Asteroid mining

Asteroid mining or astro mining is the exploitation of materials from asteroids and other minor planets.

## History

### Mining on Welt

Welt, as well as the majority of realms of the Weltan system follow the same plan, the strong gravity of the core pulls all heavy siderophilic elements into the core which leaves the crust depleted of such valuable elements until rain of asteroid impacts re-infuses the depleted crust with metals like gold, cobalt, iron, mithrilium, etc.

Today, the other races mine these metals from the crust of Welt, and they are essential for their economic and technological progress. The Dalmer however, looked to the Weltan belt for their mineral wealth, and developed astro mining

### Minerals in space

As resource depletion from Dalmer activity became a reality and guest theory came into effect, the idea of extracting valuable elements from asteroids and returning them or using space-based resources to build solar-power satellites and space habitats, became more attractive.

Early in the Empire's history, imperial observatories announced that the trojans (asteroids that orbit celestial bodies) orbiting Welt and possibly large numbers of other trojans, consist largely of water ice. Since water is the basis for life, the Dalmer took upon themselves to diversify their supply sources, and began extracting water from the trojans.

## Economic process of asteroid mining

The process of on site resource utilization using materials native to space for propellant, thermal management, tankage, radiation shielding, and other high-mass components of space infrastructure lead to radical reductions in its cost. Although these cost reductions could be achieved, offsetting the enormous infrastructure investment required was a heavy toll on the IECCC and tithes around the empire. In the end the DCDEA's array of tractor beam sites is seen as superfluous compared to on site production.

Mining can be broken into seven phases:

1. Finding an asteroid to mine.
2. Breaking off a large asteroid chunk by continually shooting it with the mining laser.
3. Pursuing and destroying the large chunk by continually shooting it with the mining laser.
4. Collecting small asteroid chunks by continually shooting it with the mining laser.
5. Scooping the unearthed ressources
6. Processing, marking and ejecting slag and unwanted resources
7. Selling stored resources to a space station or land and unloading them.

## Asteroid selection

An important responsibility that falls to the DCDEA is to consider the orbital economics of target selection, in particular the change in velocity and travel time to bring the asteroid to the target tractor beam site. The cost of bringing the asteroid compared to its payload is considered before bringing in the asteroid. The Easily Recoverable Asteroids (ERA) class of trojans are the most common candidates for mining activity. Their low difference in speed makes them suitable for use in extracting construction materials for orbital facilities or for bringing them to the surface, greatly reducing the economic cost of transporting supplies into orbit.

### Types of asteroids

Multiple types of asteroids have been identified but the three main types would include the Adamale, Marl, and Luster type asteroids:

* Adamale type asteroids have a high abundance of water. Mission costs could be reduced by using the available water from the asteroid.
* Marl type asteroids have a lot of organic carbon, phosphorus, and other key ingredients for fertilizer which are used to grow food.
* Luster type asteroids carry little water but are more attractive because they contain numerous metals, including nickel, cobalt, and more valuable metals, such as gold, platinum, and mithrilium. A small 10-meter Luster type asteroid contains about 650 tons of metal with 50 kg in the form of rare metals like platinum and gold. Ingot type asteroids are rare but contain up to 10 times more metal than Luster types

## Issues with asteroid mining

There are a number of issues that make asteroid mining a difficult societal shift for the Dalmer in their attempt to better adapt to guest theory.

### Logistics

Difficulties include the high cost of spaceflight, unreliable identification of asteroids which are suitable for mining, and more extraction challenges. Thus, terrestrial mining remains the only means of raw mineral acquisition used today.

### Space dust

The other main issue with asteroid mining is that the process creates space dust, which can become an issue for spacecraft and satellites as it clogs and damages instruments. It is now a legal requirement that dust be vacuumed, melted and compressed into inert space slag and sent back into orbit, these new asteroids are marked as priorities for becoming future satellites.

## Mining methods

The dalmer devised several methods of mining asteroids, on site, orbital, tracting and planet cracking.

### On site mining

On site implies landing mining apparatus atop an asteroid and converting its features into usable shippable resources that will be sent back to Welt. These are the longest operations reserved for long term operations.

### Orbital mining

Orbital mining means bringing an asteroid (most often via rocket or on site tractor beam) to a static orbital mining station where the asteroid will be stripped of its resources and sent back into orbit. These operations generally concern the smallest trojans of Welt.

### Tracting

*Main article: Tractor beam site*

Tracting implies bringing an asteroid from outside Welts atmosphere to be processed in a tractor beam site. These operations are generally less focused on resource extraction but more focused on turning the asteroid into a satellite.

### Planet cracking

*Main article: Planet Cracking*

A fourth method, planet cracking is no longer in use due to its obsolete nature, but some still practice the method.

**Planet cracking**

Used mostly in the farthest reaches of the empire where infrastructure isn't present to allow for large scale asteroid mining operations. Planet cracker ships are considered obsolete as they must allocate precious space to both weapons, processing and storing asteroid ressources, whereas modern astro mining ships focalize on one aspect of the process in order to optimize mining operations.

Depending on the type, when an asteroid is destroyed it will explode into collectable resources. These resources be collected by an Astro Scoop which separates resources from dust. In practice the user discharges a weapon (the standard weapon used is the Asteroid Mining Laser) to destroy the asteroid and pilots over it and the resource will be placed into the cargo hold.

There are two required pieces of equipment needed in order to mine asteroids mining lasers, scoops and a single cargo hold. If the ship has the space, it can equip a tractor beam, which will greatly increase mining efficiency. Every starship has a hardpoint for a single cargo hold, mining lasers and tractor beams are installed in weapon hardpoints. The best mining ships are those with the most weapon slots, which will allow the greatest number of mining lasers and tractor beams.