A recently discovered asteroid which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter has enough gold in it to almost make every single person on earth a dollar trillionaire.
None of us should be holding our breath for our billions however as the asteroid, named Psyche 16, will take many years yet to become economically viable. Professor John Zarnecki, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, estimates that it would take around 25 years just to get ‘proof of concept’, and 50 years to start commercial production.
Mitch Hunter-Scullion, the der of the UK-based Asteroid Mining Company, told the BBC that this is definitively the next industry “boom”.
“Once you set up the infrastructure then the possibilities are almost infinite,” he said. “There’s an astronomical amount of money to be made by those bold enough to rise to the challenge of the asteroid rush.”
While this golden asteroid is a massive 750-million kilometres from the h there are other “near-Earth” asteroids that could be exploited sooner for resources such as water and base elements. Not to mention the possibility of mining the moon.
Allied Market Research estimates that the asteroid mining industry will be worth about $3.8-billion (R54-billion) by 2025.
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