Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,talk.politics.space,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: Wealth in Space (Was Re: Clinton and Space Funding)
From: wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 00:44:00 GMT
 <1992Sep23.214254.3010@digibd.com> <1992Sep25.135849.20626@ke4zv.uucp> <1992Sep28.175027.25554@eng.umd.edu>
Organization: University of Houston
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In article <1992Sep28.175027.25554@eng.umd.edu>, sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu writes...
>In article <26SEP199221403772@judy.uh.edu>, wingo%cspara.decnet@Fedex.Msfc.Nasa.Gov writes:
> 
>>Nick, Nick, Nick, don't you ever read the reports about recently discovered
>>near Earth Asteroids?  There is one of the found in 1987 (I forgot the 
>>designator) that is confirmed by albedo and spectral studies to be nickel 
>>iron, as are about 10% of all meteorites found on earth.  The size of this
>>asteroid is about 1.7 miles by .8 miles.  It was estimated in the
>>article that I read, that based upon similar fractions found in metorites on
>>the earth of that type, that there was approximately 90 billion dollars worth
>>of gold and 1 trillion dollars worth of Platinum, give or take a few million.
> 
>That's before you bring it home. Actual price of gold and platinum on earth
>would drop, ASSUMING you can bring home the metals for a price less than or
>equal to the price of extracting them using current and near-term methods.
> 
>Basic laws of supply and demand. More goods, prices drop. 
> 
>I dunno, maybe everyone could have gold-plated fixtures in their bathrooms? :)
> 
>> From the day of the first contract
>>to the moving out to Pad 39, it was only five years for the first Apollo.
>>We can do it IF we have the will.
> 
>If it is deemed necessary, sure. So far, it hasn't. Same reason why we haven't
>built powersats or space colonies or anything else up in the sky. No need.
> 
> 
>                 Play in the intelluctual sandbox of Usenet 
> 
>  -- >                  SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU                        < --

Check out your chemistry books. platinum is one of the best if not the best
chemical catalyst in existence. We use a little in every Catalytic converter
on every car in the first world.  A Brinks truck comes into a factory near
Huntsville every week with a shipment of platinum for the catalytic converters
made here.  Platinum is used in many industrial processes. (Some smart 
researcher here should give us a breakdown). It would be wonderful if the
price of platinum would drop by a factor of 10. Then there would only be
100 billion dollars worth on the asteriod BUT consumption would go way up and
some industrial processes would become more efficient due to the new cost
effectiveness of using the lower cost patinum.  Therefore demand would 
increase greatly, while lowering the cost of our overall industrial process.
If this were an American enterprise, this could put our basic industries
that rely on platinum based catalytic processes to become more cost 
competitive on a world basis, which would help ease our balance of payments
burden and begin to bring terrestrial wealth back into this nation. Not a 
bad deal actually.

What about gold? Well if the price dropped by a factor of ten, there would 
only be nine billion dollars worth of gold. Well that puts gold at a price
in the $30-$40 dollar range. This would bring much more demand for gold,
especially in electronics packaging which is where the majority of gold
is used today.  This lowering of cost, if an American enterprise would make
our electronics industry more competitive on a global basis, therefore 
bringing more wealth into this nation, creating jobs for the educated, and
providing money for needed social services as well as for the bread and
circuses crowd in Congress.  Not a bad deal actually.

I haven't mentioned the Nickel and Iron that makes up the vast majority of
the asteroid.  There is probably a couple of trillion tons of smelter grade
nickel/iron (read steel) available on that one asteriod.  What would this
do? It would effectively end all iron importation to the United States, 
(We mine very little these days ourselves). This would help in our
balance of payments.  Also, the vast quantity of material could be used
in places where it is not cost effective to do so today, such as in the
primary structures of bridges and buildings. Stainless steel, which this
material basically is, would last five hundred years between needed replacement
on bridges in the Northeastern US and Europe, vastly lowering maintance
and replacement costs for our interstates. (Remember that a recent estimate
placed this cost in the 200 billion dollar range in the next 20 years).
This of course would free up billions to be used for bread and circuses as
well as to buy back our country from the Japanese and other foreigners. Not
a bad deal for ONE asteroid.

Then after all of these goodies, a much larger fraction of the American
people would have the wealth to buy gold plated bathroom fixtures.

Not a bad deal really

Dennis, University of Alabama in Huntsville

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