Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to 1986DA

re: 1986DA

There are 32150.746 oz(troy) to a Metric tonne.
Spot gold is around $950 per troy oz.
So a tonne of gold is worth about $30 million.

How much would it cost to get 1 tonne of gold in the form of gold bricks from High earth orbit to the earth surface.

Suppose instead 1 tonne there was 100 tonnes of gold bricks so 3 billion dollars worth of gold.

What do you need to send to Earth orbit in order to get the gold bricks to the earth surface?

You need a modest booster to kick it out of orbit and something like an Apollo return capsule.

Obviously you could design something that would worked more efficiently than an Apollo return capsule. But let's start with that as a baseline.

"Apollo CM:
Crew Size: 3. Length: 3.47 m (11.38 ft). Basic Diameter: 3.90 m (12.70 ft). Maximum Diameter: 3.90 m (12.70 ft). Habitable Volume: 6.17 m3. Mass: 5,806 kg (12,800 lb). Structure Mass: 1,567 kg (3,454 lb). Heat Shield Mass: 848 kg (1,869 lb). Reaction Control System: 400 kg (880 lb). Recovery Equipment: 245 kg (540 lb). Navigation Equipment: 505 kg (1,113 lb). Telemetry Equipment: 200 kg (440 lb). Electrical Equipment: 700 kg (1,540 lb). Communications Systems: 100 kg (220 lb). Crew Seats and Provisions: 550 kg (1,210 lb). Crew mass: 216 kg (476 lb). Miscellaneous Contingency: 200 kg (440 lb). "
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apollocm.htm

Roughly it weighs 5 tonnes and carries 1 tonne of payload and it costs millions of dollars to make and cost more than 30 million to launch it to high earth orbit.

You could improve the Apollo CM but keep it's basic design and structure and it seems to me you will still cost somewhere more 30 million dollar to make it, and ship it to high earth orbit.

So, you toss out the Apollo CM.
One can easily have the gee load exceeding 100 gees. Instead gee loads based upon human requirements, perhaps you don't want the gold deforming too much from the gee loads- how many gold bricks can be stacked in earth gravity?
Hard landings could be an option- though probably not much more than say 200 mph crash.
The design may be making the gold bricks and vehicle density about 2 or less. And have it hit a lake [or a dry lake] and recover it.
And/or we could argue again about the merits of parachute vs no parachute.

My point is you going to need some kind thing that will contain the gold bricks. And you will need some delta-v to put it on precise trajectory to will hit somewhere on Earth.
And you might need something to load the gold bricks from space into the thingy.

How much would this cost to recover 100 tons of gold?

And as I have said before, 100 tons of lunar dirt on earth could be worth more than 100 tons of gold.

Lunar meteorites are selling for about $1000 per gram:
http://www.meteorite.fr/en/forsale/LUN.htm#BAS
Google: 1 troy ounce = 31.1034768 grams

As I have said, rocket fuel is the most valuable thing one can mine in space. Because, you sell the rocket fuel in space. 100 tonnes of water in high orbit is worth about 400 million dollar. And 100 tons of rocket fuel in high earth orbit is worth about 800 million dollars.
3 billion dollars is obviously more than 400 or 800 million, but though 100 tons of gold is worth 3 billion dollars on earth, obviously it cost you something to get it back to earth, so 100 tonnes of gold in space is not worth 3 billion dollars- it's 3 billion minus the cost of bringing it to earth.

So, if you want to mine NEOs- the gold isn't as important as the water you can get from a NEO.

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