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Comment by adamhearn | Hacker News Reader

What happens to the value of gold once astroid mining begins?

I suspect not much will change. The Delta-V requirements for sending precious metals back to earth is insanely high. And, you’d be trying to send back some of the heaviest elements. But what point would that serve if you were to simply put the gold into an underground vault?

I imagine any mined minerals would stay in orbit and people would “own” that material while never taking possession of it. It’s not too different from what we do today. If you buy gold for your IRA you’re basically purchasing a share of some gold hoard you’re never going to see.

> The Delta-V requirements for sending precious metals back to earth is insanely high.

Sending gold down to earth is very cheap. As a bonus, you can also take out a city you are tired of.

In addition to owning orbiting gold, I imagine the real use will be to feed orbital factories, to produce satellites/space stations/rockets in orbit. Everyone on a space station can have a golden toilet.

(edited: typo fix)

Ackshually, sending _down_ is often more expensive to sending _up_. For example, if you want to burn something from Earth orbit in the Sun, you need ~30km/s, but to send it _up_, out of Solar system -- only ~15km/s.

I recommend Kerbal Space Program game, it's really fun to do orbital maneuvers there.

Come on. Retrograde burns are cheap compared to sheer amount of fuel needed to escape real sized atmosphere not the tiny KSP one. (There are mods for realism there.)

Oh, and instead of burning you can use solar sails too. Or shoot lasers or explosives at them to vaporize and give them momentum.

The biggest problem is actually getting to the rocks, chunking them and then not causing a rerun of the movie Armageddon. (Which made changing asteroid direction seem way too easy.) Once the rock is on a trajectory, it will be rather hard to deflect in time, and even then could collide later on. Or hit a newly deployed space station.

Once you fire it, you will end up ruining someone's day, somewhere and some time. It's a weapon of mass destruction.

They referred to "sending down" in the context of "sending down to earth". It's not much use to spend effort mining gold just to haul it into the sun.

Very little - the Organization of Mining by Extraterrestial Companies will hold regular meetings to set their rare-earth and noble metal production targets to ensure price stability (profitability).

If they try to bring it to earth... probably bad things :-P

Hopefully we don't need to wait too long to find out.

Does the asteroid hit Earth?

It matters more where it hits and how big it is. If you want that material on Earth, it's best to break the rock apart in space in such a way that the chunks are still shielded from reentry heat, and send them on a good trajectory to crash somewhere empty and minable. Siberia and swathes of desert are a good choice.

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