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Platinum Asteroid Worth Trillions Of Dollars Flies Past Earth

posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the waving-money-goodbye dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Asteroid UW-158 is set to wizz past Earth today, carrying an estimated five trillion dollars in platinum.

Spectroscopic analysis has revealed the composition of the asteroid, and made it a prime target for future asteroid-mining missions. It is approximately 452 metres by 1,011 metres in size. If the analysis is correct, it could be carrying an astonishing 90 million tons of platinum. It will swing past Earth at a distance of 2.4 million km, and will not be visible to the naked eye.

Paging Bruce Willis...

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:13AM

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:13AM (#211782)

    In order to figure out order of magnitude cost to mine the asteroid, one needs following information I think. If you can't figure out cost/difficulty, then the rest is noise.

    What is the relative speed of the asteroid to the earth? How often does the asteroid pass near to the earth? If the asteroid does not pass the earth frequently, how much energy/momentum is required to move the asteroid into earth orbit? Is there a device that can provide this much energy on a feasible cost and time scale? What is the purity of the platinum and how easy is it to extract said platinum (or ore)? What are the errors on platinum abundance (how was this even estimated in the first place)?

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  • (Score: 2) by penguinoid on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:14AM

    by penguinoid (5331) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:14AM (#211799)

    If we had a working asteroid detection/Earth defense system, we might have been able to nudge it to a specific landing spot while testing the system, for very little energy. Much of the platinum would be lost on entry, but it would still be a large amount.

    --
    RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:47AM

      by Francis (5544) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:47AM (#211815)

      And it would probably wipe out a good chunk of life as we know it. Land it on land and it blocks the sun for a while. Land in the ocean and you get massive waves. Something that big traveling that fast is not something you want to hit the earth.

      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:16AM

        by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:16AM (#211827) Journal
        Nudging it to impact the moon would probably be a better bet - no one is living there, and it's possible to set up a mine on the surface to extract the ore dumped by the asteroid. There have been plans for magnetic launchers to send stuff back from the moon for decades, but no one has built one because there's nothing on the moon that's sufficiently valuable to cover the cost.
        --
        sudo mod me up

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:25AM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:25AM (#211835) Journal

          Nudging it to impact the moon

          Yes, good idea. Unless it knocks the moon out of its tidally locked orbit, and we lose the tides and also our orbital stability and begin crashing towards the sun! See what your greed has done? It's a goddamned paradox, Louise!

        • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:05PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:05PM (#211914) Journal

          Send chunks of it into Earth's atmosphere that are too small to do real damage? Land them someplace sparsely inhabited like the Sahara?

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.