tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post7280477376912173724..comments2024-03-27T03:00:27.024-04:00Comments on Facts & other stubborn things: The economics of spaceEvanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12259004160963531720noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-49208615253330870742012-11-27T19:09:23.740-05:002012-11-27T19:09:23.740-05:00Seems worthwhile to quote Dennis Wingo, one of the...Seems worthwhile to quote Dennis Wingo, one of the chief exponents of lunar PGM extraction, from over at Nasawatch (http://nasawatch.com/archives/2012/11/looking-more-cl.html#comments)<br /><br />"Extraterrestrial Platinum Group Metals from the asteroids is a bridge too far today, and this is why in my book I focused on the near term opportunity at the Moon for these metals. Even there as a stand alone product PGM's are not where they should be from the Moon but are part of a larger ecosystem created by the industrialization of the Moon, the supply of water, the ability to do manufacturing on the Moon, and to develop a sustainable off planet presence that enables the cost effective colonization of Mars.<br /><br />In the analysis that I did in my book "Moonrush" we postulated a PGM price in the $300 per ounce range, which is sustainable and is only marginally higher than the production cost on the Earth per ounce today<br />..." <br /><br />I.e., PGM mining could be an important part of some more diverse future space-based economy. Unfortunately, corporations don't have the funds for building such economic systems from scratch, and democratic governments have no interest in doing so. Perhaps we can hope the Chinese will take a stab at it sometime in the 22nd century, or perhaps the Brazillians in the 23rd. <br /><br />Or perhaps we could create some new institution or institutions ("NASA Plus" or "Super ESA") to colonize space. We've got Linux and BSD operating systems and other Open System computer applications; we've got collaborative efforts like Wikipedia (and Wikileaks) working; we've gotten millions of people involved with distributed data processing through Seti@Home and similar projects. These are NOT traditional capitalism, yet they seem to work and even libertarians now take them for granted.<br /><br />We've got a framework for distributing work across the world via Amazon's Mechanical Turk; we've got PayPal and other mechanisms for channelling funds; we're getting better at managing organizations and major tasks via computer networks.... Suppose some foundation or UN agency set up organizations to develope better rockets and extract resources from lunar rocks and build self-supporting settlements on the moon and other planets, which made use of internet-supplied efforts. Suppose the USA and other nations allowed individuals to contribute funds to such an international space program and deduct the amount from their income taxes? Is this really more outlandish a notion than the modern corporation would have seemed to economists in say the 1870's?<br />mike shupphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08383379836883992742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-76274116101267963632012-11-27T11:05:56.848-05:002012-11-27T11:05:56.848-05:00If they play their cards right, they can get a who...If they play their cards right, they can get a whole lot more money than that at first by keeping their yield secret and unloading the platinum slowly.<br /><br />I don't understand why adding a whole bunch of other precious metals doesn't significantly improve the situation. Even taking the rather naive approach of dropping the whole find on the market in public in one go, having several metals means the price of each of them will be depressed less by your sale. Is the claim that they are closely correlated?<br /><br />Finally, I think it's important to remember that the investors here are probably well aware that this is not a quick flip and that it may take decades for the business model to work out. And they themselves are in some cases running the sort of companies which might be able to benefit from more abundant precious metals.PrometheeFeuhttp://prometheefeu.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com