Thursday, November 12, 2026
Science

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 materi...

Asteroid mining will crash the platinum market, but that's good news for Earth
Image: Phys.org
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 that question with a new paper titled Will AstroForge Collapse the PGM Market?

Originally published at Phys.org

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