Gold, like all the heavy metal and other rate elements, were created in stars, and are still extremely rare. Given that, is gold still a precious metal in the far future?
The alien says its people have many of these- perhaps they could be used as money? Perhaps the adventurer will agree; the coin is solid soft gold, always a valuable commodity. (page 4)
Each coin is worth approximately Cr400 (two ounces of gold at Cr200 per ounce). (page 38)
Approximately Cr123,OOO in Imperial currency.
Gold is listed as a commodity in one of the CT books ....
Cr 7054 per kg (Cr 8000/kg in T20)
A US Dime or a Eurocent made of Gold would be worth about Cr 50.
I'm guessing it's in the charts and tables in the commodities section. I forgot or didn't know … oh well. So much for that theory.
I read somewhere that astronomers have found a star that has a large amount of gold in a debris field that surrounds it.
Gold is priced on several variables including: scarcity, store of value, use in industry. When demand fluctuates on one, two or all three of these variables, the price will change. So, even though there is a large supply of gold, like from the above star, you'll need to consider the amount of demand from the other two (or more) variables.
The gold miners/extractors could also control the amount of gold in the market, much like Anglo America and De Beers controls the supply of diamonds in the market. Then through beautiful or clever marketing, they can influence the demand for the diamonds. Years ago I saw a video from PBS on how De beers controls the market. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they have warehouses full of uncut diamonds that they won't release to the market because it will depress the price of diamonds.
So how would a megacorp in 3I influence the price of gold, an element that is used in industry? Are monopolies legal in 3I? If not, that could be the foundation for an adventure. Or maybe a planetary thru sub-sector sized corp is trying to monopolize the market. How will the local governments view this?
By the way, miners stop extracting gold when the price gets too low. Farmers will destroy an over supply of milk to raise the price. Some adventure right ideas there.
Well, it's an excellent conductor of electricity, it retains color, and is chemically non reactive. It may not command the price it does in our society, but it would be one that would pay the bills when recovered.
...So how would a megacorp in 3I influence the price of gold, an element that is used in industry? ...
Ship tons in T20 are explicitly volume, not mass. (p. 254.) Cargos are Td.Timerover51 found and quoted the reference [Adventure 2, page 38].
Cr 200 per ounce = Cr 7054 per kg.
T20 listed Gold as a commodity at Cr 8,000,000 per metric tonne (Cr 8,000 per kg).
Both values are in the same general ballpark and are about 100x the commodity price of Silver at Cr 70 per kg (Cr 70,000 per ton).
Elements heavier than iron can be created in stars, check out the s-process.
Here is the Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process
Yup, I agree with your overall conclusion.I stand corrected on the formation of heavy elements in stars. However the principle still holds, gold distribution in a galaxy depends on OBA stars (and their destruction). So gold and many other heavy elements will likely exist in similar proportions in star systems like ours that formed in similar galactic conditions.
A TL9+ civilisation would be able to mine asteroids, moons and rockball planets as fairly trivial engineering projects considering cheap fusion and gravitics.So gold and other precious metals wouldn't be rare in absolute terms in the 3I which covers a volume of space small enough that all the stars within are essentially from the same galactic neighborhood.
Not all systems will end up exactly the same and some worlds will be richer in some minerals than others or the minerals will be more accessible. Another aspect to keep in mind with respect to precious metals is in the 3I asteroid mining would be a thing. While metallic asteroids are relatively rare (at least in our solar system) a single decent sized one rich with ore would be an awesome find. No one would mind it getting literally pulverized to extract every last gram of precious/useful minerals out of it.
I agree with you againWith the ridiculous listed price of gold a Type-J Seeker able to refine a few tons of gold pays for itself. To tear through a system's asteroid belt or some gas giants' moons looking for precious metals would be fairly quick even with a slow maneuver drive. So buy yourself a Type-J, go asteroid prospecting for a month, and come back a gajillionaire.
Yup, I agree with your overall conclusion.
A TL9+ civilisation would be able to mine asteroids, moons and rockball planets as a fairly trivial engineering projects considering cheap fusion and gravitics.
I agree with you again
The actual prospecting isn't exactly hard either. Fire a laser at the asteroid you want to survey and then use a spectroscope to analyse the elemental composition of said asteroid. Start with the dense ones![]()
Finding GOLD is pitifully simple, extracting and refining the gold is where the expense comes in.
Just as a Traveller point of reference, fusion tunneling an asteroid costs Cr 1000 per dTon. If my iron asteroid is 0.01% gold (a staggeringly rich concentration), then each 1 ton of gold requires 10,000 tons of iron ore being extracted and refined to liberate that 1 ton of Gold from its surrounding waste. If your Prospector can extract and process 1 ton of ore per HOUR, then it will only take 417 days to refine 1 ton of pure gold.