Curious?????

jdr7181@... wrote:

> I have a question:
>
> Could a spacecraft be launched from Earth, rendezvous with and land
> on a Near-Earth Object (or perhaps the moon, though probably more
> complicated and expensive), mine the object and "fire" the raw
> material back to Earth (not LEO) for collection and processing?

The most likely thing to do this with is the platinum group
metals. Right now they cost >$500 an ounce, very comfortably
more than gold or anything else, pretty much. (Platinum is
used in catalytic converters for cars; each car uses a good
fraction of an ounce.)

However the big question is how sensitive the price is. Right
now there is a tight supply so the price is controlled by the
suppliers. However if competition occurs then clearly the
price could sag. If that happens then it could wipe out
our space business. One way around this might be to go
into partnership with the existing suppliers- give/sell them
shares in your business; but there are some interesting
problems in that area too.

The second issue is practical. To make this cost effective
it would be necessary to purify the metal at the NEA. This
means that quite a bit (100s of tonnes possibly) of
equipment would be required.

(The reason for that is that even though NEAs have a
relatively high abundance of platinum group metals, its
still down at 1 part in 10,000 or so relative abundance.)

The bottom line is that it isn't clear whether money can
be made this way right now.

> Jack

--
- Ian Woollard (ian.woollard@...)

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological
civilization?"
- Gerard O'Neill