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Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by EA-3167 on Thursday July 20, 2023 @11:58AM (#36802443)
Or more accurately, "It's only worth that as long as it's in space, if you bring it to Earth then it's worth very little, along with all of the iron, nickel and gold on Earth."

Talk about crashing markets.

Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by JumpCrisscross on Thursday July 20, 2023 @12:05PM (#36802568)
> if you bring it to Earth then it's worth very little

Years ago I did some back-of-the-envelope commodities analysis on this. (Of course, the firm I worked for didn't represent it as such.)

It's worth more than "very little," though obviously not quadrillions of dollars. In the long run, the dominating component of unit costs are refining, not transport. The latter is amortized over a large mass; the former limits the rate at which commodity hits the market.

In the short term, measured in tonnes, it would be transport. Scaling such that the short term, in tonnes, is a short amount of time, in present dollars, defines the venture's economies of scale and thus minimum viable configuration.

Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by manarth on Thursday July 20, 2023 @01:05PM (#36803463)
Depending on how quickly it "arrives", it might not just be the markets that are crashing.
Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by Clockface12 on Thursday July 20, 2023 @01:07PM (#36803503)
Well said. :D
Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by r00fus on Thursday July 20, 2023 @02:42PM (#36804831)
Just don't look up
Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by LargeTomato on Thursday July 20, 2023 @01:32PM (#36803832)
NASA, capable to capturing a $10 quintillion asteroid but, according to the hacker news commenters, completely incapable of making rational economic decisions. These Internet commenters are so smart.
Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by SideburnsOfDoom on Thursday July 20, 2023 @03:08PM (#36805265)
> NASA, capable to capturing a $10 quintillion asteroid

They really aren't capable of capture. It hasn't been done yet, even for much smaller space rocks. This mission will "observe" i.e. fly by or orbit the rock.

That's all we're capable of now, so the valuation is quite moot and selling the mission on that basis is close to deceptive.

Re:NASA enters ‘home stretch’ to reach golden asteroid worth... by imtringued on Saturday July 22, 2023 @04:05AM (#36824373)
The least it can cost is as much as it's marginal cost of extraction and delivery. These asteroids are so large it would take trillions of dollars to extract all the resources.