An Asteroid called "16 Psyche"

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There is a huge asteroid that is 140 miles in diameter. We are not in any danger from it because it is approximately 230 million miles from Earth in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is an unusual asteroid because it is probably an early planet that had its outer layers striped away by a massive impact event. And that left only the planets core intact. As a result much of this particular asteroid is composed of iron and nickel.



So why is this interesting? Well the monetary value of this amount of metal on earth would equate to:

$ 10,000,000,000,000,000,000

Source: Asteroid discovered 170 years ago could be worth $10,000 quadrillion

I'm a bit surprised that the Russians haven't tried to plant their flag on it and then claim ownership. Or maybe the Chinese!

If we start mining the Moon, or asteroids, then...the good news is that would could just ruthlessly strip mine without worrying about the ecological damage because these are all dead worlds that dont have native flora and fauna, and therefore have no ecology.

The bad news... after you dig up some high grade iron ore on 16 Psyche, or the moon, then how do you get it to earth?

It might be easy to get bulk cargos of pig iron off an asteroid because asteroids have virtually no gravity, but then how do you land big bulk loads of ore back onto the earth?