New Book on Space Colonies

> Mining of platinum group metals is often considered promising, but
> again there is a need for CATS to make it work. Tourism is another
> possibility. I think that tourism has some important benefits, but
it
> certainly requires a decrease in launch costs.

I've been seeing many references to platinum recovery as being a
profit center, and not knowing much about the details of such
proposals, I realy don't know what to think of them.

Someone help me out here. How do you get the platinum back to Earth?

Here's some quick calculations:

Price of platinum 2001-2003: $450 - $700 per oz.

Let's take an a price of $600 to work with.

Launch cost of $1,000/lb. (maybe send up empty vehicles and send up
extra fuel to increase their return mass limit?)

$1,000/12 = $83.33 per oz of platinum is the launch cost. This is
14% of our target of $600 per oz.

In 2002, total worldwide demand was 6,540,000 oz (44% jewelry, 31%
autocatalyst, and 24% industrial.

Total gross income of the business = $3,924,000,000.

For now I'm discounting price elasticity as a driving factor because
of lack of data. (Will demand increase substantially faster than the
rate of decline in price and increase in supply.)

So do we soft land the platinum at $83.33 per oz? Do we incase it in
refractory metal and drive it deep into the earth in the Australian
outback? How happy would the ozzies be with that? Do we aim for the
ocean and have to get underwater recovery equipment on site? Can it
be soft landed with parachutes? What is the mass limit for them
because platinum is heavy stuff.

All things being equal, can the orbital platinum be found, mined,
refined for less than 86% of the market price (86% metal cost + 14%
delivery cost = 100%)?

I'm sure that I'm missing something here. I hope someone familiar
with the details of this proposal can fill in the blanks for me.

>
> More to the point all of the things you view as economic drivers
on
> earth that just happen to use space will benefit from (and
therefore
> drive) CATS. In addition, there is the possibility that these
> industries will need orbital infrastructure, and once the
> infrastructure is in place for the earth-centered industries it
makes
> other types of activity easier.
>
> ......Andrew

I have no doubt about your analysis that CATS will be an economic
driver for some industries, but the orbital interlinkages may be as
complex as here on Earth and will CATS be a necessary and sufficient
component to their development. Necessary, a confident yes for that.
Sufficient, that I have yet to see a case made for.

TangoMan