Is it really true?
"Platinum .....one asteroid could generate more of the stuff than has ever been mined in Earth's history. This is true, ..."
Maybe, if there was an asteroid out there, in easy reach, that had a very high concentration of platinum in it. If asteroids are remnants of the proto-planetary cloud that formed the earth (among others), why should they have a significantly greater concentration of platinum than the earth's crust?
Even if they did have, how does the mass of an 'average' asteroid compare with the mass of all platinum bearing ores mined throughout earth's history? How do we find these 'lucky' asteroids?
On a separate note: to return large ingots of purified metals down the earth's gravity well, you could use them as counterweights in a pulley based space-elevator arrangement, with buckets at regular intervals it coud form a cheap launch and return system.