[ExI] Hawking urges Moon landing to 'elevate humanity'

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jun 24, 2017, at 6:12 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 24 June 2017 at 13:46, Dan TheBookMan  wrote:
>> One major problem with this: real world markets ate forward-looking. The
>> prices for the commodities would likely crash beforehand based on the
>> expectation of such sales. If traders expected the project to work -- and
>> it's hard to see how they wouldn't unless you somehow keep the whole thing
>> secret or most traders expect failure right until contracts are signed.
>> 
>> One way to mitigate this might be to set up futures or options contracts
>> with the goal of profiting before things start to happen. But that puts you
>> into a realm of very speculation trading that might not end up playing out
>> as you believe.
>> 
>> Another is to try to stimulate demand. If a very rare commodity's supply
>> increases hugely and demand stays the same, prices typically crash, but if
>> the demand can go up that might play out another way.
> 
> 
> I see a few problems with the proposal to fling an asteroid in the
> direction of Earth. :)
> 
> You have to be able to stop it when it gets near Earth. A fast trip
> aiming to go into orbit would probably not be greeted with much
> enthusiasm, as a slight miscalculation could be quite messy. A slow
> trip would take many years and circumstances would have changed by the
> time it arrives.
> 
> The theory sounds good, but the practice requires a bit more space
> technology than we have at present.

True. This adds to my point. Unless these capabilities are improved rapidly -- like a Big Bang in space tech -- or are kept secret -- unlikely for such a large scale project even were it completely government run and funded -- it's almost certain that commodities speculators would crash prices before the stuff reaches Earth or the contracts are inked.

This would apply even were this to not involve moving an asteroid, but simply mining in situ. My guess is this is more likely, especially at first. If and as this succeeds -- likely over a range of missions over years of effort, prices would start to fall if demand remains the same. Making a huge killing here depends on commodities prices being wrong a lot and long term -- everything going right up until your fortune is made. That's not impossible, but it does depend on too many things going right in my opinion.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst

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