An Asteroid Possibly Worth $10,000 Quadrillion Is NASA's New Mission

[INVAR]

It's a solid chunk of nickel iron over 100 miles long. That's a fleet of starship hulls, already in orbit.

Who needs a fleet?

Let's just build one of these!:



Or, if we must have a fleet:



Trump likes things YUUUUUUUUUUUGE so why not?

[ABX]

One other thing, for Nickel specifically as an example, price is due to scarcity. How quickly will the increased supply crash the value to make it an almost worthless metal and not worth mining.

I do like the suggestion that it is more valuable in space. Don't mine it, use it as a space infrastructure. Send robots to engineer it in space.

[Cripplecreek]

Who needs a fleet?


Trump likes things YUUUUUUUUUUUGE so why not?

In space you want huge. The only reason we send people up 3 to 5 at a time is the cost and inefficiency of rockets.

A ship with a crew of hundreds or even as few as dozens doesn't require them to be nearly as cross specialized.

[Smokin Joe]

I worked on Wall Street and I cannot grasp a quadrillion dollars.

No biggie. Zimbwabe made that easy enough. I have ten 100 trillion dollar bills (Zim). That's a Quadrillion, in the US. In Britain, the one would have to be followed by 24 zeroes, instead of the fifteen zeroes in the US quadrillion.

[Smokin Joe]

There was a time when American mouths would water at the prospect of opening a new frontier and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process.

Human expansion always creates wealth and mining and using this asteroid in space could be our human big bang of ever accelerating expansion.

If we used the material there that could really boost spacefaring with cheaper materials and the development of ways to mine and utilize them.