FancyDency
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Jul 12, 2025 1:28 PM
FancyDency
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Tallboy13
cryborg
freshthrowaway1138
Ah, the inspiration for the Irish Space Program!
SilentSecretMan
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTY1YjkxZmJldzdsN2ZuMGhxYmlzczZzempremoxYzE4bnl0dTVwNmlzNTRibmExaSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/lOiJqCjiEOcmc/giphy.mp4
scrybot
My vinky vas a key!
Oneblueeyerighthandguy
That is what we call a surplus.
RenegadeSci
It would save billions a year in energy if all electrical cables were silver for conducivity and gold plated for corrosion resistance (we spend about $10T a year globally on electricity). https://theconversation.com/our-us-10-trillion-global-energy-bill-dwarfs-whats-needed-to-limit-global-heating-194868 Silver is ~7% more efficient as a conductor. Hopefully we can find high amounts of silver too. https://www.sciencing.com/copper-vs-silver-wire-conductivity-5863373/
MrPengy
Article: Makes a simple statement to help readers understand the scale of something
The Internet: AYKTUALLY,
streetcatz
but all that added wealth would trickle-down right? your boss might even give you a pizza party
PoggersM
See (or read) Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet
iLovePregnantLadies
It would only go to like 3 people anyways.
thotheger
Namely the business that invested in getting it in the first place
Antininny
Don't steal this poor ninny's outrage! ;-)
Hovencl00f
Gold has a huge number of qualities that would make it hold a great amount of its value, but the cost of capturing an asteroid and getting it to Earth unscathed would be prohibitive even if it were possible.
ruokanga
That’s not how corruption works.
BladeTurMoiL
So the rich will be initiating a meteor impact soon just to saturate the market?
Can’t wait.
do7rkb5n
There was an attempt to steal a post from the other place. Fuck off bot
thotheger
No it wouldn't. you need to launch a rocket for a satellite capable of flying to psyche to then BRING IT BACK to then mine it in earth orbit. Because hurling it to earth would either wipe us out or turn all the gold into dust in the atmosphere or both. All of these things I said cost A LOT. Oh and we have never done the returning a while asteroid thing back. You'll need a lot of gold to make that trip worthwhile and the gold don't magically show up over night. The market will be fine
Normandingo
Don't really need the insult.
Ebo352
I enjoyed that episode of Billions
seckzie
That is inflation and is exactly what has happened with money and labor. Our regimes now insanely tries to redefine inflation to blame US.
SmashySashimi
Nah, the millionaires would become billionaires, the billionaires trillionaires, and the rest of us would still get screwed.
Aintlurkingnomo
myotherusernameismyotherusername
No, that's enough to make a few people multi-quintillionaires.
demosteness
No. All that gold would go to a few fortunate that would manipulate its price. Take a goddam socio-economics class.
nickoftime90
Did we not just have a movie out a while back where this was done and didn't go well? " Don't Look Up" I think was the name of it.
Nnoodles
Nah, You're thinking of that Bruce Willis movie, Armageddon.. but they sent him up there to drill for oil. :p I think.... it's old.
swhertzberg
A gold asteroid would have a Deep Impact on our economy
fastjeff
CorGoBrrrr
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1d2xhdjlzZGJrNDY1NDM3ZWthdWtqcWFyZnoyZTE3azcyYmhuc29obyZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/l8aCBaBuz5R6M/200w.webp
Lekonua
Eh, kind of? The reason it didn’t work out was because the asteroid was already going to hit Earth, and *then* they found out it had a lot of resources, so they shifted focus from destroying it to figuring out how to exploit it. This particular asteroid is just floating around out there so far away that mining on it is purely hypothetical.
EchoOfSnac
It'll still be useful to press latinum. (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
NoCapes
Why is no one (including the person responding in the screenshot) not just taking the original comment at face value. They’re just doing math: $700 quintillion divided by the number of people or earth equals everyone having over a billion dollars thus making them all billionaires. The economics of it (while very true) has nothing to do with this simple math equation.
HaveANiceFace
Humor
cousteau
The price of gold would plummet though, making it worthless.
badbuddhist
Interesting take, but that doesn't work out. The value of the gold on the asteroid is based off the value of gold right now. The instant that asteroid is mined and the gold enters the global economy, the value of all gold plummets, and it's no longer worth a fraction of $700 quintillion. So.. no one's a billionaire. Except for billionaires.
TamsinVenrith
You’re missing the point. The original post isn’t saying “if we mined this we could make everyone on earth billionaires”, they’re just using the current monetary value as a reference point to help people understand how much gold that is. It’s like saying “if you folded paper 42 times it would reach the moon” and then having someone go “nuh-uh it would fall over from gravity and rotation first”, it’s not meant to be a practical application in the first place
IslaNublar
This. "I have a billion dollars", "You're not rich! if everyone has a billion dollars!" Maybe not, but they ARE still a billionaire. Economics doesn't change that fact. What being a billionaire means changes.
Richter12x2
While it's true that it wouldn't mean we were all suddenly rich, what it WOULD do is reset the value of current billionaires. Except they're the ones who would get it all and not share anyway.
KingdomsCrown
The math is just there to put it into perspective
thesameasyours
Earth has enough diamonds for every human to have a 1ct ring on each finger, but guess what debeers decides to do?
unclesporky
When you say "earth has enough," do you mean theoretically contained somewhere, probably underground? How much could very human have with what we've already mined?
thesameasyours
Theoretically its a quadrillion pounds of diamond, most unreachable with current technology.
Actual mined is.......
JusticePhrall
11 Harrowhouse
HonestCommentFarmer
Create a market for cubic zirconium.
JonSnowAKAAegonTargaryen
Also part of why so many areas in Canada aren't mined for such minerals, and 'precious' stones. They'd flood the market, and tank the price. Don't buy compressed carbon.
LariCheltsy
Sprinkle diamonds on their food and it makes their dookie twinkle?
sirtula
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTY1YjkxZmJlNnpoYmZyb25wbGdmMXlqcDljdW00d3liNzZxb3d4ZWNhdmV3eWQ5bSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/8lp6CW7K2fdDGn3xCQ/giphy.mp4
Wylekat
Expensive kidney stones.
HulaJesus
It will also add a lovely scarlet hue
LariCheltsy
emu314159127001
Why would you want a diamond without debeers to put the idea into our pretty little heads? No one did, until they created the "tradition" of the engagement ring using, you guessed it, diamonds.
amp99
'De Beers Don't Make (Natural) Diamonds Expensive (Anymore) | The Deep Dive' by Soup Emporium: https://youtu.be/GzXeWlRzBqs
Schlumpfi
Diamonds are already worthless. For industrial applications they exclusively use artificial ones. For Jewelry the artificial ones are shaking up the market, too. But even before that it all was a big marketing fuzz. There’s nothing that makes these thing valuable in the first place, except of „uuuh, shiny rock!“. Just ignore them, buy artificial ones that are cheap and so big every rich person is envious (modern ones are nearly indistinguishable), just don’t buy blood diamonds and you are good👍
castamir
To make them indistinguishable you'd need to just shove a lot of random crap inside. And that's not crap that's hard to obtain — it's just stuff that's around the blood diamond in the rock that it was dug from. But no one does that as 1. you'd degrade a pure diamond to a dirty one, 2. the cartel got laws passed that make it illegal to pass pure diamonds as "real" (ie, blood) diamonds.
emu314159127001
and really, because of the cartel propping up the price and making them a form of wealth for the genocidal types, plus what it does to the environment and not to mention the exploitation of the workers, ALL mined diamonds are blood diamonds.)
Schlumpfi
On point 👍
katolu
Diamond tipped knuckle dusters
Jimthebutler
I hear they are using those for the upcoming fight on the Whitehouse lawn.
thesameasyours
For the nazis!
onlyheretoargue
I have zero interest in having a diamond ring on each finger.
Raxiel
Ok, tell the guy behind you that he can do his toes as well.
johnxbear
Unless they give attribute buffs.
freakdiablo
Anywhere from +20 to +100 to attack rating based on quality?
PipWhipple
20% Chameleon per ring!
ThatLoserTheFourth
You are the one from my dreams
VitaminJay
Engage in activities that would be considered a war crime?
Europeans looting Africa, amirite?
cousteau
Well, if the dollar were still based on gold, it would. It would just make the dollar worthless, so being a billionaire would lose its meaning.
ConsumerOfStories
Gold could be as plentiful as trees and they'd still charge $3K per ounce for it. It's not about supply anymore.
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CrisprCAS
The person charging less would be stopped from charging less by economic, legal, or extralegal pressure.
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CrisprCAS
Cartels exist. OPEC is one. Artificial scarcity is a thing. I'm sorry you took a microeconomics class once and now think that's actually how the world works, but it's not.
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BixbyConsequence
It is very much a commodity. Few prices are more supply/demand driven than that of Gold.
Antininny
This person also needs to take a goddamn economics class. "They" might charge $3k, what do you think would happen if someone besides "They" charged just a little bit less? And then some other person charged even less than that? "They" is only one economic entity in your mind? That's a big mistake.
badbuddhist
I think they're assuming gold supply is a monopoly
Antininny
It kind of... isn't.
jinbee
See current top comment - gold is *super* useful in electronics manufacturing and stuff like that, and in industry you don't get away with luxury pricing because someone *will* undercut you. Same with industrial diamonds. Jewelry is pretty irrelevant here.
StevenAlleyn
I mean it absolutely is. The total amount of gold ever mined in all of history is ~ 217 kilotonnes. Which sounds like a lot until you realize that the Empire State Building alone contains ~ 50 kilotonnes of steel.
It actually is supply constrained/rare
Frobizzle
But it's used in luxury goods so it's supply clearly isn't enough of a concern. Precious metals are overvalued.
StevenAlleyn
It’s also used in almost every electronic device
Frobizzle
Ok, but like I said, until it's not wasted on things like jewelry, it's value is artificial.
Electronic devices are not marketed to people with gold in mind.
LurkingSarcasm
Why does everyone think it would be shared? When someone finds a giant diamond in a mine, does the whole planet get richer? Gold would be the same worth and one guy would be the richest person in the solar system.
IAmASentientWaffle
Yeah, diamonds are a great example because they are extremely abundant. Global supply though is tightly controlled by 2 or 3 companies to keep the value high (and despite that they still feel the need to exploit the workers, of course).
MarkSengenberger
The price of gold isn't the policy - a poor guy saying "we'd all still be poor" and feeling smart about it is.
Antininny
It's the only self-soothing method they have. Don't take that away from them! /s
anosebyanyothername
Gold is SUPER USEFUL; the best choice for a variety of tasks. Gold is FINITE because the Earth doesn't make it....all the Gold on our Planet comes from SPACE EXPLOSIONS. Bringing Gold in from Space would be FANTASTIC...so long as it didn't come in too fast, or need fossil fuels to be burned in it's transportation.
It's value to the company that owned the Gold mine in orbit around our Planet would be...heh heh...astronomical. The joke in this Post is that it was EVER going to get shared around.
torokunai
ChatGPT says there's around $5T of gold held in investments right now.
While it probably wouldn't be a catastrophe if it all went back to $35/oz or whatever, by way of comparison the US housing market suffered a $5T valuation drop 2008 -> 2012. The latter caused a crisis since everybody was walking away from their mortgages 2007-2011.
Antininny
Nice use of caps lock, my friend.
ZachariasWolfe
Personally, I'm guessing they probably used the shift key.
Antininny
*Nice use of shift key, my friend.
EchoPMIM
Petition to permanently rename supernovas to SPACE EXPLOSIONS (all-caps obligatory).
CommunCreator
Gold is definitely meh. It’s a metal, and the two things metals are good for are tensile strength and electrical conductivity. Gold is not strong at all. It’s a lousy building material. Its conductivity is middling, about as good as steel but not as good as copper or silver. Its real value is in the fact that it doesn’t oxidize readily so you might use it for electrical connectors that could be exposed to oxidizing.
kerrigan778
Earth makes a fair few elements but they're still quite finite tbf.
OdinYggd
Transmuting other elements into gold is totally possible too. You just need a strong neutron source to do it, such as a nuclear reactor with sample tubes in it. And the gold you get this way tends to be a little bit spicy, often reaching isotopes of gold that aren't the natural stable one.
AllTheKitties
If the fossil fuels are burned in space, is it still as bad?
Point stands, though, that if gold were that plentiful, we still wouldn't all be rich. It also shouldn't make a company super rich if they owned that much. It's useful, sure, but it's value is driven more so by its scarcity and perception as a store of value than its useful applications. Maybe if the supply could be controlled, but once we're out there mining space rocks, that's not going to be feasible for long. I wouldn't bet on it.
insaaanity
I mean, using fossil fuels in space wouldn't matter much
anosebyanyothername
Yeah but how are you getting UP to space and how are you bringing it back DOWN? You can't just Yeet it
dbox
Ackchyually™
https://www.spinlaunch.com/
https://thespacebucket">com/">https://www.spinlaunch.com/
https://thespacebucket.com/what-happened-to-spinlaunch-its-plan/
WooNeat
Yes but fossil fuels aren't a problem because of the limited amount (it's a pretty high limit) it's the damage being done by the carbon release in the atmosphere which space doesn't have, that's all ... Going up would use less fuel because there's just the tools/people, going down is basically countering gravity with stuff like balloons/chutes since space materials are heavy but don't too soft a landing either as long as shockwaves are controlled
anosebyanyothername
OK I do think you have a point. However a quick Google raises issues for your side of this debate:
Glitterfartjuice
Wouldn't it most likely originate from a single supernova?
anosebyanyothername
Also, since I'm capslocking,it would be the
ULTIMATE
FUKKIN
IRONY
if we kill ourselves and everything else on the Planet by hitting the Earth with a gold asteroid.
HatBeardMe
Too fast: inbound asteroid
KatInTheCorner
This might be a dumb question so please forgive me if I'm being a dum dum: In the same way we can make diamonds or other gemstones in a lab, could we not make gold in a lab? I was never very good at chemistry so there might be something very obvious I am missing.
anosebyanyothername
Short answer is yes. BUT you need a Nuclear Reactor
KatInTheCorner
I used to think it was a real pity we didn't have more of those around...but under THIS administration it would be Chernobyl times a million after budget cuts and staff shortages.
Midgarmerc
Surely space mining will be super ethical I'm sure
anosebyanyothername
pritolus
Just like in The Expanse!
ChicanoBatman
Holy shit. I'm 57, and never knew that gold originated from supernovas! That's nuts. Thanks for the education.
Supernova Nucleosynthesis Process - This process of nucleosynthesis is responsible for the creation of approximately half of the elements in the periodic table, including gold, platinum, and uranium.
BHPaperstacks
Bring wait till you hear about this thing called carbon.
cousteau
Isn't that made routinely inside stars though? At least by the end of their life, when they've run out of cheap stuff to burn.
BHPaperstacks
That's the joke
kerms
Most elements higher than hydrogen originate from the cores of stars and then are spread around the universe after they go supernova.
Gold and anything heavier than Oxygen exist in very small amounts in the cores of collapsing stars, with some of the very heaviest only being fused at the very last moments of a star's life. Hence why precious metals aren't as abundant.
ChicanoBatman
You know, a lot of folks would love reading posts revolving around interesting information. Actually what drove Imgur for so long, was creative, knowledge based posts. Well that and boobs. Anyway, thanks for knowledge and insight.
ArchMagos
Yup. Iron is the element where fusion of lighter elements stops providing more energy than it takes. Interestingly, it's also the element where fission stops producing more energy than it takes. This is why some scientists have hypothesized that if Heat Death isnt the end of the universe then everything will eventually be iron, as it is the most stable element
cousteau
Yeah, basically everything past iron isn't made in regular stars, if I understand correctly.
DenverTech
> need fossil fuels to be burned in it's transportation; What does this mean ?? Sending fossil fuels out the that rock to burn in space before it gets here would not add nothing to earths atmosphere. Building a (?) type of rocket to get that rock here would be impossible with our current technology. So that won't happen anytime soon. So, we may never see that rock appear on our horizon anytime soon.
torokunai
I suspect SpaceX has this mission in its backpocket
anosebyanyothername
wow, glad you scienced that out fellah. For a while there I had started to relax about the economy since we were about to enter into a new era of asteroid harvesting
need fossil fuels to be burned in it's transportation; What does this mean ? I guess the clue is in the words
DenverTech
> we were about to enter into a new era of asteroid harvesting; Really ??? Do you honestly believe this will happen within the next 100 years ?? OH, you said "were' so we are not going to, right ??
anosebyanyothername
is.....is this your first go at trolling? Because if it is I can help
DenverTech
Ok, no straight answer. Good Luck
cousteau
Imagine the sheer amount of high quality connectors we could make!
Amomani
I mean if we burn fossil fuels outside the atmosphere it should be okay?
vegivamp
We used to believe - or be told, at least - that the oceans were so big our pollution could never affect them; that our fishing could never exhaust the supply.
How would you start fixing a cloud of pollution that's forming between us and the sun because of gravity, thereby blocking our sunlight?
Now that's obviously just a thought experiment, it's not like I worked out the physics in a hurry, but you get the idea.
Frobizzle
It may be finite but the value of gold is still hugely overinflated to sell jewelry or increase investment portfolios. Everything on our planet is technically finite.
Outside of industrial applications and manufacturing gold is as useful as any other rock.
torokunai
gold's best property is that it "stacks" well; it's the crystalized labor and capital of getting it out of the ground into an intermediate investment good (bullion)
PectorialMuscles
Pretty much all advanced computational devices contain gold. Gold is also an alloying metal, it's non reactive, it's malleable and relatively easy to purify. Gold is one of the most uniquely irreplaceable metals and it happens to be quite rare... As in there's only a mcmansion's volume worth of it around. Aside from facilitating much of modern technology, I guess it's useless.
anosebyanyothername
...he types, on a machine laced with gold
vegivamp
A machine that is the result of industrial applications and manufacturing, indeed.
torokunai
yeah "aside from that Mrs Lincoln.." vibe
Meltemi
It's a meaningful point, however. Gold's cost is problematic because of its subjective valuation as a shiny. In 2022, 47% of gold consumption was jewelry, 37% to bullion, and 9% to coins and medals; electronics and "other" applications comprised only 7% of use (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries). Gold, while a useful conductor resistant to oxidization, loses in cost-effectiveness because its value is "hugely overinflated" to sell jewelry, or because it's perceived as innately retaining value.
torokunai
easier to store 400oz of gold vs. 12,000bbl of oil . . . it is a curious commodity . . .
evilspock
Gold can never be worthless - it's simply too useful, totally aside from its rarity. It is malleable, an excellent conductor, and doesn't corrode, making it ideal for electronics.
And - mining asteroids would be astonishingly expensive. Recouping those costs would keep prices high.
Diamonds are actually pretty common - they are expensive due to marketing and artificial scarcity. Whoever owned psyche could set the price.
cousteau
And it's a shame, because diamonds are very good electric insulators BUT excellent heat conductors, so they'd be amazing for electronics.
Giraffehalf
Oxygen is highly useful but its lack of scarcity makes it difficult to commodify.
ookdabook
> Whoever owned...
This right here is the problem. We need to set up a way to collectively, and globally, come to decisions about how to deal with these sorts of resources. It's bad enough we let people enclose and privatize the Earth. Fuck letting them do that to the sky as well.
Antininny
Oh yeah, communism is certainly the solution /s
evilspock
First come first served and capitalism is working so fucking well. NOT.
Antininny
Communism isn't the only solution, yet you seem to assume it is. Maybe that's your fucking problem, you ninny.
evilspock
That'd be nice - but realistically whoever spends, say a quadrillion dollars to actually get out there and mine the asteroids won't accept the risk and do the work to get them without the ability to make a profit. It would be nice if society as a whole could accept the responsibility, but we haven't evolved enough for that yet.
ookdabook
The work does not *need* to be done. If it cannot be done as a collective enterprise, then it should *not* be allowed at all. Any government which allows the privatization of space is not, in any way, "of the people." *This* is exactly why we need socialism of some stripe; democracy cannot survive if capitalism is allowed to continue unchecked and unbounded, and if democracy does not survive, then neither will our so-called "rights."
evilspock
The work needs to be done in the sense that without it, you are stuck mining gold planet-side - which is an ugly dangerous polluting process. It's absolutely not a necessity, yet, unless you think that maybe the side effects of mining the earth are undesirable. Gold in the earth is a resource of diminishing returns - it gets more expensive as we mine out the easier deposits. At some point space mining may be cost-effective.
evilspock
As for "allowed" - we can't even collectively keep the environment habitable by reducing fossil fuel emissions, and I don't see much movement in that direction, so keeping everyone from mining the asteroids at some point is a pipe dream. The reality is when it's feasible - it'll happen.