Why are diamonds so expensive when these are out there?

[OutHouse]

so glad my wife is not a diamond fan. she like rubies, sapphires and emeralds. and honestly i do to, not only for the price but i think they look prettier on her.

 

[pontifex]

yeah, because we have the ability to travel to this planet easily, are able to survive its 3900 degree surface temps, mine everyhing, and transport it back.

even if we could manage to do this, they would be even more expensive than earth diamonds due to the expense of just getting there...


if this isn't just a dumb trolling question, how have you survived this long?

 

[RPD]

Good reading FYI
http://imgur.com/gallery/8qcno & http://imgur.com/gallery/GuPzI


Bought my wife a moissanite necklace I think last Xmas, she loves it.

 

[Linux23]

My mind is blown. I was taught diamonds are a girls best friend. Have I been lied to my entire life?????

 

[sdifox]

My mind is blown. I was taught diamonds are a girls best friend. Have I been lied to my entire life?????

Of course. Your wallet is their best friend.

 

[BrainEater]

Actually , 'lab-grown diamonds' are all the rage , the local diamond store is advertising 'artisan-created-diamonds'...lol !

If you own stock in any natural diamond company , fuckin sell now !
Haha , we can already grow perfect diamonds with specified lattice orientation.

:thumbsup:

 

[GagHalfrunt]

My mind is blown. I was taught diamonds are a girls best friend. Have I been lied to my entire life?????

No, no, they are. But it doesn't quite work like you think. Humans are competitive by nature. Men work out our competitiveness in sports, the workplace, a good bar brawl, whatever. Women compete with other women less openly. Instead of footballs, fists and cars they use clothes, hair, jewelry, shoes, etc. To a woman, a diamond ring is one of the ways she keeps score. If her best friends husband blew $20,000 on a basically valueless hunk of rock and her own husband blew $25,000 on a basically valueless hunk of rock, she wins. But if her friends have more expensive rings, they win.

 

[Ken g6]

Why is helium so expensive when it's something like a quarter of the universe? 😉

 

[dighn]

Yes, OP: You're correct that once we have cheap wormhole travel or warp drives it's true that diamonds will lose most of their value.

nah debeers will just have a fleet to blow up all the diamond asteroids.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

My mind is blown. I was taught diamonds are a girls best friend. Have I been lied to my entire life?????

Women prefer a nice cock.

 

[DrPizza]

And I'm not sure I agree with you DrPizza, sure, it might be awhile before we get those diamonds, but we will. So given the time value of money and economic logic the price should decrease today.

You're either very naive, very foolish, or trolling.

 

[IGBT]

tightly controlled market that limits the supply to bolster value.

 

[Greenman]

There are already enough diamonds on earth to make diamonds almost worthless.

DeBeers runs a monopoly though, and controls supply to artificially inflate the price.

Bingo!
The only real use diamonds have is in cutting tools.

 

[MongGrel]

They work pretty well in diamond wheels for grinding carbide, polishing paste for molds and various things also

 

[Spacehead]

I think there's been talk that a planet named 55 Cancri e is most likely 15% diamond.

No need to go all the way there

 

[poofyhairguy]

Women prefer a nice cock tied to a fat wallet.

Fixed

 

[Darwin333]

From a simple energy point of view, the cost of bringing back one kilogram of diamonds from some far off planet/meteor/whatever would make those diamonds even more expensive on Earth than current diamonds. Huge costs in getting out of the solar system... and it'll be even more expensive to launch from one of the nearby candidates. I think there's been talk that a planet named 55 Cancri e is most likely 15% diamond. The diamonds aren't on the surface - the surface is graphite. Thus, when you get there, you have to mine the diamonds. THEN, you've got to launch the diamonds. And, you're not going to be back within the next 20 or so generations, if you launch today. I'm not sure how you're getting a launch vehicle there - it's not like launching from the moon. It takes far more energy to launch there than it does on Earth. That is, you need a much bigger rocket than you would need on Earth. Imagine needing to not only launch a rocket here on Earth, but that rocket has to be carrying an entire, fueled rocket that's larger than the biggest rockets we've ever built.

Oh, and the surface of that planet is several thousand degrees - enough to melt any materials you make your rocket out of. Damn. Also, it's 40 light years from Earth. That round trip is going to take, ohhhhh, 6000 years if you hurry.

In the meantime, they can create all the diamonds you'd ever need in labs at a far lower expense.

I'd wager that if the moons surface was pure diamond, no mining required, that "moon" diamonds would still be far more expensive on a real cost basis then mined "Earth' diamonds. Hell I'll let ya throw in the manipulated price and then some and I'd still wager the price wouldn't even be close.

 

[Darwin333]

So why don't they just create the perfect diamonds in a lab and sell them at lower prices than DeBeers or whatever but still at a profit?

They do...

 

[n7]

Exactly.

At first I hated the diamond racket but now I think a diamond engagement ring is the perfect purchase before marriage- it teaches the future husband how to accept that his money will be wasted on stupid shit that looks good.

This is disturbingly insightful i think. D:

 

[DrPizza]

No need to go all the way there

Of course, no one is ever going to go to Saturn to get diamonds. While you wouldn't need ludicrous speeds to get there within a few lifetimes, the costs of such a mission would be ludicrous. Such a mission would be completely impossible with today's technology. There's nothing to "land" on. Where the diamonds may be is under so much pressure, and so deep in the gravity well, that you're far better off just making the diamonds on Earth.

 

[shimpster]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...-planet-space-solar-system-astronomy-science/

There are almost certainly planets out there that are made of diamonds or have some significant percentage of there total mass made up of diamonds. When those are eventually brought back to earth diamonds will be essentially worthless given that supply will be increased many thousand/million/billion/etc. fold. So why are they so expensive today?

mainly due to the fact that dumb humanz will pay the price

 

[zinfamous]

Exactly.

At first I hated the diamond racket but now I think a diamond engagement ring is the perfect purchase before marriage- it teaches the future husband how to accept that his money will be wasted on stupid shit that looks good.

you won this thread.

 

[DrPizza]

I'd wager that if the moons surface was pure diamond, no mining required, that "moon" diamonds would still be far more expensive on a real cost basis then mined "Earth' diamonds. Hell I'll let ya throw in the manipulated price and then some and I'd still wager the price wouldn't even be close.

I had given the moon some thought, and if sold at current market prices, it's fairly conceivable for an unmanned mission to return & make a profit. 1 carat = 1/5 gram. Provided the diamonds were gem quality on the surface - though a rover could probably sort diamonds, I think it would be reasonably feasible to bring back several hundred pounds of diamonds. The moon has such a low gravity well that you could take sufficient fuel for a return trip. E.g., see Apollo missions.

Hmmmm. Then again, if we look at the percent of the national budget that was spent in the 1960's on the Apollo missions... Still, I find it conceivable though unlikely someone (Elan) could do it and make a profit.

 

[luv2liv]

i didnt know anything about Moissanite until this thread.
ty!

 

[Darwin333]

I had given the moon some thought, and if sold at current market prices, it's fairly conceivable for an unmanned mission to return & make a profit. 1 carat = 1/5 gram. Provided the diamonds were gem quality on the surface - though a rover could probably sort diamonds, I think it would be reasonably feasible to bring back several hundred pounds of diamonds. The moon has such a low gravity well that you could take sufficient fuel for a return trip. E.g., see Apollo missions.

Hmmmm. Then again, if we look at the percent of the national budget that was spent in the 1960's on the Apollo missions... Still, I find it conceivable though unlikely someone (Elan) could do it and make a profit.

You have to consider that there is a huge supply of diamonds somewhere being kept from the market. Evidently DeBeers was broken up but they tightly controlled the supply by basically warehousing absurd amounts of diamonds. There was a big find of colored diamonds in Australia not long ago and evidently they didn't want to play ball with the big boys so the big boys released a bunch of their own stashed colored diamonds as a big fuck you and to show what happens when you don't play ball. I don't imagine they'd sit around and let a new player come in with a huge supply of new diamonds.

Even then, I still question the cost effectiveness of it. Don't forget you'd have to launch an Earth reentry vehicle, along with the rover and fuel, which would be fairly heavy. You think they could get all that up in a single launch? I guess the rover could be solar powered and stay there so you'd only have to launch a vehicle to collect what the rover has already gathered and sorted and then get it back into the Earth's atmosphere.

On a side note, you ever see the security at diamond mines? I can't imagine the amount of security they'd have at the landing site and holy shit if it lands somewhere unexpected, that would be a funny thing to watch.