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by jcranmer 2917 days ago
> 2) Asteroid Mining. Whether it's Musk/Bezos/A. N. Other, the very first time someone brings down an asteroid. It will herald the dawn of abundance for precious metals. What will happen to prices is another topic. But this will allow researchers to develop even more exotic materials.

Say what? The idea that asteroid mining will enable material science revolutions is fanciful. We're not exactly short on metals (even precious metals). And interplanetary space is less extreme than environments we can create in terrestrial situations, so we're not going to find weird new stuff by poking around asteroids.
2 comments
whatshisface 2917 days ago
>We're not exactly short on metals (even precious metals).

Last I checked, the price of most metals was greater than zero. They're commodity markets, so that means they're scarce. If you mean "available at any price," then we were not short on iron during the Bronze age or short on Aluminum during the early 1800s.

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dwaltrip 2917 days ago
Well, it is possible that if rare and expensive metals become dirt cheap, new exotic alloys may be developed that were previously economically inconceivable.

I don't know how likely this is. I imagine plenty of research has already been done on exotic alloys, however I wonder how much that research has been affected by economic constraints.

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