How much are asteroids really worth?

Nov 29, 2024

Popular media love talking about asteroid mining using big numbers. Many articles talk about a mission to Psyche, the largest metallic asteroid in the asteroid belt, as visiting a body worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000, presumably because their authors like hitting the "0" key on their keyboards a lot. But how realistic is that valuation? And what does it actually mean?