Xref: utzoo sci.astro:13758 sci.electronics:20858 sci.physics:20181 sci.research:1735 Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.electronics,sci.physics,sci.research Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!news.larc.nasa.gov!grissom.larc.nasa.gov!kludge From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Excavating (minig) gold in the space by NASA. Message-ID: <1991Jun13.033633.11447@news.larc.nasa.gov> Keywords: gold Sender: news@news.larc.nasa.gov (USENET Network News) Reply-To: kludge@grissom.gatech.edu ( Scott Dorsey) Organization: NASA Langley Research Center References: <1991Jun11.202207.15680@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <1991Jun12.151136.24502@tc.fluke.COM> Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1991 03:36:33 GMT Lines: 20 }>>>Today's Washington Post reports that an asteroid has been found orbiting the >}>>>Sun at a distance of about 20 million miles from Earth (closest point). It >}>>>apparently contains 10000 tons of gold and 100000 tons of platinum, as well >}>>>as 10 billion tons of iron and 1 billion tons of nickel. Its estimated >}>>>worth was put at around 1 trillion dollars. This sounds pretty suspicious. The first problem is that gold is soft and has a low melting point. This would make it seem as if it wasn't an element to be particularly popular among asteroids, and a quick glance at a table of meteorite compositions makes me rather sure. Platnum perhaps. The second problem is that space travel is very expensive. I rather suspect that it would cost a lot of money to get there, perhaps more than the material is worth at the depressed prices that would result from the discovery. Also you'd probably want to refine it in orbit or in place, which isn't something that anyone has tried yet. I haven't seen the Post article or the spectral data. But I can tell you that there are a lot of things out in space far more valuable than gold. I refer to abstract things like knowledge, but also to concrete things like vacuum :-). --scott