If the Moon were made of gold then when would Earth gold become worthless?

Question

Literally made of gold.

Would the price become worthless before or after the space age?

How would this affect mankind?

(not to mention huge tides)

Answer 1

Your question should be rewritten to simply state that there was a fantastic amount of gold on the moon.

Were it really entirely made of gold, it would weigh far more (maybe 6-10 times more) than the earth does!

It would have an atmosphere (likely poisonous to life) and the Earth would rotate around it instead of the other way around!

to address the economics of your question:

Even commodities which are quite plentiful can still be made expensive due to processing costs or transportation or even illegal or immoral conditions like a cartel or monopoly situations.

Access to such a vital resource would likely enrich whoever controls space travel.

Relatively cheap gold would also allow its use in a variety of commercial and industrial applications that would be too prohibitive now.

For example, all wiring in homes and industrially would be gold rather than less effective copper.

Due to its non tarnishing/anti rusting nature gold would be used universally instead of stainless steel.

Unique alloys would be forged as right now, gold is far too expensive to experiment with except by very few with very deep pockets.

All in all, gold demand would explode and would continue to maintain in value as new uses came on line.

Sand is cheap if you go to the beach and pick it up yourself.

But if you want 27 tons for your glass factory, you will have to pay someone for it and to have it shipped to you and to house it while you wait to process it.

Same thing with your moon gold.

Answer 2

If the moon were gold imagine what the night sky would look like. The moon supposedly came from the earth . So the same mineral amounts would be here. I think since Gold has a specific gravity of 19.3 that most gold is near the center of the earth. Only small amounts come to the surface. I also think that the more dense minerals are located closer to the sun. So maybe Mercury would have much more gold on it. Just a thought.

Answer 3

hmmmmm... I guess when it would be economically feasible for the price of gold to sustain mining and exploration of the moon...and that would be short lived since there is since a fantastic amount hitting the market like that eventually the market would reach a saturation point and it would once again not be economically be worth while for the cost to obtain it. so then earth gold would be more realistic...Unless some commercial/industrial use for gold was discovered that would make it necessary at "any price"

You could compare this question to the current examples of
Deep water or Shale oil which is only worth the cost of drilling/refining when the market holds a +$50 barrel future.
OR
Since the core of our planet is believed to contain massive amounts, if not all gold...similar to your moon theory (A very valuble commodity at a very inacessable, but not impossible location)...

so there might be a point in the future when your hypothesis could be put to the test with a sight variation....

Answer 4

The cost of harvesting the gold on the moon would be astronomical. It would probably outweigh the benefit of getting it. If the costs were low enough, however, more gold supply would lower the price of gold. Gold will never become worthless because it is not a currency, it is actually useful on it's own as a conductor and metal material.

Answer 5

Never. Mining gold on Earth costs between $300 and $350 an ounce. Bringing an ounce of gold from the moon is likely to be way more expensive than that...

Answer 6

You would not have to worry about it, soon as people learned it
was made of genuine gold, it would dissappear. They would find
a way to steal it ! Hence: The California Gold Rush, remember ?