[TML] Molding Ships

[Richard Aiken]

On 9/27/07, shadow at shadowgard.com <shadow at shadowgard.com> wrote:
> And actually, iron alloys have a very useful property for breaking it
> up. At really low temps they get really brittle. Temps that are easy
> to get for folks who routinely handle ton lots of LOX and LH2.
>
> Chill some of the surface (inside an enclosure) and hit it with
> something hard. Use magnets to move the bits and pieces out of the
> way and drag them off to process.

So we shade the nickel/iron asteroid, then use mining robots equipped
with LH2 squirters and jackhammers to bust it up into fist-sized
gravel.  We feed the gravel into a series of crushers until we get
powder.  Then we emulsify the powder and do the chemical distillation.

Now we've got pure iron dust (plus other stuff we stockpile for later).

I still want to mold ship hulls in orbit, using ~TL 8 equipment.  So
once I use my solar mirrors to make a BIG lump of the dust molten, can
I maybe use a slow centrifuge to mix it into steel?  Like pouring a
liquid back and forth between two glasses?

-- 
Richard Aiken

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