The golden asteroid that could make everyone on Earth a billionaire

 

A nice story of course and we do have nickle deposits whose genesis was from something like this. 

Gold does not accumulate like this, sadly, but it sure makes a great story to dream about but it as disconnected from reality as a herd of unicorns that love you.   If such a vast reserve of gold ever existed, gold itself would become worthless.

It is still and iron nickle asteroid whose other constituents will be generally modest. If we could ever float it down to the surface, then we eliminate significant mining costs for nickle and iron and little else.  We really need other metals and all those are ample right on Earth.

We could print billions in cash for every human on earth and we would all be broke..
 

The golden asteroid that could make everyone on Earth a billionaire

Published time: 26 Jun, 2019 

© Getty Images / MARK GARLICK / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

https://www.rt.com/business/462703-golden-asteroid-everyone-billionaire/

Whether it was the Big Bang, Midas or God himself, we don’t really need to unlock the mystery of the origins of gold when we’ve already identified an asteroid worth $700 quintillion in precious heavy metals.

If anything launches this metals mining space race, it will be this asteroid--Psyche 16, taking up residence between Mars and Jupiter and carrying around enough heavy metals to net every single person on the planet close to a trillion dollars.

The massive quantities of gold, iron and nickel contained in this asteroid are mind-blowing. The discovery has been made. Now, it’s a question of proving it up.

NASA plans to do just that, beginning in 2022.

Of course, says veteran miner Scott Moore, CEO of EuroSun Mining “The ‘Titans of Gold’ now control hundreds of the best-producing properties around the world, but the 4-5 million ounces of gold they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in space.”

In the decades to come, if you want to be a gold titan, you’ll have to get your feet off the ground. The real titans will be far from Earth.

Moore should know: He heads up a junior mining company that is seeking a seat at the titan table with the biggest in-development gold mine in Europe.

The 21st-Century Gold Rush

Can we actually extract this space gold? That is the quintillion-dollar question, certainly.

Speaking to Outerplaces, Professor John Zarnecki, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, estimates that it would take around 25 years to get ‘proof of concept’, and 50 years to start commercial production.

Of course, it all depends on two key things: Economic feasibility and our advancement of space technology.

And then, we’re not alone, either. There are other world powers who would like to get their hands on that asteroid, as well. China definitively plans to dominate this race.

Mitch Hunter-Scullion, founder of the UK-based Asteroid Mining Company, tells the BBC that this is definitively the next industry “boom”.

“Once you set up the infrastructure then the possibilities are almost infinite,” he said. “There’s an astronomical amount of money to be made by those bold enough to rise to the challenge of the asteroid rush.”

EuroSun’s Moore agrees: “What we’re doing on the ground now may be impressive, but like everything else, even gold exploration in space is only a matter of infrastructure. We’ll get to it, eventually.”

But it’s not just about the quintillion-dollar prospects of the Asteroid Belt, which is 750 million kilometers from Earth.

“This may be the Holy Grail of space exploration for gold, but it won’t be the first stop on this adventure,” Moore says.

There are also Near-Earth asteroids, which pass close to Earth and could be pushed into an orbit from which water and other elements could be extracted.

Then there’s the moon, which holds resources from gold and platinum group metals to Helium-3, water and rare earth metals. Even though mining operations require gravity and the Moon’s is only one-sixth of Earth’s, scientists say there is enough gravity to make it work.

The Global Asteroid Mining Market

Yes, there is already a global market for asteroid mining, and Allied Market Research estimates that it will top $3.8 billion by 2025.

They’re counting ongoing and future space missions, the rise in inflow of investments in space mining technologies, and the growing use of print materials obtained from asteroids in 3D printing technology.

According to Allied, while the spacecraft design segment of this market accounted for four-fifths of the total revenue in 2017 and is expected to continue to dominate through 2025, the big change here will be in the space mining segment, or the “operation segment”. That segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 29% by 2025 “due to a surge in investment by public and private stakeholders in space mining technologies for resource exploitation”.

“You can’t just think of space mining as something that will suddenly happen in 25 or 50 years,” says EuroSun’s Moore. “It’s already happening from an investment perspective. And the Asteroid Belt is just one aspect of this market. The entire global space market is worth hundreds of billions already.”

Indeed, Morgan Stanley estimates the global space economy to be worth $350 billion today. By 2040, it will be worth a cosmic $2.7 trillion.

Nor is the Psyche-16 Asteroid the only thing of interest in the Belt. Another small asteroid measuring 200 meters in length could be worth $30 billion in platinum.

Who Will Get There First?

China has vowed to dominate this race, and that’s an easier game for a country that controls all the major natural resource companies and maintains a tight leash on tech developers.

That’s not to say that the US doesn’t have ambitions here. The difference, though, is stark. While NASA is focused on space exploration and scientific missions, China is focused on a space-based economy that is zeroing in on long-term wealth generation.

Even Europe, where EuroSun is developing a major goldmine in Romania, has its hand in the game. In January, the European Space Agency(ESA) announced a deal with ArianeGroup, the parent company of Arianespace, to study a prep mission to the moon in 2025. It’s got natural resources on its mind.

Even tiny Luxembourg has 10 space-mining companies registered since 2016, with some targeting space ventures to the Moon, and others eyeing near-Earth asteroids for mining.

Tokyo-based iSpace, for instance, is a private space exploration company that plans to complete a lunar orbit in 2020, and a soft landing in 2021.

For Moore, the prospect is daunting, even if it is the clear future reality, because mining in EuroSun’s Rovina Valley project in west-central Romania has been a cakewalk, both in terms of geology and infrastructure. Everything lines up for a large, low-cost project (the biggest in-development gold mine in Europe.) That won’t be the case in space, but it’s a big bill that governments will want to help foot or risk losing their place in space.

Whoever gets there first will become the new god of gold, and the competition is heating up.



MIDAS ROCK 

Giant golden asteroid contains enough heavy metals to make everyone on Earth a billionaire – and Nasa is heading there in 2022



Harry Pettit, Senior Digital Technology and Science Reporter 

26 Jun 2019, 15:40

NASA is eyeing up a nearby asteroid that contains enough gold to make everyone on Earth a billionaire.

Psyche 16 is nestled between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and is made of solid metal.

4 An artist's impression of Psyche 16, an asteroid with enough gold in it to make everyone on Earth a billionaireCredit: Nasa As well as gold, the mysterious object is loaded with heaps of platinum, iron and nikel.

In total, it's estimated that Psyche's various metals are worth a gargantuan £8,000 quadrillion.

That means if we carried it back to Earth, it would destroy commodity prices and cause the world's economy – worth £59.5trillion – to collapse.

We've known about Psyche 16 for a while, but its potential to cause havoc on Earth was recently touched upon by a veteran miner.

NASA launches space missions to Jupiter's 'trojans' and METAL asteroid

4 Nasa's Discovery Mission (artist's impression) is launching in 2022 and aims to explore PsycheCredit: Nasa Scott Moore, who heads up EuroSun Mining, said the sheer amount of gold in the asteroid threatens to throw the gold industry into chaos.

"The 'Titans of Gold' now control hundreds of the best-producing properties around the world," he told Oil Price.

"But the 4-5 million ounces of gold they bring to the market every year pales in comparison to the conquests available in space."

Nasa is launching a mission to probe the asteroid in summer 2022. Dubbed the Discovery Mission, it will arrive at Psyche 16 around 2026.

But bringing back an asteroid of this value could completely wipe out our global economy.

Fortunately, the space agency is taking the trip for scientific purposes and isn't planning on conducting any mining.

4 An artist's impression of Psyche's surface

What do we know about quadrillion pound asteroid Psyche?

Arizona State University researchers say that Psyche 16 was found in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, who named it after the ancient Greek goddess of the soul. 

What gives asteroid Psyche great scientific interest is that it is made of metal. 

It appears to be composed of one of the building blocks of the Sun's planetary system and could provide clues to how our planet formed. 

The asteroid is most likely a survivor of violent hit-and-run collisions, common when the solar system was forming. 

Every world explored so far by humans (except gas giant planets such as Jupiter or Saturn) has a surface of ice or rock or a mixture of the two. 

Because we cannot see or measure Earth’s core directly, Psyche offers a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created the terrestrial planets. 

It reckons 16 Psyche is a survivor of violent hit-and-run collisions between planets which were common when the solar system was forming.

That means it could tell us how Earth’s core and the cores of the other terrestrial planets were formed.

Two space mining companies – backed by big name celebs – are gearing up for a gold rush after asteroid ownership was made legal in 2015.

Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources each have their eyes on the 2011 UW158 asteroid which is twice the size of the Tower of London and worth up to £4.5trillion.

4 This graphic shows the location of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids which are thought to be a relic of a much earlier era of the solar system. It's thought that Psyche is one of these relicsCredit: Nasa