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Comment by BWStearns | Hacker News Reader

Realistically I think the result would be a more civil version of the diamond market. Since there are only a couple players who could bring back anything you would just park your supply in orbit and bring it down when it was profitable. You'd still lower the prices but how much you brought home would be ceilinged by the total market demand. You'd probably bankrupt literally every terrestrial mining operation which wouldn't be the worst from an environmental and quality of life standpoint.

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Cost probably would depend on the 'moat', i.e. how easy is it for another player to enter the market.

On the other hand, we may get a kind of OPEC of asteroid miners.

The problem with cartels like this is that all it takes is a single person to break to cartel, for the whole thing to come crashing down.

Someone might even do it as a charity operation.

Considering that bringing the resources to Earth would still require landing rights, I'd imagine such a cartel would be easy to break by the world's governments.

and considering that if the cartel was blocking you, but you had a few hundred thousand tons of metal in orbit.. you could just send down a bit for free..

Governments these days compete with each other to pander to corporations. The promise of a few jobs and a few political donations is enough to get a government to do just about anything you want.

Yes, you are right. And these governments compete with each other.

For every government supporting cartels there will be a dozen trying to break them, because of how much money you can make by breaking a cartel.

Greed still wins, for the betterment of humans.

Not in the diamond business. A player who won't conform is simply crushed.

Something even better is to reffined and process everything to raw materials in orbit and then bring them on Earth.

But where would you store all of it?

Space is big. I mean, really big.

The orbits that are most useful for our current-day satellites are crowded, of course, but you could stash your asteroid booty anywhere you like. Putting it in orbit around the Moon might not be a bad move.

Earth orbit isn't that crowded. And you don't need to spread out. A cube of 100x100x100 m would store plenty of metal, but would not need more safety margin distance than any other satellite.

It is pretty crowded, actually. We've had satellites literally colliding with each other before. Filling it up with chunks of asteroid isn't the best use of limited room, especially when space farther away is genuinely empty and since you're coming from outside the Earth/Moon system you can put the goods anywhere you want.

Why bother bringing it home at all? Set up orbital factories as well, and ship the finished goods back to Earth via space elevator.

Get rid of mining and dirty manufacturing on earth once and for all.

This book captivated me as a child and explains many interesting possibilities about manufacturing in space: https://www.amazon.com/third-industrial-revolution-Harry-Sti...

All kinds of interesting processes become feasible in weightlessness. For instance, some kinds of alloys just aren't possible on earth because the metals' densities are so different that they don't mix properly. No so in space.

Aren't atmospheric elements required for most refining processes?

Can't you ship it home with a heat shield and a parachute?

Sure. But adding ballistic re-entry to your manufacturing process seems a little scary.

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