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NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars

posted by martyb on Friday January 20 2017, @02:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the iron-is-a-precious-metal? dept.

randomerr writes:

NASA wants to uncover the mystery behind the asteroid “16 Psyche.” that may contain a priceless treasure trove of minerals. “We’ve been to all the different planets, we’ve been to other asteroids. But we’ve never visited a body that has been made of entirely metal,” said Carol Polanskey, project scientist for the Psyche mission. Now NASA, led by researchers at Arizona State University, plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to orbit 16 Psyche – an asteroid roughly the size of Massachusetts, made of iron and other precious metals. The mission’s leader estimates that the iron alone on today’s market would be worth $10,000 quadrillion.

Previously: NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:47PM (#456545)

    and if you're not in a hurry you can move stuff anywhere in the solar system practically for free using the so-called Interplanetary Transport Network of gravitational slingshots

    Yeah, you can get it there and enjoy watching it fly past because you don't have a way to stop it.

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:41PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Saturday January 21 2017, @05:41PM (#457023)

    So pick a different path that has it ending it's journey with a velocity-shedding slingshot around the moon and ending up in Earth's orbit instead. There's a near-infinite number of ITN paths to get from A to B, all with different approach vectors.