Psyche is an intriguing giant asteroid that some call the most valuable in the solar system. It is a colossus approximately 223 km in diameter, but this is the average dimension, since it is an irregular asteroid. Its approximate dimensions are 278 by 232 by 164 km, its appearance would be that of a crushed potato or rather like a crushed metal nugget.
If we placed it on Earth it would be greater than the distance between
New York and Baltimore would be a real planet killer if it were on a collision course with the Earth. The extinction of the dinosaurs would simply be a summer afternoon storm compared to what a giant asteroid like Psyche can cause, but luckily this asteroid peacefully orbits the sun in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. What makes it very special is its origin and that it is a metallic asteroid basically composed of iron and nickel, although it also contains other rarer elements. like gold, silver, platinum, perhaps also rare earths, but it will not be like what is advertised in many media outlets that present it as a new version of or a space version of gold.
And since we are talking about natural resources, I am going to reveal to you a curiosity that is almost never told well in documentaries or is directly told poorly. It is possible that in Sique we will find concentrations or betas of gold, platinum and other precious metals, yes, but we will not find anything or almost nothing of uranium, thorium or plutonium, if there are they will be very residual things. The question is why uranium, thorium, plutonium are heavy elements, they should not also go with the rest of the metals, the answer is no, because iron, nickel, gold, silver, platinum, etc., are siderophile metals, that is, lovers of iron.
These elements dissolve in liquid iron and sink towards the core of the planet, for example, the Earth, on the other hand, uranium, thorium and plutonium are lithophiles, lovers of rocks, they react with the silicates of the rocks and remain in the mantle and crust, therefore, the radioactive heat of the Earth comes mainly from the mantle, not from the metallic core and this is good news for future space miners, in Psyche they will not have to worry about bumping into with dangerous radioactive betas.
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But the question, is the asteroid really worth that amount, is it that valuable? The direct answer is no, it is a fantasy, a fantasy of the media to attract an audience, in economics, the value of anything is determined by supply and demand, going to Psyche, for example, 1 kilo of gold and bringing it to Earth costs much more than the value of that kilo of gold on Earth, which by the way is quite expensive lately, around €130,000, But let's imagine that giant transport ships are created and the costs of the space mining and you manage to bring Psyche's gold to Earth with a extraction and transportation price of a few hundred euros, then you would have another problem.
The supply would increase enormously, but the demand would remain stable, so the prices of gold would plummet. If there were both gold and iron on Earth, gold and iron would be worth almost the same, the variation in their price would be marked by the application of those elements, perhaps iron would win because it would have much greater application in construction. Huge amounts of iron are needed, having a gold yacht may sound very good and luxurious, but it would be extremely heavy and very impractical, although gold would win in the production of technological elements.
Supply and demand, that is the balance that governs the price of things since the dawn of time, in the case of this asteroid, having an immense amount of metals would cause a plummet in prices, but that is something that will never happen because at least in this century we will not have the technological capacity to extract resources from such distant asteroids profitably. This does not mean that in the next century it can be done and that it will be an asteroid of strategic value, but right now the objective of space mining is the moon, not that metallic colossus of the asteroid belt.
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