rare-earth

Updated: May 4, 2025

Earth, with its depleted iron ranges, its exhausted tin and copper mines, and its burgeoning population, was hungry for metal. Earth needed steel, tin, nickel, and zinc; more than anything, Earth needed ruthenium, the rare-earth catalyst that made the huge solar energy converters possible. Mars was rich in the ores of these metals ... but the ores were buried deep in the ground.

Alan Edward Nourse - Gold in the Sky