16 Psyche—a 140-mile-wide/226-kilometer-wide asteroid—could contain a core of iron, nickel and gold worth $10,000 quadrillion.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft was set to launch in August 2022 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026. However, software issues and mission development problems meant the mission missed its window.

Forbes

The Bank of 16 Psyche is backed by hard metal assets worth well over $10 quadrillion, according to estimates in the article above. By comparison, the US national debt after 2 years of Joe Biden’s presidency* is roughly $30 trillion, a mere pittance.

NASA has been unable to meet its launch schedules for the 16 Psyche rendezvous — no doubt due to its failure to include SpaceX in planning the mission. NASA is still very much mired in the old-style corrupt boondoggle political game — as demonstrated by its graft-ridden bad bet on the Space Launch System. From 2014 to 2022, it has always been clear that NASA was ripping off the US taxpayer for purposes of political payoffs.

SpaceX, on the other hand, is all about getting results for money spent. If SpaceX had been in charge of the 16 Psyche mission, Elon Musk would be the richest man in the solar system 😉 . Oh wait!

The small car-sized Psyche spacecraft will target the asteroid of the same name, which orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe the highly metallic asteroid could be the naked core of a protoplanetary body, a planet that never fully formed, and could therefore give researchers a glimpse at the internal structure of rocky planets usually hidden by miles of rock.

The Psyche spacecraft was originally intended to reach its namesake asteroid in 2026, after traveling more than 1 billion miles. The new launch schedule will bump that rendezvous to sometime in August 2029, following gravity assist maneuver around Mars to pick up speed in 2026.

Yahoo

Similar to NASA’s Apollo program to the moon, the purpose of NASA’s 16 Psyche mission appears to be just to say they had done it. Big government agencies and their programs are all about spending their budgets in such a way as to funnel most of the money to political supporters. Actually accomplishing anything meaningful for the long term future of humanity does not seem to be part of the planning matrix.

Meanwhile, back on Earth:

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