NASA Discovers a Rare Metal Asteroid That's Worth $10,000 Quadrillion (observer.com) 192
A reader shares a report from Observer: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a rare, heavy and immensely valuable asteroid called "16 Psyche" in the Solar System's main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid Psyche is located at roughly 230 million miles (370 million kilometers) from Earth and measures 140 miles (226 kilometers) across, about the size of West Virginia. What makes it special is that, unlike most asteroids that are either rocky or icy, Psyche is made almost entirely of metals, just like the core of Earth, according to a study published in the Planetary Science Journal on Monday.
Given the asteroid's size, its metal content could be worth $10,000 quadrillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000), or about 10,000 times the global economy as of 2019. Using ultraviolet spectrum data collected by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope during two observations in 2017, researchers deduced that Psyche's surface could be mostly pure iron. However, they recognized that the presence of an iron composition of as small as 10 percent could dominate ultraviolet observations. Psyche is the target of the NASA Discovery Mission Psyche, expected to launch in 2022 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Further facts about the asteroid, including its exact metal content, will hopefully be uncovered when an orbiting probe arrives in early 2026. The asteroid is believed to be the dead core left by a planet that failed during its formation early in the Solar System's life or the result of many violent collisions in its distant past.
Given the asteroid's size, its metal content could be worth $10,000 quadrillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000), or about 10,000 times the global economy as of 2019. Using ultraviolet spectrum data collected by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope during two observations in 2017, researchers deduced that Psyche's surface could be mostly pure iron. However, they recognized that the presence of an iron composition of as small as 10 percent could dominate ultraviolet observations. Psyche is the target of the NASA Discovery Mission Psyche, expected to launch in 2022 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Further facts about the asteroid, including its exact metal content, will hopefully be uncovered when an orbiting probe arrives in early 2026. The asteroid is believed to be the dead core left by a planet that failed during its formation early in the Solar System's life or the result of many violent collisions in its distant past.
10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Informative)
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:2)
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Funny)
What would happen if we dragged it into Earth orbit? Other than the price of iron and other metals crashing.
As long as that's the only thing crashing. Wouldn't want to mess up feet and meters doing that.
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Informative)
What would happen if we dragged it into Earth orbit?
Psyche's mass is 2.4e19 kg.
Bringing it from the Asteroid Belt to Earth's orbit would require a delta-V of about 11 km/s.
E = 1/2 mv^2
E = 0.5 * 2.4e19 kg * (11000 m/s)^2 = 1.45e27 joules = 4e20 kwh.
Let's just be ridiculous and say you could generate power in deep space for the same cost as on earth, about 10 cents/kwh.
So that is 4e19 US dollars in energy costs. Roughly 500,000 the current gross world product.
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Funny)
What would happen if we dragged it into Earth orbit?
Cost: Roughly 500,000 the current gross world product.
So, better bring the Earth to it
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:4, Insightful)
So, better bring the Earth to it
Better still, use the metals in a "local" space economy.
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Funny)
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Psyche's mass is 2.4e19 kg.
or about 20 times the mass of all oceans on Earth. Bringing this thing into orbit, or on Earth would surely have some consequences, especially if the properties of iron are taken into account .
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Putting that anywhere near the planet would have it rip up entire continents
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That's 1 thousandth of the mass of the Moon, so I don't think it would be a problem, unless you targeted low earth orbit. Something around geostationary orbit would be fine.
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fairly sure that much mass would cause a tidal influence which would likely alter weather patterns, migratory patterns of marine life like sea turtles, and who knows how much a small change like that could result in a butterfly effect. It would be more rational to have it share earths orbit around the sun than have it so close that it orbits the earth, assuming they could move it at all. The most likely scenario would be to discover heavy unstable metals in the core capable of generating radioactive propul
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If 16 Psyche were in Earth orbit, the cost to bring the materials down to Earth with our current spaceship technologies could be as low as $1000 per kilogram. Considering the cost of Earth-bound iron is around $1.50 per kilogram, I don't see the new $1000/kg option putting much pricing pressure on terrestrial companies.
In order for asteroid mining to make economic sense, we have to make the transportation several orders of magnitude cheaper first. This doesn't necessarily mean we have to be able to get to o
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:4, Interesting)
You disassemble the asteroid and move the pieces towards earth on different trajectories so that half the mass is in the reverse orbit of the other half.
Then you build reverse-mass drivers. Instead of using energy to accelerate mass (say, from the lunar surface) you capture the energy while decelerating the mass. The decelerated mass then drops down to the earth's surface. The recovered energy will be worth a few quintillion dollars at current prices.
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This is just techo-handwaving to get around the fact that no space operations are cheap enough to bring iron (or platinum ore worth $3/kg) to the Earth profitably.
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of mining asteroids is to reduce the amount of material you need to launch into space. There is little point in spending all that money for materials that are readily available on earth.
The point would be to mine this material and send it to a space station or shipyard and use it to construct things in orbit.That would likely be cheaper than lifting all that material out of Earth's gravity well.
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$1000/kg? What are you smoking? It costs that much to get stuff from Earth to orbit, but that's the expensive direction.
Delivering stuff from orbit to Earth's surface is practically free. You don't even need a spaceship, all you need is some cheap heat shielding and enough propulsion to make your orbit graze Earth's atmosphere. (Easily delivered by cheap disposable rockets, though mass-drivers would be more likely if you had a lot of material to move). Maybe some parachutes if you want to land gently,
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To the extent that dropping the tangential velocity from however many km/s it is going to zero requires a "nudge", yes. Also, the more massive the object, also the more force is required to slow it down.
If you don't eliminate virtually all of the tangential velocity, all will you do is change the shape of the orbit to make it more elliptical, making its perigee perhaps much lower, but the ellipitcal orbit will still take it out to be just as far away as th
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Why would you do that? It's worth far more in space. Shaving a few thousandths of a percent off, and building an orbital ring would be a great place to start.
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Reminds me of the gold and silver rushes when Europeans started bringing it back from the Americas. Prices crashed and the value of all that metal waiting to be found decreased by orders of magnitude until it wasn't worth the effort.
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Back in 1324, king Mansa Musa of Mali in West Africa, was the first Malian king to pilgrimage to Mecca. He passed Cairo in Egypt on the way.
Mali was much richer in gold, and the king spent so much gold in Cairo that the local gold market crashed. The gold market dragged the economy down with it, and it did not recover for twenty years.
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To be clear on the Mali empire, they weren't so much rich in gold directly. They were basically a middleman in the gold trade, getting wealthy on land trade of gold from South to North. It worked out well for them until they started being bypassed by ships.
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This problem is addressed by Adam Smith, in his "Wealth of Nations". In his time (eighteenth century), money was based mainly on silver coins and ingots. Spanish explorers discovered vast silver resources in the Americas, and this had the perhaps paradoxical effect of damaging the Spanish economy, by devaluing the value of money. The native S Americans were puzzled by the invaders' desire for gold. "Do you white-skins eat gold?", or something like that.
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:3)
Re: 10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Funny)
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there's no economic basis for something being worth 10 quintillion dollars.
Have you not played Adventure Capitalist?! https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com]
Re:10,000,000 trillion (Score:4, Funny)
Is Quintillion really that hard to remember? It's an absurd number anyway, there's no economic basis for something being worth 10 quintillion dollars.
That's equivalent to a whole truckload of inkjet cartridges.
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Let's not go crazy here. That's equivalent to a whole truckload of black inkjet cartridges.
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One Quintillion hyoo-män dollars? How many bricks of Gold Pressed Latinum is that?
Re:10,000,000 trillion (Score:5, Insightful)
To NASA's credit there is nothing in the cited study that mentions anything about the value of the asteroid's metals, about mining at all, or even about this being a discovery. It's just an article about the asteroid's composition. It doesn't take any involvement from NASA at all for a "news" site to realize that they can turn valid interesting scientific observations into a sensationalist click bait headline and make some ad revenue.
NASA did some real science. Some parasitic news writers did some bad math and turned it into ad revenue.
FOB? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the 10 trillion is for FOB. I am guessing it comes out to a negative number CIF
In CIF, the seller is responsible for transporting goods to the nearest port, loading the goods on the ship and paying freight for the goods to be delivered to a port chosen by the buyer. In FOB trading, the seller is only responsible for taking the goods to the nearest port on his or her end
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Right you are. The actual value is a negative number several times larger than the quoted one.
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There are tons of valuable materials, such as gold, floating about in the oceans of the earth. This has been talked about ever since I was a child. The problem is always the cost of extraction.
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Supply and Demand. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once it's here, it'll be worth s few hundred billion in real money terms.
Basically, as much money as some nations/industries will pay to get access to the material, then not much more, since availability will be fixed - making it kind of unusable except for novelty/exclusivity.
It's the same logic if we were able to access the gold theoretically in the middle sections of our planet. Valued as it exists in limited amounts now, sure - a trillion times our net world income or whatever - but of a much more limited value once available by the ton.
Not that it would be worthless or anything - it's still a nice soft and heavy material, and would remain pretty - it just wouldn't have its irrational level of value attached if its supply wasn't so sporadic and controlled.
Ryan Fenton
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That's too bad since there might be enough gold in there to make everyone on Earth a billionaire 93 times over ...
Owning lots of gold does not make you rich, unless you can actually spend the money. If gold is as plentiful as iron, then you are as rich as a scrap merchant, and not a king.
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Not necessarily (Score:2)
Gold in the last was valued not only for its colour but for the fact that unlike all other metals minable back in past times, it doesn't tarnish. Sure, it was still prized purely for aesthetics, but these days it has arguably far more value in the electornics industry. So no, another metal wouldn't necessarily come along and replace it.
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As a "store of value" as gold-bugs claim it is, it would be replaced. Sure, not replaced in the limited industrial applications it has due to its lack of oxidation, but less than 10% of annual gold production goes into any industrial use. Existing gold reserves are a 1000 year supply for this.
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By which of course I mean building a Death Star.
NASA did not discover 16 Psyche (Score:3)
This object was first seen 168 years ago.
Save the verbal gymnastics please.. The best case is It's shit writing by ill educated writers.
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Re: NASA did not discover 16 Psyche (Score:2)
Re: NASA did not discover 16 Psyche (Score:5, Funny)
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I'll take 'boring but accurate' over misleading clickbait any day.
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Shouldn't that be "NASA discovers one weird trick about asteroid 16 Psyche"?
CDO (Score:2)
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> This object was first seen 168 years ago.
So the headline got the word "asteroid" right and nothing else (why don't they teach scarcity in school?).
Wait, it's a planetoid core remnant, not an asteroid. I stand corrected.
Good job, /.
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This object was first seen 168 years ago.
It's right there in the name, since asteroids are numbered in order of discovery. 1 Ceres was discovered in 1801, while 3834 Zappafrank was discovered in 1980.
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It also is not really a metal asteroid. It was thought to be mostly metal when the mass was first measured, but as measurements improved, that's been revised downward. It's bulk density is around 4 g cm-3. So while there would be a substantial metal component, it's would have to be mostly rock. Unless it's really porous.
Will cost $9,999 quadrillion to bring it here (Score:2)
So who cares?
Mining gold from seawater is more lucrative...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Many have tried but it just isn't viable to mine from the ocean, yet.
Nonetheless he is correct. "More lucrative" means here "loses less money".
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Currently, there is no a cost-effective way to mine or extract gold from the ocean to make a profit.
These guys [discovery.com] would beg to differ.
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I was expecting you to link to treasure ship excavators / looters.
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I doubt the value is in bringing it here. I think the value in something like this will be when we figure out how to build manufacturing in space and begin to spread a bit through the solar system. So, we probably won't make use of it for anything other than pulling samples for the foreseeable future. But, if we manage to not completely annihilate ourselves for another couple hundred years and continue our current trajectory towards space travel and exploration, there's every possibility we could have a
"worth" in Monopoly money? (Score:4, Insightful)
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the only thing it could do is crashing the metal market and making all metals worthless.
Umm, it’s a clump of solid metal 70 miles in diameter. I’m pretty sure even if it was set on the surface very gently and just let go it would be sinking in massively and creating destruction on a wide scale flattening everything in a 40 mile radius from that unlucky backyard lol.
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Tooth-ship (Score:3)
https://cdn.iopscience.com/ima... [iopscience.com]
So basically it's a spacecraft shaped like a tooth, I vote that we panic.
Testicle, not tooth. (Score:3)
Can't believe no one's said it (Score:5, Funny)
Dibs!
Who does it belong to? (Score:3)
Are there any treaties etc. that govern the ownership of extraterrestrial objects?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
although its ratified by some spacefaring nations, it tends to get ignored a lot.
The rules will eventually come down to 'who can enforce them'.
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Whoever gets there first will likely be able to dictate all terms going forward. We should make sure that "whoever" isn't China.
Dollar to replace SI (Score:2)
We announce today that the dollar will replace all the units in the international system of units as of today.
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So much simpler. I hear they've been standardizing all values in the same way. It will be the standard measure for morality.
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We are one step closer... (Score:2)
Psyche was discovered in 1852!! (Score:5, Informative)
It is one of the oldest asteroids known (the 16th, to be exact), and can be observed with hobbyist's telescopes. The reported discovery is a re-evaluation of its composition with improved spectroscopic data, nothing more.
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Came looking for this comment. I have seen this exact story posted in so many different place, all with the same fundamental error in the headline. For some reason, it really pisses me off.
Economics 101: Opportunity cost (Score:3)
It is far more valuable were it is, in space. There is no point in bringing this to earth because of the Opportunity_cost [wikipedia.org]. The cost of getting materials into space is astronomical, pun intended, at around $10-25,000 to get one kilo in to near earth orbit.
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It is far more valuable were it is, in space. There is no point in bringing this to earth because of the Opportunity_cost [wikipedia.org]. The cost of getting materials into space is astronomical, pun intended, at around $10-25,000 to get one kilo in to near earth orbit.
You need to keep up with the market. You can, right now, contract to put a payload into LEO [spacex.com] for $5,000/kg without having to buy an entire launch. If you buy an entire launch the cost is $2500/kg, and will become much lower as the larger, more highly reusable launchers go into service. The limiting cost for a launch based on fuel costs is only $10/kg.
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Profits before fun (Score:2)
Great example of stupid "science reporting" (Score:2)
Don't blame NASA for this ridiculous headline. This is what happens when so-called journalists with no understanding of science and economics explain stuff to us. Let's give it a name... like maybe "assplaining."
Discovered? (Score:5, Informative)
It was discovered by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on 17 March 1852.
Hardly news.
A bit silly.. (Score:2)
2. to give such a neat round number
3. to assess worth of stuff in space, not accounting feasibility
4. not comparing it to a shiny -diamond- planet, even less feasible
The list goes on, yes I can mention more, and I really like the energy calculations people have posted, it is really funny!
The main issue I have with news like this is the lack of realism.
It is not that we, as humanity, shouldn't do this, or try to grab it, or build things in space perhaps, but please pro
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I wouldn't disagree with the "probably not in our lifetime" bit. Though, truth be told, with the current private sector space launches progressing the way they are, I could maybe, very outside chance, see SpaceX or somebody setting up a test mine there as I lie in my death bed fifty or so years down the road. Manufacturing from that material won't be taking place while I'm still kicking around unless there's some huge medical breakthrough making us live for centuries. And pardon me if I don't hold my bre
Belters? (Score:3)
Not a joke, but easily accessible heavy metals and other raw materials would go a long way toward making space exploration and colonization self-sufficient. No need to contend with a gravity well to get to the raw materials.
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Sounds entirely feasible.
Iron rich rocks provide manufacturing raw materials. Ice asteroids provide carbon, water which can be processed in to Hydrogen or methane for fuel and oxygen for fuel oxidiser and to breathe. The only real issue is going to be Nitrogen, which there is evidence of in ammonia salts in comets.
The big thing is energy to power the conversion processes. Here's hoping a simple, efficient and cheap Thorium type reactor can be developed.
Misleading title (Score:2)
It is not an asteroid made of rare metals. It is about 100% pure iron. It is rare because most asteroids so far are apparently rocky or icy. Even though Elon Musk has talked about mining and value in terms of Earth prices the real value would seem to be in being able to build things out of iron in space without lifting it. Finally, if you are already in a spaceship the most valuable thing is not going to be iron, but water nearby even if "icy asteroids are not rare".
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It is about 100% pure iron.
Unless it's not.
Using ultraviolet spectrum data collected by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope during two observations in 2017, researchers deduced that Psyche's surface could be mostly pure iron. However, they recognized that the presence of an iron composition of as small as 10 percent could dominate ultraviolet observations.
Way to hedge your bets.
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Rubbish (Score:2)
Beltalowda! (Score:2)
Untold riches are just begging to be exploited. It's a can't-miss opportunity for our species.
Space Imperialism (Score:2)
Ironically, the downfall of Spanish empire was due to their looting of the Aztec gold. All that gold that was worthless on the other side of Atlantic was brought into the European economy, crippling local value, and making everything made in actual Spain worthless.
If we go, and dig a huge asteroid made of gold, and bring zillion tons of it here, the gold market will plummet. Same with every other mineral imaginable.
Unless you bring in a small trickle of mineral streams, there is no value in huge chunks of "
Time for (Score:2)
the first Belters to settle...
Clickbait headline for serious business (Score:2)
In reality, smelting precious metals and rare earths in the asteroid belt and bringing only smaller amounts of things like platinum, gold, neodymium, etc. makes sense.
Automated machinery will likely be doing this in your lifetime if you are under 40.
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Weak, tiny science fiction ships. Blow it up like a balloon with ten mile thick iron skin, and put some really powerful stuff into it.