Asteroid mining will crash the platinum market, but that's good news for Earth
Science fiction authors have been dreaming of robotic spacecraft harvesting fortunes from asteroids for decades. Humanity is slowly getting closer to that reality. But if you ask asteroid mining skeptics, they will usually ask one specific question—what happens to the prices of all those rare materials once someone actually brings them back? A pair of system dynamicists from MIT directly tackled…
AstroForge, a California-based startup, is one of several firms focusing on mining platinum group metals (PGMs) from asteroids and returning them to Earth. These metals, including platinum and palladium, are crucial in industries like automotive catalytic converters and hydrogen fuel cells. However, terrestrial reserves are scarce, with over 80% of known PGMs located in deep mines in South Africa and Russia.
The high cost of extraction has driven interest in asteroid mining. AstroForge's approach involves using small, agile probes to latch onto metallic asteroids, vaporize the crust with high-power lasers, and refine the PGMs in orbit before returning them to Earth. MIT researchers have modeled the impact of asteroid mining on the terrestrial PGM market and found a two-phase transition: initially, as supply increases, PGM prices will drop dramatically, potentially collapsing the terrestrial mining industry.
However, over time, the price will stabilize at a lower level, benefiting other industries by reducing the cost of PGM-intensive technologies and enabling a faster transition to renewable energy sources. Despite technical challenges and past failures, the potential benefits for humanity, particularly in terms of sustainability and profitability, make asteroid mining an increasingly attractive prospect.
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