Why Bother?
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The Colossal Untapped Value Of Asteroids
- the asteroid 'Davida', which has a diameter of 326 kilometers, has been identified as the most valuable asteroid in the belt, with a resource value estimated to be some 27 quintillion (26,990,000,000,000,000,000) U.S. dollars. It is a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid, and contains water, nickel, iron, cobalt, nitrogen, ammonia, and hydrogen.
by way of comparison consider this
- In 2014, according to the CIA's World Factbook, the GWP totalled approximately US$107.5 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), and around US$78.28 trillion in nominal terms. The per capita PPP GWP in 2014 was approximately US$16,100 according to the World Factbook.
Consider those two numbers.
The value of the asteroid is $26,990,000,000,000,000,000 (2.69 x 10 ^19
The yearly income of earth is $107,500,000,000 ( 1.07 x 10^11)
The asteroid is eight orders of magnitude more valuable than all the money that everyone on the planet earns in a year.
Now..
Consider supply and demand.
If the supply is low (for something of value) the price is high.
conversely.
If the supply is high( for something of value) the price will be low.
The resources from that ONE asteroid would cause the price of EVERYTHING to plumment...by ( 10 or more) orders of magnitude.
For example....suppose gasoline cost $2.00 a gallon?
what's ten orders of magnitude less?
$0.00000002 a gallon?
(perhaps my math is wrong, suppose I dropped a decimal or five...does it really matter?)
Imagine that happening to EVERYTHING!
Guaranteed minimum income? Who needs it when you could buy everything you need with pocket change?
And that is just ONE asteroid. There are millions of them out there.
There is no doubt that we can get there. Earlier this year Elon Musk sent his little red roadster to the asteroid belt.