☄️ Will asteroid miners crash the price of platinum?
Two MIT researchers simulated what happens to platinum-group metal prices once companies start bringing metal home from asteroids.
The mystery
Platinum and palladium are so rare on Earth that a tonne costs tens of millions of dollars, and most reserves sit in deep mines in South Africa and Russia. Some metal-rich asteroids hold far more of them than any mine. So what happens to the price when that metal starts arriving from space?
The answer
Researchers Robert Nachtrieb and Steven Smith built a computer model of the market for the 20 years after the first successful asteroid return. They expect two phases: first a 'space gold rush', when early space metal still sells at normal prices and miners enjoy huge margins; then falling prices as supply keeps growing. Startups such as California-based AstroForge plan small, low-cost probes that grip a metallic asteroid with magnets, vaporise its crust with lasers, refine the precious metals on board and send them home inside a heat-shielded capsule.
Now think about this
If precious metals become cheap thanks to asteroids, which technologies, like hydrogen fuel cells, could suddenly become affordable?
