The Emptiness of the Deep Beyond

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

M-type asteroids are phenomenally rich in previous metals, up to hundreds of times as much as the surface of the Earth, so any mining enterprise should produce a lot of precious metals.

With the immediate effect of crashing the price. Any time a technology looks like it's going to produce ridiculous return on investment, the fairly rapid result should be that either the resource required to do it goes up in value, or the product of the process goes down in value, until the ROI is no longer all that notable. Asteroid mining in THS has been around for long enough that one of those things should have already happened.

[AlexanderHowl]

A 90% reduction in prices is reasonable. As price goes down though, demand will likely go up exponentially as well, as precious metals are really useful. As supplies increase and prices decrease for gold, palladium, platinum, etc., producers will shift from the suboptimal materials available at TL8 for the optimal materials available at TL9+. For example, gold is pretty much the best conductive materials for room temperature computing, so TL9+ computers will probably use gold for every electronic connection since there is enough production from space to increase supplies and decrease prices.

The increased demand from producers will likely moderate the crash in precious metal prices, as a 100x increase in production would likely result in a 90% reduction in prices but a 100x increase in demand. In that case, the total amount of money spent on precious metals would increase 10x because they would be so useful compared to more common metals. Just imagine the demand for gold if every TL10 computer in transhuman space required 1% of its mass to be gold because of the wiring.

[Anthony]

I'm not saying there won't be money to be made in resource extraction industries. Just that it won't be extraordinarily profitable relative to the capital costs of setting it up.

[AlexanderHowl]

It will take time for prices to reach equilibrium. Even using fusion rockets, it is not quick to set up mining stations in the Main Belt, so it will take time for the production to impact prices. Even in Transhuman Space, building spacecraft in orbit requires substantial effort and time.

For example, the annual production of gold on the Earth is 3300 metric tons per year. In order for asteroid mining to reach 100% that level, society would need to process over six hundred million metric tons of ore from M-type asteroids every year, which would require a few thousand SM+8 dedicated mining vehicles. A SM+14 industrial facility is capable of producing one such vehicle every four days, meaning that a society would require four such facilities sixteen years to produce that many mining vehicles.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It will take time for prices to reach equilibrium.

Yes it will, but asteroid mining has been available for decades.

[AlexanderHowl]

NEA mining has been around for decades, but the Deep Beyond states that there is no large scale mining in the Main Belt. For some reason, people turn M-type asteroids into Cole Habitats and ignore the trillions of dollars of precious metals in their hulls. NEAs are generally S-type asteroids, so they lack the phenomenal wealth of M-type asteroids, though they would have pockets of rich ore (similar to the surface of the Earth).

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Anthony

They're also much more expensive, and the vast majority of resource extraction jobs do not require all that much flexibility; what flexibility is actually required can be covered by a small number of humans, SAIs, or LAIs.

Do you dislike having humans around? People will want to go themselves, that won't likely change. And with exo-wombs and cloning tanks, you can grow plenty of humans in deep space. Humans want humans in the story. Sometimes the environment will be to deadly to go into. But the rest of the time humans will want to go there themselves.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Do you dislike having humans around?

No, but I assume monetary incentives work, particularly when it's grossly unlikely that there's anything remotely interesting to do in an asteroid mine. I would expect human presence to be largely nonexistent in terrestrial mines by midcentury.

[AlexanderHowl]

The difference between terrestrial mines and asteroid mines is that people can live in the old mine shafts on asteroids after they have been reinforced and sealed and/or can construct habitats from the industrial metals/silicon/slag produced as the byproducts of mining for precious metals. Since the process of separating the precious metals from the ore will purify the ore, you have high quality building materials available right there, and it makes more sense to use them there than to export them. Each habitat that you build increases the demand for local products as people move into them, which allows you to build a real local community.

For example, if the mining activities of the Main Belt produce 25,000 metric tons of precious metals per year, it will produce enough byproducts annually to build habitats capable of supporting 800,000 people in comfort. After a quarter century, you have enough living space for 20 million people, which is a small nation. With TL10 technology, you can populate the initial habitats with bioroids and then move the bioroids to new habitats as standard humans move in.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The difference between terrestrial mines and asteroid mines is that people can live in the old mine shafts on asteroids after they have been reinforced and sealed and/or can construct habitats from the industrial metals/silicon/slag produced as the byproducts of mining for precious metals.

You can do that in terrestrial mines too. You just have no reason to want to. The only reason to live on an asteroid is because you have a job that requires you to be there.