MIT Model Predicts Asteroid Mining Will Slash Platinum Prices 75%

In short, a costly, dangerous industry primed for disruption. The only missing piece has been an alternative supply.

Where would the new supply come from?

Metallic, or M-type, asteroids — the leftover cores of protoplanets — carry PGM concentrations dozens of times higher than Earth's richest mines. A single kilometer-wide (0.6-mile) rock of this type holds more PGMs than humanity has extracted in all recorded history.

AstroForge, a California startup, wants to go get them. Unlike earlier multibillion-dollar mining spacecraft concepts, it builds small, agile probes costing only a few million dollars each to launch. Each probe latches onto a metallic asteroid with magnets. High-power lasers vaporize the crust, and an onboard refinery separates PGM gas from the bulk nickel and iron. A heat-shielded capsule then blasts the refined metals back to Earth — so the company ships only high-value material, not low-grade ore.

AstroForge has suffered high-profile failures during development, typical of fast-moving "new space" companies. The study's projections assume it eventually succeeds.

What does the model predict?

A two-phase transition. Phase one resembles a "space gold rush." PGM prices have been held artificially high by scarce supply — a textbook economics problem. When space metals first arrive, they sell at normal prices, delivering astronomical profit margins to whoever lands the material first.

Those profits should, in theory, attract private investment that expands production capacity. The model projects industry profits rising to eight times current levels during this phase.

Then comes phase two: what the authors call equilibrium collapse. Global supply swells far beyond terrestrial output, and prices fall dramatically. High-cost mines, such as those in North America, go first. The Russian and South African giants follow, unable to stay profitable at the new prices. Within 15 years, the model says, space-mined supply completely replaces terrestrial mining and prices drop over 75%.

Is a market crash good news?

For miners, no. For everyone else, the authors argue, yes. Cheaper PGMs mean less expensive hydrogen electrolyzers and a cheaper transition to the green economy. Space mining also avoids the acid mine drainage, arsenic pollution and hazardous deep-tunnel labor that terrestrial extraction demands.

That is a better future on paper. The engineering to reach it remains unproven, and a preprint simulation of a market that does not yet exist carries obvious uncertainty. But if AstroForge or its rivals do deliver, the winners stand to become fabulously wealthy in under two decades — while platinum becomes a bargain.