[TML] Asteroid Mining (was Molding Ships)

[Richard Aiken]

On 9/25/07, Tom Naro <tomnaro at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Richard Aiken raikenclw at gmail.com Wrote
> This wiki is not bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

Actually, I think that's where I read about it.

> Selling claims has a few problems:
>
> How do you tell one big rock from another? There are a lot of asteroids in a belt,  Do you just use the coordinates? Do you have to tag the asteroid with a transponder?  Do you mark it with paint?

In Bowman - IIRC - you used transponders.  But it ought to be possible
to plot the orbit accurately enough not to have to use these.

> Who enforces the claims?  A asteroid belt is a pretty big place to patrol.  Do you have to stand guard until the mining company vessels show up?

Who enforced the claims in the gold and silver mining boom towns of
the American West?  Unless I'm much mistaken, it was nobody and
nothing except social pressure and the claim owners personal firearms.
 If somebody wanted your claim badly enough, they could take it.  But
people still made claims.

> Claim jumping might be a pretty big problem.  A miner see another miner spending a lot of time near a certain rock.  He transmits the coordinates (or his own frequency) to a teammate.  The teammate registers the claim.  You have spend time and money on this rock, they take if from under you.

How does he know that the claim is worth anything?  You could have
just spent hours looking for nothing.

> Here is the big one, just exactly what is a claim worth?  After all, the processing is the expensive part, the second most expensive part would be breaking the asteroid apart.

Actually, I'd say these are both part of the same process.  What's
expensive is the mobile mining platform which does this.  But that's
paid for after the first couple of years or so.  After that, expenses
are rather low.

>The claim seller is not really doing much work.

According to Bowman, he's spending weeks at a time cruising through
the asteroid belt at just slightly above the average local orbital
velocity, zapping little rocks with his mining laser and reading the
revealed spectrums with his sensors, hoping to see something besides
"rock, rock and more rock."

Now, in a "real" universe, this work would probably be done by a robot
drone.  But in Traveller, an independent armed robot makes Imperials
queasy.  So sapients get to do it.

> How much competition is there?  Since the prospector is doing only a small amount of work - the job might attract a lot of lazy people who think they can get money quick.

I wouldn't call them lazy, exactly.  Even after your spectrum analyzer
shows something other than rock, you still need to get in a vacc suit,
go over to the rock in question and take a few core samples with a
drill, to make sure it's not just a thin surface layer on top of
"rock, rock and more rock."

But they *are* definitely in it hoping to get rich quick.  Most of
them are PCs, you know.  :-)

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein