[ExI] De-Orbiting Gold

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because, at this time, no one will buy raw materials in orbit - at
> least, not for any price that someone capable of delivering it would
> accept.
>
> Without that, the value is zero, by definition.

Tis sad, but true. I think you could, however, set up a kind of space
bank. Adrian, you pay me $1000 for an ounce of gold in orbit, and
Mike, you pay me $4000 for a ton of copper in orbit, and you just hold
that as stored value (money) until you exchange it for something else,
or you create something with it. This kind of money is probably
preferable by many people to fiat currency. At least there is
something real that some day you can hope to recover and put to use.

> Nope.  No customers = no value.  Coins and jewelry can be sold;
> space elevator counterweights can not.

I disagree, I think it could be sold. Especially when once the space
elevator is built, you can put granite up and bring gold and copper
down. I would buy a piece of a space elevator counterweight. It's
great money...

> Which gets to the heart of the problem: lack of fabrication capability
> in space.

That is a problem for sure, but it is a different problem.

> Once someone launches the equivalent of a machine
> shop, or some other way to make use of raw materials in orbit (such
> as there actually being a space elevator, or one under construction),
> then and only then might raw materials in orbit gain value.

Again, if you think of it as stored money, where every ounce is
assigned to someone, that's real money folks!

> Or, of course, you could plan to deorbit some of that gold, for the benefit
> of others who have no desire to join you or work extensively with you (as
> in, most of the people with money).  If the resources of space really are
> all that vast, what's the problem with "wasting" the first bits of it you
> recover, until you can get mostly self-sufficient?  Waste is only a problem
> for sufficiently limited resources, and the amount of gold in space is
> nowhere near as precious and rationed as the amount of money in your
> bank account right now.

Clearly not. However, gold will always be a rare commodity because of
it's position in the table of elements. Surely you've seen Cowboys and
Aliens... LOL

-Kelly