Amusingly, “rare earths” are actually concentrated in the crust compared to universal abundance and thus would make awful candidates for asteroid mining, while “tellurium”, literally named after the Earth, is an atmophile/siderophile element with extreme depletion in the crust and one of the best candidates.
Given all the potential benefits there is no way we are not going to redirect asteroids to earth. Everybody will have an abundance of rare elements.
xlr8
rare earth metals? More like common space metals, amirite?
Amusingly, “rare earths” are actually concentrated in the crust compared to universal abundance and thus would make awful candidates for asteroid mining, while “tellurium”, literally named after the Earth, is an atmophile/siderophile element with extreme depletion in the crust and one of the best candidates.
Thanks for the pro-tip! I’m not much of a geologist, more of an ideas guy[1] myself.
“I can handle the business end”