Don’t Quit Your Day Job 

The economy does not work that way.

NASA is looking at visiting an asteroid named Psyche 16, which is comprised of several different valuable metals, including gold and platinum. As a result, there have recently been many stories about just how valuable this asteroid is, with headlines like:

  • “Gigantic golden asteroid could make everyone on Earth a billionaire”

Well, that’d really be something.

The combined total value of all those precious metals would equal out at something like $700 quintillion.

That’s 700,000,000,000,000,000,000 (700 quintillion) dollars for 7,000,000,000 (7 billion) people, which works out to $100,000,000,000 each. Score!

Of course, even if this asteroid could be fully mined, monetary value doesn’t actually work that way. The linked article even discusses this, but not before using a spurious headline to lure you in, of course.