When the first of the asteroid miners went up into space, they were looking
to make some money. There were tons of resources up there that they hoped
would make them rich. It was probably about to, but it wasn’t long before
the economy shifted, and no more value was placed in things that once meant
everything. Yes, the metals and minerals they mined and processed from the
asteroids were still incredibly important for the future of the human race,
but everything they could exchange them for was now readily available, and
distributed freely. That material was now only useful for making spaceships,
and other vacuum structures. Trying to take it all the way down into Earth’s
gravity well was a waste of time and energy. Still, their lives weren’t
purposeless. Someone would have to build those ships, so it might as well be
them. They still weren’t making any money, because it didn’t exist anymore,
but people were grateful for their efforts, and the species was quickly
becoming a multiplanetary culture. They kept working, kept looking for more,
and were surprised about how much gold there was up there. Back in the
ancient days, gold was the standard for monetary value. Everything was based
upon its worth according to scarcity, measure of work needed to refine the
raw material, and an arbitrary love of all that was shiny. Even after gold
stopped being the official standard, people placed value on it simply
because of how pretty it looked. To this day, it’s used in a number of
technological instruments, but in relatively small amounts. As it turns out,
the solar system is chock full of the stuff. Scarcity was a component of
man’s inability to reach beyond the atmosphere at the time, and that is no
longer the case. Still, what are they going to do with all this gold? Sure,
some of it can go to those devices, but there will be a lot left over. This
gave one of them a crazy idea.
They decided to build a ship. This ship would be composed almost entirely of
gold. Propulsion, of course, and wiring systems, required specific materials
in order to function, but the basic idea was that if it could exist in gold
form, it was to be manufactured out of pure gold. It was the dumbest thing
that anyone on Earth had ever heard of, but they too realized they had
plenty of gold to satisfy their needs, and they recognized that the asteroid
miners earned rightful control over everything they found that wasn’t
claimed by someone else. It took them years to gather all the gold they
would need, and refine it, but they were essentially immortal now, and most
of the business was automated, so what did they care? It wasn’t until they
were just about finished when they noticed that no one had thought about
what they were going to actually do with the darn thing. Even with their
indefinite lifespans, it wasn’t a good way to get to other planets in the
solar system, or to other stars. It was more a piece of art; a think piece,
a proof of concept...a proof of strength. They didn’t know if there were any
aliens flying around out there, but they figured that their big gold ship
would be a pretty good message to send anyone looking to see if the Earthans
were weak enough to attack. If humans were advanced enough—and bored
enough—to construct a literal golden ship, they were probably nothing anyone
should want to trifle with. So they placed it in a permanent stable orbit
around Earth, and named it The ESS Dorado. People came to visit
occasionally, but it was mostly there to be marveled and appreciated from a
distance. Aliens never came, and eventually they let it burn up in the
atmosphere.
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