How Asteroid Mining Will Save Earth

Thanks to Audible for supporting PBSDS. To start your free 30 day trial and receive a free audiobook visit or text spacetime to 500 500! The days of oil may be numbered, but there’s another natural resource that’s never been touched, Asteroids. Get your own Space Time t­-shirt at Tweet at us! @pbsspacetime Email us! pbsspacetime [at] gmail [dot] com Comment on Reddit: Help translate our videos! Previous Episode: The Black Hole Information Paradox The richest person in modern history, was John Davison Rockefeller, His net worth was three times greater than that of our richest tech billionaires, inflation adjusted. And the source of that fortune? Timely exploitation of a vast, then-untapped natural resource: oil. Well, the days of oil may be numbered, but there’s another natural resource that’s never been touched, is effectively inexhaustible, and has a dollar value large enough to disrupt entire economies. That resource? Asteroids, and the precious materials they contain. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicts that the world’s first trillionaire will be an asteroid miner. The Rockefellers of the 21st century may be less like the internet and tech moguls of the 20th century and more like the old-school oil barons of the 19th century. Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Drew Rosen and Matt O'Dowd Graphics by Grayson Blackmon Assistant Editing and Sound Design by Mike Petrow and Linda Huang Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com) Big Bang CoolAsCats David Nicklas Anton Lifshits Joey Redner Fabrice Eap Quasar Tambe Barsbay Mayank M. Mehrota Mars Yentur Mark Rosenthal Dean Fuqua Roman Pinchuk ColeslawPurdie Vinnie Falco Hypernova Donal Botkin Edmund Fokschaner Matthew O’Connor Eugene Lawson Barry Hatfield Martha Hunt Joseph Salomone Chuck Zegar Craig Peterson Jordan Young Ratfeast John Hofmann James Hughes Fabian Olesen Kris Fernet Jane Meyers James Flowers Greg Allen Denys Ivanov Nick Virtue Alexey Eromenko Nicholas Rose Scott Gossett Mark Vasile Patrick Murray Sultan Alkhulaifi Alex Seto Michal-Peanut Karmi Erik Stein Kevin Warne JJ Bagnell Avi Goldfinger John Pettit Florian Stinglmayr Benoit Pagé-Guitard Nathan Leniz Brandon Labonte David Crane Greg Weiss Shannan Catalano Brandon Cook Malte Ubl