Path: news.ccsf.jp!tomockey.ddo.jp!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!backlog2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.bt.com!news.bt.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:08:33 -0500 From: "Mike Dworetsky" Newsgroups: fj.kanji,sci.astro References: Subject: Re: Which asteroids in our solar system would you use for mining??? Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 09:08:32 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3138 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3198 Message-ID: <-K2dnQFDUr-cvE7UnZ2dnUVZ8raWnZ2d@bt.com> Lines: 35 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-AuthenticatedUsername: NoAuthUser X-Trace: sv3-q2Kx+hw3Q3uVHaDACdarW8oHGyjvcZpEmmIFbXqD0Z5lKWunGZhgm495t0M7pO1TujjHHr97+iMC5jN!rzS53GvrdbHAHydP/dcGepCilnmfFg7Y6I9+RrnVPd/XsmaC52qktWocI3/yDTDe2yqrmrPCUCuc X-Complaints-To: abuse@btinternet.com X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@btinternet.com X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.39 X-Original-Bytes: 2934 Xref: news.ccsf.jp fj.kanji:1116 "Sam Minewire" wrote in message news:b67b43ea-d0b6-4173-b0a0-2126d3d4afb0@v38g2000yqb.googlegroups.com... >I wonder if there are asteroids with Gold, Silver or > Platinum in our solar system. > > Which asteroids would you use for mining??? It remains far cheaper to mine for these elements on Earth, and this will be the case for some time to come. Silver is not a particularly valuable metal, by the way, as its price is around 2% that of gold. The main reason to consider mining asteroids is that some of them contain high amounts of easily extracted iron and nickel in pure form, without the need for polluting refinement from ore. Even then, it will be a long time before it is economic to do this. Current cost of launch to geosynchronous orbit is around $10,000/pound (454 gm). Cost to asteroid belt would be (a guess) about double that (more fuel, more booster stages). That doesn't take into account the cost of a specialised spacecraft. The current price of gold is $925/troy ounce (31 gm). So unless the price of gold soars to $2000-3000 per ounce it isn't even worth thinking about. And gold prices tend to rise in times of economic crisis, when the political/financial ability to mount big space missions is less. The other problem is, suppose you mount a big mining operation and return to Earth with tonnes and tonnes of these metals. You attempt to sell them on the open market. The supply goes up--the price comes down, fast. -- Mike Dworetsky (Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)