Platinum asteroids tempt miners - VIDEO

[Panich52]

DiscoveryNews
DNews: Asteroid Metals Tempt Would-Be Miners on Earth : Discovery News

This week an asteroid passed by Earth that was worth an estimated $5 trillion in platinum! Is it possible to mine precious metals in space?

WATCH
http://news.discovery.com/space/videos/asteroid-metals-tempt-would-be-miners-on-earth-video-150727.htm?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dnewsnewsletter

[msongs]

1. sorry but getting that much platinum would kill the market and drive the price down to nothingness.

platinum is only so valuable because of its extreme scarcity lol

[Vincardog]

2. There will be a lot of other rare minerals to be had. Without poisoning our planet.

[AuntPatsy]

3. Exactly,

[phantom power]

4. Based on that video, they're estimating up to about 3 trillion ounces

Which utterly dwarfs the economically recoverable platinum in earth's crust.

However, even if they could release all of that onto the market quickly (which they could not), they have control over how fast they mine it. So, they could exercise a fair amount of control over what price they got for it, and avoid the problem of collapsing the market. As things stand today, we will be in a platinum-constrained state into the forseeable future, so there's plenty of room to add platinum into the economy without collapsing the price, and new uses might appear, particularly if it was known that one had a potential 3 trillion ounce supply in earth orbit.

And, as already mentioned, there will be other metals to mine.

It wouldn't be a risk-free venture, but there are people who could easily afford to throw away the cost of this venture in the event that its return was zero, for the opportunity to make a good deal of money.