That makes more sense, thanks. So those pieces would be harder to recover. I’m trying to figure out how much of it they lose in such an operation. Is it like half of the amount? Or is it like single digit percentages?
I suppose even if they lose half, it would still be better than trying to put it in earth orbit and trying to mine it there. So ultimately that would be the preferred approach.
And maybe not kill millions of people in the process.
Well… The person somewhere above calculated that if it was solid gold it would be about 1km x 1km… However now I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and it seems that Psyche 16 is roughly 223 km in diameter… So first of all it’s clearly not solid gold… But the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor, and we think the meteor that caused the extinction of all the dinosaurs is the Chicxulub crater, a little off the coast from Mexico. That meteor is estimated to have been around 10km in diameter… So if we crashed Psyche 16 into earth, it would certainly be a “life on earth”-ending event.
That makes more sense, thanks. So those pieces would be harder to recover. I’m trying to figure out how much of it they lose in such an operation. Is it like half of the amount? Or is it like single digit percentages?
I suppose even if they lose half, it would still be better than trying to put it in earth orbit and trying to mine it there. So ultimately that would be the preferred approach.
And maybe not kill millions of people in the process.
Well… The person somewhere above calculated that if it was solid gold it would be about 1km x 1km… However now I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and it seems that Psyche 16 is roughly 223 km in diameter… So first of all it’s clearly not solid gold… But the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor, and we think the meteor that caused the extinction of all the dinosaurs is the Chicxulub crater, a little off the coast from Mexico. That meteor is estimated to have been around 10km in diameter… So if we crashed Psyche 16 into earth, it would certainly be a “life on earth”-ending event.