Roid mining and fuel production by 2025?

[PB666]

 

http://stgist.com/2015/11/asteroid-mining-and-space-refueling-stations-may-become-a-reality-by-2025-5886

 

Quote

In a nutshell, Professor Oduntan said the first space act of the United States is illegal and potentially dangerous.

The Space Act passed earlier this month, according to Prof. Oduntan, is violating several treaties and global customary law which already cover the entire universe. He also added that the U.S. law is simply a “classic rendition” of Wild West philosophy, the “he who dares wins.” - http://stgist.com/2015/11/asteroid-mining-and-space-refueling-stations-may-become-a-reality-by-2025-5886

 

Edited November 30, 2015 by PB666

[Shpaget]

Hostly, the Space Act and the passing of it only shows the silliness and naivety of parts of the Outer Space Treaty, which has been from the start, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, completely unenforceable.

Furthermore, the "shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries" part of OST is just hindering development without reasonable justification. Also, even if one company mines and delivers large quantities of scarce material to the surface of Earth, it is in the interest of all countries, regardless of the fact that this one company makes a profit. Example: platinum is rare and expensive and as such its uses are limited since there just isn't enough of it for, let's say, alloying steel for construction. Introducing large amounts of it to the market would drive progress in new branches of metallurgy.

[More Boosters]

8 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Example: platinum is rare and expensive and as such its uses are limited since there just isn't enough of it for, let's say, alloying steel for construction. Introducing large amounts of it to the market would drive progress in new branches of metallurgy.

This is only true if excavating the platinum and then returning it is economical enough to actually drive platinum's price down.

[fredinno]

Silver would be great for a potential mining company- our new electronics need LOTS of silver, and stockpiles of it are dwindling rapidly. Of course, the company would still have to make a profit first...

[PB666]

Silver is dwindling because of price failures of the last 2 years, its part of the commodity price cycle. Global demand is weak, much of the developing world
 that where demanding copper and silver have slowed demand and since we are probably closer to the end than the start of commodity price weakness we expect there to be dwindling inventories.

http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/silver.aspx?timeframe=5y

Here is the graph for platinum

http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/platinum.aspx?timeframe=5y

Edited November 30, 2015 by PB666
Added platinum graph

[fredinno]

Still precious metals overall are the only reason you would want to go out to mine at the moment.

[Shpaget]

1 hour ago, More Boosters said:

This is only true if excavating the platinum and then returning it is economical enough to actually drive platinum's price down.

Of course. But consider the fact that every new economical source of any material drives prices down. What new application we find for those materials depends partly on how much the prices are driven down.

A similar thing has happened in the past. A little over 150 years ago aluminium was more expensive than gold and its uses were very limited by the cost and availability. Now, when aluminium costs less than peanuts, you can see it used everywhere.

[Nibb31]

To drive prices down, you need a combination of supply and demand. The demand for aluminium increased with the appearance of an aviation industry, which pushed cheaper production methods.

Investing in supply and hoping that demand will follow is a sure way to lose money.

[PB666]

Platinum and palladium can be justified with hydrogen fuel cell cars and electrloysis of water into hydrogen, provide really cheap electricity becomes available. 

 

I don't know if the moon is a good source of platinum, asteroids are a good source of magnesium and nickle, magnesium could be useful for ion drives and nickle could be useful to build the drives structure. 

[Shpaget]

The Bayer process, which is currently the industry standard for aluminium production, was invented decades before aircraft started to be made out of it. But it doesn't matter. A material that has seen a significant drop in the price will always find a new market.

It happened with aluminium and with iron before that. It even happened with tulips.