What would you do if NASA announced that it would start mining gold, silver and platinum on the moon or from comets and astoroids in the next 2 years? and that research proved that there was alot of it, billions of ounces available. How would that affect your current situation? Would you sell up asap? Would you hold? If prices started to fall would you get out asap at a loss? Just a theoretical situation.
IF a reaction engines skylon test article successfully flew I would be thinking vaguely about very long term prospects for some metals. That's a long way away though, it's also going to change a whole lot of things way beyond precious metals. The things that worry me enough to stack instead of going on holiday are much closer on the horizon than $250/kg access to LEO.
I doubt very much this would be an issue If De beers marketed all the diamonds they actually produce we would be making roads out of them. The terrestrial mining industry should do just fine without the space cadets.
Well there surely is billions of oz of PM's off world but no need to worry about them mining it. The time we need to be concerned about this subject will be when they can send a "manned" car sized vehicle to the moon and back again with none of these fall away rockets attached at the sides for the extra lift required to leave earth orbit. Id have it a guess that the bottom of our oceans hold many billions of oz's of different PM's as well and we do not even have the technology to successfully mine them in a bulk economically viable fashion. Mining the moon, asteroids and comets LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the cost of mining, refining, and transporting the metal back to Earth would be so expensive, that the price would have to go "to the moon", to justify it in the literal sense.
