Platinum as an Invaluable Earth Resource

The emergence of platinum as a precious industrial revolution in the resources of the earth continued to grow using minerals worldwide from the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century and for the next several hundred years. In 150 years from 1750 to 1900, world mineral usage increased about 1000%, but the world population has doubled. Since 1900, mine production has increased by about 1300% (young 6), the world has completely relied on various uses of limited mineral resources.

The minerals we consider are platinum, palladium, rhodium, manganese, indium, bismuth, vanadium, titanium, copper, rare earth elements (platinum, palladium and iridium are called platinum group metals). We chose these minerals for testing according to the National Research Council's survey (NRC 2008) which evaluates the importance of each mineral to the US economy and the national security of the United States.

Platinum group metals (铱, 锇, palladium, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium) are present on asteroids at concentrations several orders of magnitude higher than the ore on the earth. As the most valuable metal on earth, people think that we usually get the universe first. They have sufficient value on the earth, even though they come from asteroids, they have good value and they have sufficient market deficit. You do not care about the planet. However, they are relatively rare compared to nonferrous metals and semiconductors. This may make them interesting as a by-product of other metal mining and may help you complete the business case, but iron metal is the place to trade in fact.

The problem resource is huge. Because asteroids are rich in metals and metals are usually evenly distributed, in some respects it is easier to extract space than mining on the surface of the earth. Platinum-rich asteroids contain many times more platinum throughout the planet. The asteroid 16 that NASA is seeking to explore is related to the absurd value of $ 1.5 trillion. There are trillions of dollars of available rare earth minerals and metals, and it is reasonable to build self-replicating space bases using these resources, support the industry first, and then support human settlement It seems to be a method of space exploration.