“This isn’t space mining,” says NASA. As if at this point in history, government agencies still had a monopoly on the truth.
In October 2023, humanity took a discreet but decisive step toward its next economic model: the extraterrestrial one. That day, the Psyche space probe launched from Cape Canaveral, bound for an asteroid of the same name. Its mission is ostensibly scientific: to study the exposed metallic core of a failed planet, a stellar fossil trapped between Mars and Jupiter. But the subtext is more powerful than the Falcon Heavy rocket that propelled it: capitalism has set its sights on the cosmos. And Psyche, with its supposed $10,000 quadrillion worth of metals, is El Dorado.
If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will reach the asteroid in August 2029. And although no one is saying it out loud, it will be the year humanity will attempt for the first time to touch the door of the solar system’s central bank.
The core of another world… or the core of our future?
Psyche is no ordinary stray rock from the asteroid belt. Its composition is unique: it is made up almost entirely of metals such as iron, nickel, gold, and platinum. In other words, the material pillars of every Earth’s economy since ancient times. Its discovery in 1852 did not generate much interest beyond astronomy. But today, with the planet’s resources dwindling and the climate crisis stifling energy options, the scenario has changed.
NASA maintains that this is a “scientific mission” to understand how planetary cores form. But behind the academic rhetoric lies a growing appetite for space mining, a business that until a decade ago was the exclusive preserve of science fiction writers, and which today is emerging as the next global speculative market. It’s not about bringing the material back to Earth—for now—but about setting precedents, validating technologies, and sending a clear message: we’re already digging off the planet.
Capital has no homeland, but it will soon have orbit.
In a context where artificial intelligence is replacing workers and decarbonization is eroding old industries, the real gold isn’t underground. It’s floating, and the race to capture it has already begun. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and state space agencies are just the visible face of a deeper phenomenon: the transition to an orbital economy.
The key is not only economic, but systemic. If Psyche truly harbors metals in sufficient quantities to saturate terrestrial markets, the price of commodities—from steel to gold—would collapse. And with them, the entire framework of currencies, futures contracts, and global monetary policy.
What would happen if gold were no longer scarce? What would central banks do? Who would regulate interplanetary treaties?
The Psyche mission won’t bring immediate answers, but it is asking the most dangerous questions of the 21st century. And it does so in an environment without laws, without national sovereignty, and without citizens: space.
Humanity has already experienced similar episodes. The California gold rush in the 19th century. African colonization for mineral resources. The war over lithium in the Southern Cone Triangle. But never before has greed had to travel 370 million kilometers to establish itself. And yet, here we are.
Current space treaties prohibit claims of sovereignty over celestial bodies, but they leave the door open to commercial exploitation if the place isn’t “owned.” A perfect semantic trap for the lawyers of megacorporations.
The United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan are already working on their own extraterrestrial extraction plans. It’s not science fiction: it’s the new geopolitics. And the asteroid Psyche is their first plank.
The real danger: bringing it back
So far, NASA insists that its mission isn’t for extractive purposes. But no one invests billions of dollars in a spacecraft that simply “observes.” The real goal is to develop the infrastructure, algorithms, and trajectory maps that will allow for the design of cargo missions in the future: missions that bring tons of rare metals back to Earth.
And if they succeed? The economic system would collapse from oversaturation of supply. Gold would cease to be valuable, platinum would lose its aura of exclusivity, steel would cease to be strategic. In other words, metals would become abundant and, therefore, useless as a store of value.
As the philosopher Slavoj Žižek ironically observed: capitalism can survive everything except its own success.
A ghost haunts the asteroid belt
Psyche is not just an asteroid. It’s also a hypothesis for the future. A mirror into which humanity projects its technological anxieties, its decaying economic models, and its extractivist obsessions. The same pattern of exploitation, now without atmosphere, without jungles, and without witnesses.
But there’s a possibility that neither NASA nor the enthusiasts mention: what if we’re not the first?
Psyche could be a planetary core exposed not by chance, but by intervention. In other words, someone else could have exploited it before. An uncomfortable idea that fuels the fire of those who maintain that advanced intelligence doesn’t colonize planets, but rather extracts resources and moves on. Just like we do.
Digging Upward
While on Earth we discuss inflation, AI, and regional wars, a probe silently sails toward a body that could redraw the foundations of our civilization. Its arrival in 2029 will mark a before and after. And although they say it won’t bring anything, the truth is that it’s already bringing us something: dangerous questions.
Who will own the cosmic gold?
Are we ready to manage a gold rush without geography?
Or are we simply repeating, on an interplanetary scale, the same mistakes that brought us here?
As Nietzsche said, the abyss isn’t ahead: it’s above. And that’s where we’re going, to dig in the void.
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