Asklemmy

43944 readers

770 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

120

What exotic science fiction technology would you finance research into, if you had billions of dollars? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by TehBamski@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

172 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

I did some googling and math. Global platinum market is 8 million oz a year. Current spot price is ~$900. That's $7T per year. They would have a monopoly and be able to shut down all mines by undercutting the price selling at say $800/oz. If it cost $40 Billion to mine the asteroid, that means it would take 7 years to pay back the cost.

7 year payback is short for businesses. Commercial Solar is installed despite having a 10 year payback.