NASA Plans To Explore A 10 Quintillion Dollar Asteroid That Could Cause The World's Economy To Collapse

[NunoLava1998]

no, the earth is flat dummies

[D-Dos Dan]

This thing is pretty big but not as big as you'd think, $(1*10^19) / $80 (~price of iron ore currently per metric ton) puts it at 1.25*10^17t or 1.25*10^20kg.

 

Earth = ~6*10^24kg

Moon = ~7.35*10^22

 

It's ~1/100 the size of the moon so it wouldn't screw around with the tides too badly and the earths orbit would definitely be screwed over it would take many 1000s of years to effect it, unless it was crashed into the Earths surface where the energy transfer would probably screw up our orbit however it's only 1/50000 the size of the earth.

[Tieox]

Telling you all, build a space BBQ on it.

 

[FloRolf]

1 hour ago, Bsmith said:

considering the fact we actually know very little about mars it could go two ways.

 

1) the impact will create enough heat to warm up the planet a little, melting some of the water that's on the planet and possible release of other gasses/fluids which allow for the creation of a very thin and minimal atmosphere which keeps the warmth inside, functioning as a natural biosphere that with enough time allows for live to evolve on it own, on mars, which could make colonization much more viable in the end.

 

2) the meteorite crashes on mars and releases some gasses and fluids, but not enough to create a atmosphere meaning the heat will escape and the gasses/fluids will freeze again, we now have mars with a huge chunk of metal on it that we can't reach or mine easily, but would be very useful for humanity if we could reach it.

 

this are two simple and superficial possibilities. of course there are more things able to happen, but they will fall between those extremes.

to me both ways Sound awesome.

If 1. would happen then gg. if 2nd then whatever.

[Snadzies]

Even if the asteroid was sitting in a perfect orbit around Earth right now, with current technology it would be far too expensive to mine the asteroid anyway to make it worth anyone's time.

I could hit the character limit of several posts going over even a simplified list of cost for sending up equipment, people, supplies just for mining, let alone processing, refining and the development of technologies for each.

And that isn't even considering the insane dangers of living / working in space and the dangers of all the debris sent into orbit such projects would cause.

 

We are likely still a few hundred years away from being able to efficiently and safely work in space.

[VerticalDiscussions]

One thing is certain tough, platinum and gold jewellery prices would drop like rain. Possibly even precious gemstones.... the definition of luxury would be completely different and honestly, what material would we have to use to regain that sense here on Earth again?

[NunoLava1998]

I think they would just replace our currency with iron and gold and salt n' pepper.

[ADM-Ntek]

2 hours ago, VerticalDiscussions said:

One thing is certain tough, platinum and gold jewellery prices would drop like rain. Possibly even precious gemstones.... the definition of luxury would be completely different and honestly, what material would we have to use to regain that sense here on Earth again?

nope they would just hord it like deboers does with the diamonds.

[bcredeur97]

what they should do is move it onto mars so it's there for future use lol

[deviant88]

Please create a rule against click bait titles i so fucking hate these threads they are top of the shitposting.

10 quintilion asteroid and collapsed economy f you and your senzationalist news this has nothing to do with reality, unless NASA itself announces a plan to bring the asteroid close to earth and actually mine it stop posting fake titles. Not to mention such an operation would be meaningless since the cost of operation would outweight that of the materials which would devalue quickly.

Also you cant bring an asteroid down to eart without burning in atmosphere and causing a massie impact scene.

[xentropa]

Why do we need iron?  That is like the most common metal on Earth and is already dirt cheap.

 

Maybe if it is filled with platinum, iridium, or any other 6d metals, then it MIGHT be worth something.

[dalekphalm]

16 minutes ago, xentropa said:

Why do we need iron?  That is like the most common metal on Earth and is already dirt cheap.

 

Maybe if it is filled with platinum, iridium, or any other 6d metals, then it MIGHT be worth something.

The asteroid does have deposits of heavy/rare metals. So that's really where the value is. The iron ore is nice to have, but iron is readily available enough as it is. Would be more useful once we have off-world manufacturing.

[Simon771]

19 hours ago, TheRandomness said:

I mean they could just pull it into orbit and slowly mine it out, giving more metals and such over a much longer period of time whilst keeping it secret, therefore the economy wouldn't die. But hey, what do I know as a 16 yr old?

Can you imagine them trying to pull it closer and accidently smash it on our planet

That would destroy more than just economy

[Archeval]

19 hours ago, Energycore said:

How is having better access to commodities and materiel actually lethal for the economy? Is our system that fragile? Am I missing something?

not really, as it stands right now no currency has a value backed by something in the real world (Gold/Silver standard) Russia is trying to change that but as it stands most currency is based on the dollar so the only reason right now that any currency has a value is because we think it does, or because we think one currency is more valuable than another.

 

This started because the US was the only major country that wasn't leveled by WWII, also most of our allies owed us from the lend lease program, countries started trading their gold in for dollars just in case their own currency goes belly up and to make exchanges with other countries. which lead to a great deal of countries having their money coincidentally backed by the US dollar which at the time was still under the gold standard.

 

then came our costly wars and a great many countries making exchange deals with our currency we removed the gold standard in i think 1976 because it was limiting the economy and everyone just stuck with the dollar and that's how we got to where we are.

[Archeval]

6 hours ago, NunoLava1998 said:

I think they would just replace our currency with iron and gold and salt n' pepper.

not likely as this would severely limit the economy as your money would be a commodity that has a practical use in the world. what would happen though is the values of the metals in the asteroid would plummet due to a saturation of the market.

 

i think that's pretty much all that would happen

[Master Disaster]

8 hours ago, D-Dos Dan said:

This thing is pretty big but not as big as you'd think, $(1*10^19) / $80 (~price of iron ore currently per metric ton) puts it at 1.25*10^17t or 1.25*10^20kg.

 

Earth = ~6*10^24kg

Moon = ~7.35*10^22

 

It's ~1/100 the size of the moon so it wouldn't screw around with the tides too badly and the earths orbit would definitely be screwed over it would take many 1000s of years to effect it, unless it was crashed into the Earths surface where the energy transfer would probably screw up our orbit however it's only 1/50000 the size of the earth.

Its made or iron so infinitely heavier than the moon.

[dalekphalm]

15 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Its made or iron so infinitely heavier than the moon.

Not necessarily. How big is this asteroid? The moon has a solid Iron core that's ~240km in radius (480km across) - I'm sure there are asteroids that big, but fuck, that's a giant asteroid. That's "we're totally fucked forever if this thing hits us" big.

 

In addition to that, surrounding the solid iron core is a liquid iron layer, w/ 330km radius, and then surrounding that, is another layer, which is partially melted iron, with a 480km radius.

 

Thus, the total iron core of the moon is 480km radius (960km diameter):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Moon_diagram.svg

 

And that's not considering any normal deposits of iron or other ferrous metals in the regular crust layer.

[Wolther]

37 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Its made or iron so infinitely heavier than the moon.

The moon is 7.35*10^22 kg of mass while the asteroid is 2.27×10^19 kg of mass. 

The moon is.. much much "heavier".. like thousands of times "heavier" 

[MadOne627]

This post is seriously annoying. Space is full of these kinds of things and we don't need more of it on earth. This asteroid isn't import to the people on earth it is important for things like our space program.

 

The interesting thing to me about this story had been the speculation on what they are going to do with it. I agree it would be nice to have in orbit around earth because if I remember the rough number my aerospace friend said "90% of the mass on a launch pad doesn't make it to space". If we want to travel the galaxy we will need to overcome this issue.

 

If it ends up being a good idea to bring it back. It would also be intelligent to leave pieces of it behind to use for other space programs. My thought would be figure out an orbit to get a large piece in orbit with earth, another on Mars and a few others large enough to use that are held in potentially useful places through out the galaxy. Also if we left pieces behind we would be reducing the mass of orbital chunk, increase the speed of our peice as we move it towards us, and would have deposits of Iron. I like this idea but i do not want to do the orbits math on this.

 

I have more thoughts on this and might post them later. For now back to work. 

[Wolther]

7 minutes ago, MadOne627 said:

-snip-

It's not like this thing is even unique anyways. Most asteroids have a pretty big density of metals. Asteroids aren't uncommon. Only reason why we don't have access to dense metals on Earth is because.. Well Earth is pretty massive with a very hot core. That hot core is where the most dense materials on Earth is located, the least dense are on top of the crust.

So any small asteroid would be a pretty good location to mine, and those small asteroids are everywhere in space.  

 

I don't think it's a good idea.. because well I don't see a purpose to even do that. By the time we have the capability to put this asteroid into orbit we'd have much more efficient means of traveling in space, therefore space mining I bet would already be a thing before we accomplish goals like this. 

[vanished]

10 hours ago, TheRandomness said:

Using Kerbal physics(TM) they could grab it twice and stop its orbit. Also, who said it had to orbit earth? It just needs to be close(ish)

Using Kerbal physics they could trick it into propelling itself by harnessing the flaws in the universe  

[Tieox]

Just claim their is tentacles on the asteroid.  We will have warp drive in a weekend.

[Garfieldus]

Click bait tittle while in reality economy wouldn't be effected by much at all. If suddenly a giant ass gold cube 1x1x1km were to appear out of thin air the current value of such cube would be:

763 567 200 000 000 000 (Seven hundred sixty three quadrillion USD). If I did the math correctly: 1 billion cubic meters of gold*19282000 grams/cubic meter*39.6USD/gram) 

Now you might think this would drive economy nuts and make it collapse. Well no... Because that's YESTERDAY's price and since our currency is not tied to gold the economy would be fine. Meanwhile gold would be nearly worthless. Price of gold and other rare elements is high because they are RARE. Increase the supply and the price will drop.

[Teddy07]

Would be a great debt solver

[Garfieldus]

6 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

Would be a great debt solver

Woudln't solve any debt because increased supply would drive the prices of metals in the asteroid down.