Diamond prices are down 60% since a 2011 high, and they are still falling. It’s not all down to lab-grown diamonds, demand is down too, especially in China.
No one can lab-grow gold yet, so its rarity and scarcity protect its value, but that will end too. It’s just a question of when. China launched an asteroid touch-down mission this week, which will make it the 4th country/region to do so, after Europe, the US & Japan.
How soon will it be feasible to mine asteroids? Who knows, but a breakthrough in space propulsion might mean the prospect happens quickly when it does. It’s possible gold has twenty years or less of being high value left.
The $80 Billion Diamond Market Crash Leaves De Beers Reeling
It’s possible gold has twenty years or less of being high value left.
In 20 years florida and NYC may be underwater.
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.
Time to make Space Elevators real.
The rocket equation wants to have words with you.
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.
True if used in production. But it’s used to store value. If I know gold will be worth 50% next year, I am not willing to pay full price today if I want to resell it then.
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
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
They are talking about not returning mined material from asteroids but about changing the trajectory of asteroids so that they collide with Earth. But if you do so, the asteroid would likely be destroyed, leaving little to mine, so it would have to be stopped (or slowed down) before reaching the ground.
Oh, right. I totally forgot about that part, I thought they were talking about diamonds.
Why wouldn’t it be feasible to transport heavy metals through space? They would just float.
Shooting stuff into space is hard, bringing it back to Earth is harder.
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.
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.
Are they able to lab grow the same kind of gem quality diamonds that you usually think about when it comes to jewelry, or is it still mostly industrial applications (such as diamond tipped drill bits)?
Lab grown diamonds are much better quality than natural diamonds. So now natural diamond companies are moving to the “imperfections is what make a diamond perfect” strategy. But nothing’s stopping labs from growing diamonds with imperfections if that’s what the people are after.
All in all, diamonds have always been mostly a scam and it’s showing more and more.
I’ve heard that lab grown are actually better across each measurement (clarity,shine, whatever), than natural diamonds, now.
It is the blood and slavery that make natural diamonds so valuable /s
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.
The processing cost is negligible compared the sales prices. Same as the cost of raw diamonds.
Diamonds are mostly a scam to part people from their money for literally a shiny rock.
it is, but if they maintain a monopoly, then cheaper raw diamonds will only increase profit.
although I’m assuming cheap synthetic diamonds are processed in other places.
Yeah, that’s what I mean. People have been overpaying for diamonds for a very long time, mostly because they buy a diamond specifically because it’s expensive.
A diamond isn’t 1000x better at being a shiny piece of glass on top of an engagement ring than e.g. a cubic zirconia. But it’s about 1000x better at showing that you paid 1000x the amount of money that you would have paid for a cubic zirconia.
And because of that, if the price of raw diamonds drops, the price of processed diamonds won’t change significantly, because the production cost of e.g. a diamond ring doesn’t matter for the asking price.
Have we even confirmed there are asteroids made of gold yet?
Asteroid might remain too expensive if it’s even possible, with rocket fuel, mining equipment in space,etc
Good source of iridium, which is rare on earth
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.
fair!
Love you
Do you not understand the offense you just did by linking to fucking fox news? Seriously?
Pearls in pig slop, I know. They reference another article, give the asteroid name, give a list of expected metals to be found, and wrap it in a lovely Fox News bow of some pundit giving his idea of what that all means for the rest of us. As journalism goes, it’s top tier for Fox.
Surprised fox didnt comment how this is against the natural order and bringing back gold from space will unleash a hoard of demons on the earth.
The breaktrough for asteroid mining isn’t propulsion but how to mine and process ore in a vacuum.
Given how big asteroids can be, that must be a massive microwave! Though the spinning plate probably won’t work due to gravity…
Well, i didn’t find it, but there was some news a few years ago, about progress to practical use of Maser as tunnel boring/melting device.
Actually it’s surviving the radiation outside the Van Allen belts.
Robots. Autonomous probes.
Available free to anyone who can hack the control codes!
Has anyone hacked the mining robots already in use on earth? Has anyone hacked any of NASA’s probes?
Hmm. What’s hard about that?
Drill and blast seems like it should work as normal, or just a bucket if it’s the rubble heap kind. Getting noble metals like gold out of a solution is pretty easy with electrowinning.
Drill and blast seems like it should work as normal,
Zero G?
Creating a debris field in orbit? You want this thing fully enclosed before you start messing with it in ways that cause it to break up.
I suppose in a very low orbit you could consider messy options if it will all burn up in a few months. But doesn’t seem ideal.
What about those things require any g?
Asteroid miners are going to have more in common with spiders than anything else; find a tasty roid, wrap it up in cling wrap and set off bombs inside of it until it’s a bag of gravel, then get the whole mess spinning and just let go of the stuff you don’t want to keep. Hell when you’re done you can re-harvest the angular momentum to propel you over to the next roid and start the process over again.
So easy, why hasn’t anyone done it already???
For the same reason most other things involving space haven’t been done yet. We as a species suck at prioritising stuff and allocating resources
I mean, most space travel ideas haven’t been done, even ones that are many decades old. Shit’s expensive and risky, both as an investment and an activity.
Why would that be a problem? The drilling platform would have to be tethered to the rock, but that’s doable and I’m pretty sure they drill all the time on the ISS. Actually, didn’t we drill into a comet or asteroid for samples sometime recently? The explosives would require no modification at all.
The drilling platform would have to be tethered to the rock
That would be the start of a solution.
Barbed harpoons were the approach with the comet. Putting a band around the whole thing could also work for a small body. If you’re going for gold, the asteroid is also going to be paramagnetic if I’m not mistaken, so you can just electromagnet on.
It’s slightly more problematic than on Earth, but I’m basically going to need some citations if I’m ever going to believe it’s sticking to the chosen landing site that’s the hardest part. A lot of proposals sidestep on-site processing, even, and rely on delivering a whole small body to Earth.
Maybe not to Earth (unless you wanna crash economies), but a LaGrange point would be suitable – as well as a place for something spinning so the hairless monkeys could have a semblance of gravity.
If you have human miners, anyway.
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).
Yeah, well maybe ships weren’t the best example.
Low wear resistance of gold is a significant issue, which definitely limits the number of potential applications, but I guess gold alloys could still be useful. For example, titanium has a bunch of alloys for different purposes, some more corrosion resistant than others, while others were optimized more towards wear resistance.
Titanium can also catch fire, which makes it a very tricky metal to use. Putting out a fire like that is pretty much impossible, so if your titanium cladded reactor catches fire, all you can realistically do is try to prevent the rest of the building from burning down. The reactor itself is gone at that point, so all you can do is wish you had paid for the gold cladding instead.
Also, the electrical conductivity of gold is amazing. If gold was as cheap as iron, we would definitely use lots of it in various electrical appliances.
If you can mine gold from asteroids, you’re probably also going to find silver and platinum. Those two have some amazing properties too, so I think asteroid mining has great potential to permanently revolutionize a bunch of industries.
