this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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Perhaps it’s time to start researching alternative materials.
That alternative material is aluminum. It's like a top four abundance material in the crust. It's just super fucking hard to refine from minerals that don't like to give it up without oodles of energy. Like, turn minerals into plasma levels of energy. So the irony is, to grow our energy economy past the need for copper, we will first need to grow our energy economy.
Should fusion ever actually meet its promise, then this is one of the likely things we could do with this level of energy.
If we ever become a spacefaring civilization, it'll almost certainly be necessary during the colonization of other planets/moons/asteroids, since the geological processes that concentrate copper on the earth are not present in those places. Whereas aluminum is plentiful any place rocky.
I see what you did there...
Aluminium smelting is so energy intensive that Iceland, a country with a population of less than 400 000, is the world's 12th largest producer of it, even though the raw materials aren't mined there. Iceland just has cheap geothermal and hydroelectric power.
Aluminum expands under electrical loads and the wires become loose. Loose wires are a fire hazard.
The real solution is steel wire with a copper coating. Electricity flows on the outer region of wires anyhow.
Plenty of metals floating around in space. Just need to go and get them.
Only need to capture one decent sized metalliferous asteroid from a near earth orbit and we'd be set for a century or two.
Things like platinum notwithstanding, It will almost always be more expensive to go get things in space than on earth.
Hell, even on earth it is often too expensive to get metals like iron if there isn't rail or a port nearby. Imagine having to fly iron ingots around and the associated aviation fuel cost. Whatever crazy fuel bill you're imagining, multiply by a hundred or more if you're imagining getting it from space.
No, all of those metals in space are best used to build some future version of our civilization _in situ. _