Diamond prices are down 60% since a 2011 high, and they are still falling. It’s not all down to lab-grown diamonds, demand is down too, especially in China.
No one can lab-grow gold yet, so its rarity and scarcity protect its value, but that will end too. It’s just a question of when. China launched an asteroid touch-down mission this week, which will make it the 4th country/region to do so, after Europe, the US & Japan.
How soon will it be feasible to mine asteroids? Who knows, but a breakthrough in space propulsion might mean the prospect happens quickly when it does. It’s possible gold has twenty years or less of being high value left.
The $80 Billion Diamond Market Crash Leaves De Beers Reeling
The rocket equation wants to have words with you.
Ah, yes, the notoriously accessible and inexpensive field of launching rockets, landing said rocket on a giant sized bullet so a robot can go drill in it for weeks to dig up thousands of pounds of rock, lifting the robot that now weighs significantly more off of the giant bullet, and safely returning it to our larger, slightly slower bullet.
It’s possible gold has twenty years or less of being high value left.
In 20 years florida and NYC may be underwater.
In 20 years Flordians won’t have teeth.
They can replace them with gold teeth for rock bottom prices!
But the plummeting price of gold from the abundance would make the asteroid mining commercially nonviable. As an aside, only 7.16% of the gold demand in the world is actually for technology: https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-industry-sector-share/
There are many many more materials than just gold that could be extracted from asteroids.
But sure, establishing the infrastructure to make it commercially viable is a huge investment and won’t be commercially viable for a while. (Think about missions like Hayabusa that cost hundreds of millions to bilLions, but retrieved “just” a couple of gram of material.)
I suspect asteroid mining won’t be profitable unless we are able to use the materials to build stuff in space. It costs so much to launch stuff into space that a ton of say iron is going to be worth much more there than on earth. Whether we’ll ever reach that stage is anyone’s guess but I hope so.
Just need to make sure the mining machine is durable enough and can launch itself from asteroids, because launching from asteroids with their low gravity is a lot easier than from earth, so a single earth launch can mine from multiple asteroids and send stuffs back.
Are they able to lab grow the same kind of gem quality diamonds that you usually think about when it comes to jewelry, or is it still mostly industrial applications (such as diamond tipped drill bits)?
Lab grown diamonds are much better quality than natural diamonds. So now natural diamond companies are moving to the “imperfections is what make a diamond perfect” strategy. But nothing’s stopping labs from growing diamonds with imperfections if that’s what the people are after.
All in all, diamonds have always been mostly a scam and it’s showing more and more.
I’ve heard that lab grown are actually better across each measurement (clarity,shine, whatever), than natural diamonds, now.
If the price of gold plunges one day, it should already plunge today. In other words, the probability for success of those mining operations is low.
Why should it already plunge today? The demand/supply is still the same.
But it will not be the same when asteroid mining increases the supply tenfold.
I’m skeptical about the feasibility of transporting heavy metals through space. Also, diamond were never scarce, it was all literally market manipulation.
Why wouldn’t it be feasible to transport heavy metals through space? They would just float.
Yes, if diamonds were rare I wouldn’t have a diamond tipped drillbit set and several diamond saws. “Blah blah” quality … sure … but rare is rare.
Eh they are already moving a good clip relative to the earth, nudging them in this direction would be the easier part of the equation. Stopping them when they get here is probably where you want to focus your energy… No pun intended
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
They are talking about not returning mined material from asteroids but about changing the trajectory of asteroids so that they collide with Earth. But if you do so, the asteroid would likely be destroyed, leaving little to mine, so it would have to be stopped (or slowed down) before reaching the ground.
Oh, right. I totally forgot about that part, I thought they were talking about diamonds.
Diamonds are rare on the surface of the earth, and their discovery therefore costs on the average much labour-time. Consequently, they represent much labour in a small volume of space. Jacob doubts that gold has ever paid its complete value. This holds true even more for diamonds. According to Eschwege, by 1823 the complete yield of the eight-year old Brazilian diamond-diggings had not yet amounted to the value of the 1½ year average product of the Brazilian sugar or coffee plantations. Given more richly laden diggings the same quantum of labour would be represented by more diamonds and their value would sink. If one succeeds in converting coal into diamonds with little labour, then the value of diamonds would sink beneath that of paving stones.
– Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1
I swear at times Marx had a time machine.
Asteroid mining would collapse the markets for most minerals, except perhaps the higher volume stuff like iron.
It’s good to see diamond mining being replaced by artificial diamond manufacturing, which appears to be better envitonmentally and socially.
But I wouldn’t compare diamonds to gold. Because gold is an element that can’t be manufactured (without a particule accelerator and an insane amount of energy).
Asteroid mining is still science fiction.
Excellent. One of Israels biggest exports is finished gemstones. I hope they are crushed.
they don’t mine them. just process them. not sure it’s lowering the cost of raw diamonds will change the processing cost.
its morning and haven’t had my coffee, so I’m on instinct. I feel like it would lower the cost.
The processing cost is negligible compared the sales prices. Same as the cost of raw diamonds.
Diamonds are mostly a scam to part people from their money for literally a shiny rock.
it is, but if they maintain a monopoly, then cheaper raw diamonds will only increase profit.
although I’m assuming cheap synthetic diamonds are processed in other places.
Beltalowda
The breaktrough for asteroid mining isn’t propulsion but how to mine and process ore in a vacuum.
Given how big asteroids can be, that must be a massive microwave! Though the spinning plate probably won’t work due to gravity…
Hmm. What’s hard about that?
Drill and blast seems like it should work as normal, or just a bucket if it’s the rubble heap kind. Getting noble metals like gold out of a solution is pretty easy with electrowinning.
Drill and blast seems like it should work as normal,
Zero G?
Creating a debris field in orbit? You want this thing fully enclosed before you start messing with it in ways that cause it to break up.
I suppose in a very low orbit you could consider messy options if it will all burn up in a few months. But doesn’t seem ideal.
Why would that be a problem? The drilling platform would have to be tethered to the rock, but that’s doable and I’m pretty sure they drill all the time on the ISS. Actually, didn’t we drill into a comet or asteroid for samples sometime recently? The explosives would require no modification at all.
The drilling platform would have to be tethered to the rock
That would be the start of a solution.
Barbed harpoons were the approach with the comet. Putting a band around the whole thing could also work for a small body. If you’re going for gold, the asteroid is also going to be paramagnetic if I’m not mistaken, so you can just electromagnet on.
It’s slightly more problematic than on Earth, but I’m basically going to need some citations if I’m ever going to believe it’s sticking to the chosen landing site that’s the hardest part. A lot of proposals sidestep on-site processing, even, and rely on delivering a whole small body to Earth.
Maybe not to Earth (unless you wanna crash economies), but a LaGrange point would be suitable – as well as a place for something spinning so the hairless monkeys could have a semblance of gravity.
What about those things require any g?
Asteroid miners are going to have more in common with spiders than anything else; find a tasty roid, wrap it up in cling wrap and set off bombs inside of it until it’s a bag of gravel, then get the whole mess spinning and just let go of the stuff you don’t want to keep. Hell when you’re done you can re-harvest the angular momentum to propel you over to the next roid and start the process over again.
So easy, why hasn’t anyone done it already???
For the same reason most other things involving space haven’t been done yet. We as a species suck at prioritising stuff and allocating resources
I mean, most space travel ideas haven’t been done, even ones that are many decades old. Shit’s expensive and risky, both as an investment and an activity.
Actually it’s surviving the radiation outside the Van Allen belts.
Robots. Autonomous probes.
Available free to anyone who can hack the control codes!
Has anyone hacked the mining robots already in use on earth? Has anyone hacked any of NASA’s probes?
Careful there, you’ll trigger a lot of gold worshiping tryhards
Why not lab grown gold?
they actually made gold from lead, in the hadron collider. but it was a few particles, and very unstable, still gold!
Alchemists have been trying for thousands of years, you’re welcome to join them
Now we call them nuclear physicists
Diamonds are just Carbon atoms in Chrystal form.
You can take carbon from say coal, turn it into a Chrystal and you’ve got a diamond.
Gold is just gold atoms, you can’t make gold atoms
Because of nuclear physics.
Diamonds are just carbon atoms arranged in a particular repeating structure (a lattice). So you can go from, say, graphite to diamond without touching the atoms themselves.
Gold, on the other hand is not about structure, but the atomic cores themselves, which contain exactly 79 protons. Going from one type of atom to another type requires some form of fission (breaking larger cores into smaller pieces) or fusion (smashing two smaller cores together). I don’t think there are (viable) fission “recipes” that yield gold. And fusion requires insanely high temperatures or pressures even for smaller atoms (were talking center of the sun here).
I fused with your mom last night.
Cut it out, dad.
