I have always hated the space mining argument as a linchpin of manned space travel, but this article in New Scientist is about the most disturbing thing I have seen in a while.
50 years worth of Platinum in the world if all cars where fuel cells?10 years till we run out of indium? (Semiconductor material)15 years till we run out of silver?10 years till we run out of antimony? (Flame retardant)Earth's natural wealth: an audit Only 9-29 years left of Silver? I would call this fiction but New Scientist is a respectable publication, not exactly Pop Sci.
But if there *really is* no substitute for platinum, that strengthens the argument for space mining: as the price of platinum increases, eventually it will become economically viable to extract it from off-Earth sources.
I agree with Jorge. If this thesis works for platinum, then it will work for anything. For example, thanks to Casini-Huygens, we now know there are enormous supplies of pertroleum-equivalent off-earth, basically oceans of "gasoline" on Titan. But long before the price of oil goes high enough it's viable to import it from Titan, we'll move on to something else. The underlying concept of the thesis is, mineral comodities can be driven by scarcity in the face of constant demand to become Unobtanium. There's no evidence that's true. The only practical use for in-space resources is... in space.
I don't see anything in that article saying their analysis included the effects of supply on price, nor the effects of price on demand. It is reasonable to assume they did not account for these effects, especially since they admit the calculations were crude.As supply becomes scarcer, price increases, which depresses demand. As supply tends toward zero, price tends toward infinity and demand toward zero. Depletion is avoided because demand reaches zero before supply.But even that's a simplification. When the price of a commodity rises beyond a certain point, it becomes economically feasible to develop alternatives. The article points out there's no substitute for platinum, but that ignores wider ranging alternatives: if platinum based fuel cells are too expensive, the market will adopt fuel cells based on something other than platinum. And if that is not feasible, the market will abandon fuel cells altogether for something more economical.
Quote from: NUAETIUS on 04/25/2009 05:23 pmI have always hated the space mining argument as a linchpin of manned space travel, but this article in New Scientist is about the most disturbing thing I have seen in a while.Space mining is economically nonviable right now because there is nothing that could be mined from space that is worth the cost of extracting and returning it.
PGMs are fairly easy to recycle, but oil and gas aren't. And land is also in short supply. In the long term, if humans don't colonise the solar system, their dead meat. Just not sure if the long term is 50 years or 500 years.
Remember that the most of the resources already consumed were consumed in the last 50 years or so - and we start to see the first cases of depletion (oil, helium). Sure it won't get too bad in next 100 years,