Keith’s note: according to this notice: “On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, at 10:15 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled “The Mineral Supply Chain and the New Space Race.” Five key messages are mentioned. The first two include the word “China”. The rest talk about supply chain issues, leadership, and space mining. One of the witnesses wrote a book with former Trump advisor Peter Navarro called “Death by China” – so I guess we can see what rabbit holes this hearing may dive into. We can’t even re-do Apollo after half a century and we get all upset when other nations try to. Don’t expect any solutions. This will just be a China bashing session mixed with ideas that space people only discuss with other space people – but not with the rest of us.

Asteroid miners hunt for platinum, leave all common sense in glovebox, Register “But back to PGMs. We have something that we know the demand for, in the short term at least, is relatively insensitive to price. An increase in supply of as little as 250,000 ounces – seven metric tons – will drive the price down by a quarter. So instead of the $500m they were hoping for, our lads […]