link and the first hit is this article from Smithsonian Magazine that appears to be about the same story.
Finally, here is a far less sweaty page from NASA about the actual object, though the composition of metals isn't discussed in detail.
After skimming all this I kinda feel like it's a stretch to say that asteroid is "made of gold".
I think "enough gold to completely destroy the gold industry (as a precious metal)" is close enough to "made of gold" for me.
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Asteroid mining would collapse the markets for most minerals, except perhaps the higher volume stuff like iron.
Excellent. One of Israels biggest exports is finished gemstones. I hope they are crushed.
they don't mine them. just process them. not sure it's lowering the cost of raw diamonds will change the processing cost.
its morning and haven't had my coffee, so I'm on instinct. I feel like it would lower the cost.
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Can’t wait for the day when we can have proper corrosion resistant materials. Just gold plate the hull of a ship, and salt water can’t do much.
Would that really help though? Gold is super soft so I think it would need to get frequently coated/plated again
and we already have pretty good and resistant marine paint.
Titanium is very corrosion resistant, not to mention plastics/fiberglass/carbon fiber, as I understand.
But yeah, cheap gold would be be great, just seems to me that the market would more be in e.g. electronics, where both corrosion resistance and electrical conductivity are required (something gold is fairly unique at).
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