A metal asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion, hurtling through space, makes construction of a massive orbital space station substantially cheaper. At least one company is already pitching a plan for a Von Braun Gateway Station housing some 1,500 people in orbit. The resources on the single asteroid, 16 Psyche, is not only enough to build the station, but to wipe out the U.S. national debt thousands of times over.
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Metal Asteroid Hurtling Through Space Could Wipe Out…U.S. Debt!
A metal asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion, hurtling through space, makes construction of a massive orbital space station substantially cheaper. At least one company is already pitching a plan for a Von Braun Gateway Station housing some 1,500 people in orbit. The resources on the single asteroid, 16 Psyche, is not only enough to build the station, but to wipe out the U.S. national debt thousands of times over.
29 replies on “Metal Asteroid Hurtling Through Space Could Wipe Out…U.S. Debt!”
This sounds good in theory, but it’s not practical. At least not now. If we managed to mine the metals, it would be too expensive to bring it to Earth. You would flood the market and the price would go down which would not cover the cost to bring it here.
The only way to make it profitable is to lay claim to it and sell it to others who need the metals in space, basically, create a space economy.
Creating a space economy is what I meant by “singularity” in my post below. It seems to me that this sort of thing (mining asteroids for metals and water) is the only was to make that happen.
Steve, I’m sorry Bill didn’t get your Field of Dreams joke. I thought it was hilarious!
Took a few days off from reading/watching politics – thank you for posting this on a weekend!
Shouldn’t there be 19 zeroes, not 16? 1 quadrillion = 10^15 (unless you’re a Brit, where it’s 10^24). What you printed is 10 quadrillion, not 10,000 quadrillion. Sorry to be a bean-counter…whats 3 orders of magnitude among friends?
Great! Finally, a way to pay for the Green New Deal……. Bwahahahaha!
not sure how $10Q out in space is something that will help reduce the national debt. It would make construction in space a lot cheaper, but unless there are also considerable amounts of rare earth metals that could be dropped down to Earth safely, I can’t see how it affects the national debt.
I suspect that once you’ve worked out how to mine, refine, and form it into sheets or structural members with whatever the required properties are, it would be cheaper to just to ship it up from Earth.
Up from Earth? I don’t understand. There is also the plethora of questions about mining, refining, smelting, forming, and all the rest of the things completely unknown about doing all that in zero gravity. People used to fantasize and joke about sex in zero gravity, but in actual fact it’s probably highly frustrating and unsatisfactory. Like going to the bathroom, gravity is highly preferable to weightlessness. Manufacturing on the ISS has been limited to tiny experiments yielding nothing of any commercial value. I dare say the pioneers of space mining will spend most of their money on LEO flights and equally costly experiments, many years before sheet steel or aluminum can be produced anything like it can be on Earth.
I actually suspect experiments will lead quickly to the conclusion that processing plants in space need both zero gravity and artificial gravity components. Zero-G is just useless for some things
There are ways to solve such problems. I can think of two or three off the top of my head. In the shorter term it might be more feasible to do some of the industrial work someplace like our moon, or even Mars, i.e., a place with some gravity, but not way down at the bottom of our deep and expensive gravity well on Earth.
That would enable enough material to be manufactured and stockpiled that we could then use it to build space stations (with at least some sections that spin) on or near the asteroids themselves, possibly incorporating the asteroids into their structures.
Obviously this is a timescale of decades, not months. But it answers the question that eventually killed space exploration after Apollo: okay, we’re here, now what? It provides a goal beyond “building a Mars habitat” for our space billionaires or even NASA.
That’s what I meant.
You are right that much LEO experimentation will be necessary, and costly, and time consuming. The point is, I think, that absent significant incentive, no one is willing to do such work. Not governments, not billionaires.
Also, I think it’s worth noting that after 45 years of LEO “scientific exploration,” we haven’t moved the ball at all when it comes to genuine and new technological advances that can actually change the world. It’s only with a clearly defined objective (let’s call it a goalpost) that any entity can even figure out in which direction the end zone lies. We’ve been line dancing on the 50-yard line for decades, and now Bezos and Musk are finally throwing passes.
Just a FYI. 1000 quadrillion is a quintillion. So the asteroid is worth ten quintillion dolllars.
There is an old Heinlein story called “Misfits”, I believe, where the Space Corp is moving three asteroids into orbits around earth, 120 deg apart to act as space stations. Theoretically possible to do. Not sure it would be cheaper than robots mining ore and sending it to earth from there.
Aww, your optimism makes my heart sing.
Who ever does this will control the metals market like the Diamond Market is. If you flood the market your product becomes worthless. It would be an interesting first world problem to have.
This is what I was thinking. It would have to be managed carefully to avoid making the metal worthless, so we couldn’t use it to pay off the debt. Would leaving it all up in orbit, and not bringing any down to earth (or only small portions) minimize economic impact, as Fluffy Goat suggests, or will simply the existence of the metals, once they are within more than theoretical reach, be enough to destroy its monetary value? (Obviously it would still have value for building space stations and ships in orbit, and have profound implications up there.)
Or is it that this is a singularity which will simply nullify all of economics as we know it? Like the miniaturized nuclear power plants Bill discussed on TSL a few years ago?
Speaking of which, would it be possible to build nuclear plants in orbit if we had access to the materials from asteroids instead of having to raise it from earth into orbit?
Also, I’m skeptical that any governmental entity today could accomplish it. I think it will be someone like Bezos or Musk, because it requires a discrete organizational structure with laser-focused goals and leadership.
Like the Spanish flooded the market with New World silver back in the 16th (or was it 17th?) century, and the price of silver dropped tremendously.
Bill you nailed it. This Psyche 16 is the reason for us to get out there again. In my opinion, the only thing that will stop us from doing this is ultimately the government who have more interest in controlling and ruling over slaves than prosperity for the entire planet. There are people now who have vision and willingness to do the work to get this done. Motivated people need to push this hard.
You are correct. The fight would ostensibly be about “helping those on earth” instead of “spending money on space silliness” but would actually be about control of a pot of money, and thus power over people’s lives, as always.
Will never happen. The Democrats won’t allow it to happen because it would make mere mortals much too free. The Republicans won’t do it because they are cowards and will not fight the Democrats and their will to regress the globe to the state of the prehistory of man.
If it is done, it will be done by we mere mortals who really do want to have a future and who will work to overcome the demented politicians who want to mother-may-I absolutely everything. We will have to tell the politicians to go to hell and send them there if they refused to go.
I am ready. Are you?
I regret that I have but on $100/yr to give to my billwhittle.com
So we have to go get it cause that’ll pay for the mission(s) and pay down our debt.
AND ANOTHER THING, if Psychi 16 is only used to supply raw materials for a space station, it won’t crash steel prices because none of the asteroid’s metal is coming down and none of Earth’s steel is going up. US Steel looses out on that sweet, sweet government contract. But that’s about it for economic impact
Would it be easier to mine Psychi 16 or drag it into Earth orbit and turn it into a space station?
My question to why we don’t have moon bases and giant space stations now is this: is it just that hard or do we simply lack the national will and cultural confidence to have done it in the last 50yrs?
Government space programs will always be a wasteful boondoggle. Free enterprise in space has the capacity to turn billionaires into trillionaires. Get a free civilization in space and world economies will become puny.
Besides, there will still be man after SMOD.