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psychothumbs OP t1_j60umi3 wrote

Reply to comment by klystron in Asteroid-Mining Startup Plans First Private Mission to Deep Space by psychothumbs

People are so endlessly confused that "rare earth" elements are not really that rare, while the actually rare elements are not "rare earth". Seems like this author is trying to say "metals that are rare on earth" but put it in a jargony way that they did not really understand.

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klystron t1_j60xkot wrote

We live in a world that is increasingly dominated by science and technology, but journalists seem to think it is beneath them to learn anything concerning the subjects they are writing about.

I did some web searching on the author of this article, George Dvorsky, and couldn't find any scientific qualifications other than "bioethicist".

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psychothumbs OP t1_j61qejo wrote

Plus copy editing standards have gone through the floor for both fact checking and simple spelling and grammar errors.

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PreFalconPunchDray t1_j61cnd0 wrote

I'm guessing they are hoping to find gigantic pure nuggets of these 'rare' earth elements so to sidestep and corner markets on earth. But then if something like that happens, then we immediately become a post-scarcity society wrt to those metals. Then what? I think that's the point - they find these 'nugget's of pure metals (as pure as something like that can be ok< I have no idea>) and if they find a large enough chunk, then now they have a lotta things they can pull off - all sorts of 'secondary' things they can now build since the rare earths are now cheaper than water.

You want a solid platinum car? go nuts. etc etc. All those metals are still useful, but we'd have to settle with them being too cheap to sell direclty, but the since they are not worth it in a pure form, doesn't they aren't useful.

Meh, just how I've mused about it.

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Sweezy_McSqueezy t1_j62jrko wrote

You make some good points, but I want to nit pick one thing: 'post scarcity' is not a real thing, and basically never will be. When expensive things fall in price dramatically, we generally increase our consumption of them dramatically. But, efforts are still made to use it efficiently at the margins.

One example would be screws. Screws used to be very expensive at all levels (the materials, the labor input, etc.) but are now extremely abundant and cheap (at least 1000x cheaper, maybe 1000000x). But, as a mechanical engineer, I can tell you that we definitely still try to use them economically. We try to use fewer of them in designs, we try to standardize them, and choose ones that are less expensive.

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