What do you think about this planetary mining?

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Kerbart said:

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.

I agree, I also said it required dyson sphere like structures before even getting relevant. As in how many giant habitats can you build from the belt alone. 
 

[Bill Phil]

11 hours ago, Urses said:

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 

Well you still need raw materials for input, but there are far better places for that than rocky planets.

Edited May 8, 2017 by Bill Phil

[radonek]

So, if I understand this correctly, Ishimura magically cuts out chunk of planet crust, then by more magic hold it together while lifting it off, all this while moving at orbital speed and at inclination. Pull all this mass up the gravity well, just to mine out some metals or something and let the rest, err, magically disapear. Dunno what it is after, but it must be extraordinaly scarce unobtainium if surface of whole planet can't satiate smallish ship. And as a dessert, it can mine asteroids. Well, the ones small enough to fit inside her, ummm, "massive" collection bays. It's no surprise that earth resources are exhausted, if they are spent on such idiocies. Seriously, this sound like exersice in how to spend most energy for smallest possible gain.

[KSK]

It wins on Rule of Cool (if you're into celestial vandalism on that scale) but fails on pretty much everything else, including scale.

1.6km is a big spaceship but its tiny for its purported job. Looking at those pictures, I'll be generous and assume that the Ishimura can process 8 cubic kilometres of planet at a time (approximately 1.6km x 1.6km x 3.2km).

Now taking Mercury as your example of a small planet. A quick Google search tells me the radius of Mercury is 2440 km. Assuming for the sake of simplicity that Mercury is a perfect sphere, that's approximately 60 billion cubic kilometres of material, assuming that my decimal points are in the right places. Or, approximately 7.5 billion shiploads to be processed.

For reference, there are approximately 31 million seconds in a year. So you're looking at a job taking hundreds of thousands of years assuming that one 8 cubic kilometre chunk can be processed every second.

TL:DR.  Planets are big. 1.6km is really really small compared to a planet. That company better have an awful lot of mining ships or some really really patient investors and/or stockholders.

Snarky edit. Given that a 1.6km ship, which would require about 20 minutes brisk walking to traverse end-to-end under Terran gravity (I'll concede that it might take longer in magboots or whatever), apparently requires it's own tram system, patience does not seem to be a virtue in this 'verse.

Edited May 8, 2017 by KSK

[ARS]

8 hours ago, KSK said:

It wins on Rule of Cool (if you're into celestial vandalism on that scale) but fails on pretty much everything else, including scale.

1.6km is a big spaceship but its tiny for its purported job. Looking at those pictures, I'll be generous and assume that the Ishimura can process 8 cubic kilometres of planet at a time (approximately 1.6km x 1.6km x 3.2km).

Now taking Mercury as your example of a small planet. A quick Google search tells me the radius of Mercury is 2440 km. Assuming for the sake of simplicity that Mercury is a perfect sphere, that's approximately 60 billion cubic kilometres of material, assuming that my decimal points are in the right places. Or, approximately 7.5 billion shiploads to be processed.

For reference, there are approximately 31 million seconds in a year. So you're looking at a job taking hundreds of thousands of years assuming that one 8 cubic kilometre chunk can be processed every second.

TL:DR.  Planets are big. 1.6km is really really small compared to a planet. That company better have an awful lot of mining ships or some really really patient investors and/or stockholders.

Snarky edit. Given that a 1.6km ship, which would require about 20 minutes brisk walking to traverse end-to-end under Terran gravity (I'll concede that it might take longer in magboots or whatever), apparently requires it's own tram system, patience does not seem to be a virtue in this 'verse.

I like your opinion :). 4 years ago when I played this game, I think "oh, this stuff is so cool!". Then fast forward 3 years later, I'm started playing KSP, I'm thinking "is that... really possible?", especially after KSP teached me about orbit, inclination and orbital speed to ruin every space movie ever. Then I'm thinking: wonder what KSP player say about this...

Edited May 9, 2017 by ARS

[radonek]

On 9. 5. 2017 at 4:07 AM, ARS said:

4 years ago when I played this game, I think "oh, this stuff is so cool!". 

You must be kidding. I've suffered through hour or two and dropped it like a spent stage. It's worst take on System Shock I've ever seen.

[ARS]

8 hours ago, radonek said:

It's worst take on System Shock 

Ummm... What's system shock?

[Bill Phil]

3 minutes ago, ARS said:

Ummm... What's system shock?

Generally people consider System Shock to be the game that Bioshock copied.

It's an old FPS game which has a lot of stuff on the screen...