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.

I think they should aim for a shallow man made lake or structure to heat and not worry too much about precise targeting. Take the heat and use it to steam and turbine and all that. Assuming they can target the power beam at all without lethal destruction but we'll see.