What do you think about this planetary mining?

[ARS]

So... I've completed the Dead Space trilogy, and I have to say, I'm actually quite impressed. The story is a survival horror in space setting. Basically, a massive mining ship, USG ishimura suddenly gone dark in a mining operation on planet Aegis VII. A team was dispatched to check Ishimura's status, but there's no response. Then you enter the ship, only to find out that the entire crew of the ship has been turned into a grotesque monster called necromorphs. Being an engineer (with no proper weapon) you have to fight your way through the horde of necromorphs armed with only improvised weapon based from mining or repair tool to end this nightmare once and for all, and discover the truth behing the mining operation that doomed the entire ship.

But one thing that I'm particularly interested in, is the way how planetary mining is being performed in this setting. Earth's resources has been exhausted, so humanity now rely on interplanetary mining for resources. This resulted in the creation of mining ships designed to mine the entire planet (literally). CEC corporation is one of the largest mining company, and the pioneer of "planet cracking" planetary mining, using their largest (and also the first) planet-cracker class ship, USG Ishimura.

This massive ship is designed to mine and extract valuable minerals of the entire planet. It's a 1.6 kilometer long ship that's so large it needs it's own tram system inside the ship. The USG Ishimura is also used as a research vessel as well as implementing a new "scan and catch technique" to grab mineral-rich asteroid with it's gravity tether (basically a tractor beam) before dragging it inside her massive collection bays for smelting. However, her main purpose, is the planet cracking.

After selecting the planet for mining operation, the first step of planet cracking involves establishing surface colony on the planet, where they construct the Megavents, massive circular structure that spans across several kilometers on the planet's surface to accomodate USG Ishimura's gravity tether during planet crack operation. After the designated region of the planet was considered ready for extraction, the Ishimura positioned herself on planetary orbit before locking on the megavents structure several kilometers below. Ishimura's gravity tether then pulled huge chunks of planet into herself, lifting a massive fragment of planet into planetary orbit before it's finally suspended directly below her where the mining process can be commenced on the entire planetary chunk. She's equipped with smelting bays, extraction and refining as well as ore storage facilities to accomodate this operation.

BASICALLY YOUR KSP MINING OPERATION ON STEROID

During the planet crack, a lot of planetary debris will create a ring of fragmented rocks around the planet. Ishimura was equipped with an array of ADS (Asteroid Defense System) cannons to shoot down any debris that's too close to the ship. the process will be repeated until the entire planet was stripped out entirely

What do you think about this mining operation? Give your opinions about it!

 

Edited May 6, 2017 by ARS

[regex]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

What do you think about this mining operation?

It's science fantasy at best. The amount of energy used in the described operation is literally astronomical and I have doubts as to whether a total conversion of matter to energy could even provide it (not to mention the whole tractor beam thing).

KSP itself gives at least a solid nod to current ISRU technology. This ... this is nothing like what's in KSP.

Edited May 6, 2017 by regex

[ARS]

Just now, regex said:

It's science fantasy at best. The amount of energy used in the described operation is literally astronomical and I have doubts as to whether a total conversion of matter to energy could even provide it (not the mention the whole tractor beam thing).

KSP itself gives at least a solid nod to current ISRU technology. This ... this is nothing like what's in KSP.

I agree with you. The amount of resources needed is simply beyond what's possible. By the way, does stripping planet piece-by-piece have an effect on it's orbital characteristic? I wonder...

[regex]

15 minutes ago, ARS said:

By the way, does stripping planet piece-by-piece have an effect on it's orbital characteristic?

Of course. Assuming a total conversion of mass to energy in order to power said fantasy mining operation, you're basically changing the gravitational parameter of the planet.

[something]

The hypothetical direct, lossless conversion of matter to energy is extremely efficient thanks to the c squared in E = m c**2. The Hiroshima nuclear bomb had a mass equivalent of 0.7g (that's  g as in kg not g as in 9.81 m /s**2). That's basically the mass of your family's lunch yesterday. If we can propel some tons of spaceship to the moon using nothing but a 6few hundred tons of fuel, then using matter conversion would require only a few kg. Now for a planet, say Earth, to be put to a height of 200km above it's own surface, we do need an Energy of E = m × h  × g (I am neglecting the shrinking gravitational force on purpose as it makes things difficult, so I rather overestimate the energy required). The mass of the earth is 5.97 ×10**24 kg,  g is 9.81m/s**2 and h is 200×10**3m. So we need an energy of 12 ×10**28 J. Now c**2 is roughly 8.98 × 10**16 m**2/s**4. Plug that into the Einsteinian formula and you get a mass of 1.33 × 10**8 kg. Or to be precise 133 000 000 cubic meters of water. Literally a joke, if you consider that we just put the entire planet earth into LEO...

[Zeiss Ikon]

Quote

The Hiroshima nuclear bomb had a mass equivalent of 0.7g (that's  g as in kg not g as in 9.81 m /s**2). That's basically the mass of your family's lunch yesterday.

Actually, 0.7 g is more like the mass of a pinch of salt.  A teaspoon of sugar is about 5 g.  And beyond that, I think there's a calculation error there somewhere; seems to me I recall a figure for 20 kt nuclear explosion of a few tens of milligrams.

[something]

According to Wikipedia it was 0.7g mass equivalent which naturally equals 700mg... and well yes,  700mg is a bit on the small side for a family lunch, but dont underestimate the energy you get from it...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy

Edited May 6, 2017 by something

[regex]

So now that we know this mining operation is at least plausible from an energy standpoint we can start questioning the whys of mining in this way as opposed to any other, especially if one has the energy or technology available to mine in this manner.

For instance, what is the processing speed of this method? How much of the multi-kilometer chunk of planet is expected to be stored inside said 1.6km long ship? Why would one bother to create a colony on the planet or even lift parts of the planet to orbit when it's pretty clear the ship has the structural strength and propulsive means necessary to land, and do things much more efficiently? Or whether this is simply some harebrained backstory to justify an FPS in the grand traditions of yore?

Edited May 6, 2017 by regex

[Xavven]

I wonder... if that much energy was available to the civilization, would it be better to use nucleosynthesis to produce the elements they want instead of having to go mine it?

[ARS]

54 minutes ago, regex said:

what is the processing speed of this method? How much of the multi-kilometer chunk of planet is expected to be stored inside said 1.6km long ship? Why would one bother to create a colony on the planet or even lift parts of the planet to orbit

According to the backlog, it's said that the time of planet cracking depends on the size of the planet. Small sized planet like mercury might takes 5-7 years while larger planet takes longer. The establishment of colony on planetary surface is to survey the rich-mineral region, designate the cracking site and built the megavents structure that acts as a connection point for the ship's gravity tether (the ship's gravity tether cannot simply "latch and crack" from orbit) during the mining operation, the Ishimura acts like an orbital refinery, smelting and refining ore, storing it inside her cargo bay before being picked up by another ship to be transported to earth. Also, as a note, sometimes, the surface colony is the only thing left after planet cracking is done, attached on the final rock chunk where it acts as a checkpoint outpost for further mining operation. The reason why they crack the planet is because earth is so desperate to find resources needed to sustain civilization, so if they find a planet that can be mined, they will mine every last bit of it

That said,it doesn't explain the effect on cracking planet against it's orbital characteristic (on the second game, it's revealed that titan (Saturn's moon) has been cracked, and the remaining colony becomes a sprawling orbital colony attached on titan's last chunk of land that's still orbiting Saturn)

Edited May 6, 2017 by ARS

[regex]

6 minutes ago, ARS said:

The reason why they crack the planet is because earth is so desperate to find resources needed to sustain civilization, so if they find a planet that can be mined, they will mine every last bit of it

I'm just ... yeah, not going there.

[ARS]

Explaining it will take it longer than what it should be

[HebaruSan]

I find real planetary mining more impressive.

 

[ARS]

53 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

I find real planetary mining more impressive.

 

Haha, obviously

Since we have much more experience in terrestrial mining than extraterrestrial

[Lelitu]

2 hours ago, ARS said:

Explaining it will take it longer than what it should be

That would be because it doesn't actually make any sense. The Ishimura would better serve earth by grabbing asteroids to smelt. More resources, less gravity and energy required.

[Dman979]

Since this post is not KSP-related, it has been moved to Science and Spaceflight.

[Scotius]

Science fiction writers have no sense of scale. This "mining" process is written to look impressive, but ask a real engineer to make it reality, and he will immediately start laughing. In short: to "disassemble" a medium sized planet this way, you would have to waste an incredible amount of energy grinding through megatons of worthless rock to get couple of tons of useful stuff here and there. And when you get through the surface layer, you'll start hitting pressurised white-hot magma - how this ship designed apparently to handle solid chunks deals with viscous liquid?

Eh, better not to think about the background too much in this case.

[StrandedonEarth]

It would be much simpler to just use the Death Star to break up the planet, then the heavy metals in the core would be easily accessible for mining. That was the cover story given to the engineers who designed and built the thing, to break up dead planets so the cores could be mined. Of course, the Emperor had other plans for it, and they were brainwashed not to think about why it had that particular name. At least according to the Jedi Academy trilogy

Which just begs the question: How much energy did the Death Star have to pour into a planet to fragment it? I guess that comes back to that "binding energy" equation.

Edited May 7, 2017 by StrandedonEarth

[Urses]

One interesting Method for Orbital mining i found in the romans of John Ringo. Basicaly you have a computer navigated mirror assambly (AI) in space to bounce solar light through system. You have system of Collectors that redirect light and system of amplifiers to upgrade the energy outcome. The amplifiers collect light from some collectors and send them to next system as a concentrated beam. The next step is to concentrate this beams at a asteroid to smelt it in orbit. The genial idea is to bring the asteroid in rotation to separate the innants through centrifugal force. The lighter materials wander to outside and will be separated. You schroud the outside and have to process the materials for farther usage. It is SciFi and in this romans the humans use some alien technologies for processing like gravitational separators, but i think it will be a real doable idea. The book serial is named "Troy" and if you love SciFi it is a nice and surprising lecture.

Funny Kabooms 

Urses 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Urses

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Urses said:

One interesting Method for Orbital mining i found in the romans of John Ringo. Basicaly you have a computer navigated mirror assambly (AI) in space to bounce solar light through system. You have system of Collectors that redirect light and system of amplifiers to upgrade the energy outcome. The amplifiers collect light from some collectors and send them to next system as a concentrated beam. The next step is to concentrate this beams at a asteroid to smelt it in orbit. The genial idea is to bring the asteroid in rotation to separate the innants through centrifugal force. The lighter materials wander to outside and will be separated. You schroud the outside and have to process the materials for farther usage. It is SciFi and in this romans the humans use some alien technologies for processing like gravitational separators, but i think it will be a real doable idea. The book serial is named "Troy" and if you love SciFi it is a nice and surprising lecture.

Funny Kabooms 

Urses 

Yes, however redirecting sunlight many times will not work, using one or multiple huge mirror on the other hand would work but they has to be gigantic to give enough effect, planet sized for something as large as the huge bases. If you are just after water and have an 50 meter asteroid you could do with something manageable if you wrap the asteroid. 
 

[Urses]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes, however redirecting sunlight many times will not work, using one or multiple huge mirror on the other hand would work but they has to be gigantic to give enough effect, planet sized for something as large as the huge bases. If you are just after water and have an 50 meter asteroid you could do with something manageable if you wrap the asteroid. 
 

If you redirect like 100 mirrowed rays on one point than you have are effect like magnificient glass. And with reflected light you have IR too and this will go realy hot. The aspect is you have a free energy source and your efficiency may be extended by quantity if you lack of technological Quality.

Urses 

[Bill Phil]

My problem with the dead space premise, that we're running out of resources (even with planet cracking) is that once you can mine entire planets, it's very hard to run out of resources.

[magnemoe]

10 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

My problem with the dead space premise, that we're running out of resources (even with planet cracking) is that once you can mine entire planets, it's very hard to run out of resources.

This, that is unless you are into the dyson shell age.
This will also give you lots of other resources like lots of power.

Running out of resources has happened many times, the most famous one was running out of game and wild plants 10K years ago, the second was running out of wood in England in the 18th century

35 minutes ago, Urses said:

If you redirect like 100 mirrowed rays on one point than you have are effect like magnificient glass. And with reflected light you have IR too and this will go realy hot. The aspect is you have a free energy source and your efficiency may be extended by quantity if you lack of technological Quality.

Urses 

Yes if close to the body, bouncing them a lot of time don't work well, neither is using it as an high power weapon system, this works with lasers however. 
You could use an mirror on an missile or pre positioned mine to direct or sharpen an laser from many AU away 

[Kerbart]

12 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Running out of resources has happened many times, the most famous one was running out of game and wild plants 10K years ago, the second was running out of wood in England in the 18th century

What @Bill Phil aludes to is the nearly unimaginable amount of resources you'd get from mining a single planet (even if it's “just” a dwarf planet) down to it's core. Once we get beyond what we can count on the digits of our hand and feet, humans tend to lose track on how much large numbers exactly are. “One death is a tragedy, a million just a statistic,” Stalin once said, and the cynical truth it: we cannot simply comprehend large numbers.

Small size asteroids can already yield staggering amounts of ore; thanks to the cubing effect in volume increases, the yield of a single planet is downright staggering.

If we reach a point where we're using resources at that rate, we're no longer a society who needs to mine resources; we'll have better ways of getting it.

[Urses]

And now we are ar the Star Trek point:

"Computer a Earl Grey, hot with lemon!"

At this point where you are able to strip and absorb all ressources from a hole planet, you are more at point of pure materia <-> energy transmission and don't realy need to strip material. You need only big enough energy reserves to produce every material you need.

Urses