Pros And Cons Of Mining Saturn's Rings

[Spacescifi]

 

As per the usual, I will view this from a scifi perspective, notwithstanding reality as needed.

Saturn's rings have a lot of ice I have read. Ice makes water, and water is like space gold. 

You can drink it, or use it to propel an antimatter thermal rocket if you have one.

Now it is a given that mining Saturn's rings make little sense as of the present day. 

The only way it will is when we have enough space assets out there that can actually put the ice to use. Same applies to a scifi setting... which plays fast and loose with reality well enough that travel times are far shorter.

Reality? 6 years to get to Saturn or less... especially if you have an antimatter beam rocket.

Question 1: is mining saturn's rings wrong? Just because we can does it mean we should? Maybe I should make a parody of Murphy's law and call it...

Doom's Law: If something can be done, it SHOULD be done.

Furthermore... besides destroying Saturn's pretty rings over time, is there any side effects that would be bad for us back on Earth?

I can't think of any.

 

Question 2: How does a vessel mine the rings most efficiently? A big catcher net and reel in the haul like school of fish?

If there is a better, more efficient way, I am all ears.

 

Thanks.

Edited April 16, 2020 by Spacescifi

[RoninFrog]

How to mine it?  Easy!  Get in a nice retrograde orbit and roll down the window.

Here's a great link: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5511/what-about-gathering-water-ice-from-saturns-rings.  I don't think we have to worry about destroying the rings, they weigh 15400 quadrillion tons.

[Hannu2]

54 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Reality? 6 years to get to Saturn or less... especially if you have an antimatter beam rocket.

Maybe you can assume more developed civilization and species too with antimatter rockets. Current competitive capitalism with time scale of single years or even quarters will never produce that high civilization needed to utilize whole solar system. If we do not manage to develop better administration we will compete each other to extinction on this planet.

54 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Question 1: is mining saturn's rings wrong? Just because we can does it mean we should? Maybe I should make a parody of Murphy's law and call it...

That is always a personal opinion. Nature or science does not answer that kind of questions. Probably always will be individuals who think that it is somehow wrong to change world any more than necessary for primitive living and other extreme who think that development and expansion is a duty for intelligent species. Majority want benefits but not NIMBY -effects.

 

54 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Doom's Law: If something can be done, it SHOULD be done.

Furthermore... besides destroying Saturn's pretty rings over time, is there any side effects that would be bad for us back on Earth?

I can't think of any.

No. Mass of rings is negligible compared to Saturnian system. At least some astronomers think that ring system is naturally short lived thing in astronomical timescale (100 million years).

 

54 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Question 2: How does a vessel mine the rings most efficiently? A big catcher net and reel in the haul like school of fish?

If there is a better, more efficient way, I am all ears.

 

Thanks.

You have to use imagination in any case. Net made from superstrong unobtainium strings is certainly one option. But it is difficult to predict what is the most effective method with scifi tech level. It is more easy to imagine antimatter rocket engine and calculate its performance than extreme development stages of mundane technology. If you want more futuristic story you can for example use micro or nanorobots for cutting pieces from asteroid, sorting them based on mineral concentration and transport them to melting chamber.

[kerbiloid]

We'd just keep our Saturner _{Saturn + turn + er} ship turned retrograde, and collect the melted ice dripping from the pusher plate.

[Scotius]

Just build whole mining complex on one of smaller icy moons. Low gravitation will not be a significant hurdle for a civilization that can freely travel to Saturn system.

[kerbiloid]

Why at all somebody needs those rings which are just a crashed icy moon.

[Nuke]

use lasers to ablate the surface of the ice, then using cv algorithms and physics modeling software figure out the right spots to hit to get the ice where you want it. thus turn each chunk into its own little space ship on its way to a collection area. i imagine having them march single file right onto a tangental approach to a ring station.

[radonek]

8 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Reality? 6 years to get to Saturn or less... especially if you have an antimatter beam rocket.

You are wildly mixing tech levels (again?). If you can build antimatter torch, you may as well fullfill all your material needs by tapping Jovian atmosphere. Or haul suitable icy body from Oort.

As for actual mining, I'd go with hitting selected icebergs with splash of color-adjusting nanomachines. Directed outgassing is a slow way to move, but I don't think you can beat the energy budget. Dunno if it's feasible though, not much sunlight there. Lasers could be used to speed thing up, but note that unlike Nukes idea they would just pump in additional energy. Other way would be to build a big mirror at higher orbit.

[Spacescifi]

20 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

).

 

You have to use imagination in any case. Net made from6 superstrong unobtainium strings is certainly one option. But it is difficult to predict what is the most effective method with scifi tech level. It is more easy to imagine antimatter rocket engine and calculate its performance than extreme development stages of mundane technology. If you want more futuristic story you can for example use micro or nanorobots for cutting pieces from asteroid, sorting them based on mineral concentration and transport them to melting chamber.

 

Really unobtanium is not required.

So long as orbital speed is matched the speed difference will only be whayever it takes to scoop up the ice.

Which won't be more than the nets can handle.

And imagining future tech is arguably a fool's errand, since we CANNOT predict the future 100% accurately... and it is good we can't too I might add, since that would either mean we have no choice or can make whatever we wanted happen. Neither scenario sounds good, as absolute power corrupts humans, and not having any freedom to chose our outcome makes humans angry and sad.

12 hours ago, radonek said:

You are wildly mixing tech levels (again?). If you can build antimatter torch, you may as well fullfill all your material needs by tapping Jovian atmosphere. Or haul suitable icy body from Oort.

As for actual mining, I'd go with hitting selected icebergs with splash of color-adjusting nanomachines. Directed outgassing is a slow way to move, but I don't think you can beat the energy budget. Dunno if it's feasible though, not much sunlight there. Lasers could be used to speed thing up, but note that unlike Nukes idea they would just pump in additional energy. Other way would be to build a big mirror at higher orbit.

 

Mixing tech levels is a given anytime we use known quantities with unknown ones (fiction).

Personally, I still prefer the nets, as nanobots like everything else need fuel.

A net may be primitive. But it also works.

 

On the other hand if propellant or ships are hard to come by, then the laser ablattion to station in orbit is not a bad idea at all.

Indeed... the station could feed itself daily that way, since it would be located near the rings anyway.

Just send a few scout ships out to get zap happy and send the ice blowing their own steam like dumb rockets.

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Personally, I still prefer the nets, as nanobots like everything else need fuel.

A net may be primitive. But it also works.

Better a shovel. It's proven rather than snow-gathering nanobot nets.
And the pusher plate is a ready to use one.

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

if propellant or ships are hard to come by

then gathering scattered icicles makes no sense when there is also an icy moon aside.

[Nuke]

On 4/16/2020 at 4:08 AM, radonek said:

You are wildly mixing tech levels (again?). If you can build antimatter torch, you may as well fullfill all your material needs by tapping Jovian atmosphere. Or haul suitable icy body from Oort.

As for actual mining, I'd go with hitting selected icebergs with splash of color-adjusting nanomachines. Directed outgassing is a slow way to move, but I don't think you can beat the energy budget. Dunno if it's feasible though, not much sunlight there. Lasers could be used to speed thing up, but note that unlike Nukes idea they would just pump in additional energy. Other way would be to build a big mirror at higher orbit.

moving rocks costs energy no matter where they are. what i suggest will probably require a small fleet of laser tugs. the power requirements for each would pit the nif to shame. probibly would be cheaper just to go out and net them. 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

Or we can burst another ice moon rotating in opposite direction to make a counter-ring intersecting with the original one.
They will be colliding and evapourating, so we can collect this by scoops.

[Spacescifi]

23 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Or we can burst another ice moon rotating in opposite direction to make a counter-ring intersecting with the original one.
They will be colliding and

evapourating, so we can collect this by scoops.

 

That would make the rings look like a bloated trainwreck.

Not aesthetcally pleasing... it is whatever you want scifi to be though.

[Nuke]

problem is you slam a rock going one way with a rock going the other way you get a bunch of debrits with their orbital velocity canceled out which immediately falls into saturn. if you can reverse the direction of half the rocks, you can haul all the rocks to a base. 

you might be able to artificially engineer a collection mass, an artificial moon with no other purpose than to gather material for future harvesting. just start lashing rocks together until they have enough gravity to draw in the others. but that could take centuries. 

[kerbiloid]

The rings mass is less that the Mimas mass.
Why bother at all with gathering when the nature has generously done it for us?

Edited April 17, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Nuke]

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The rings mass is less that the Mimas mass.
Why bother at all with gathering when the nature has generously done it for us?

yea, ice isnt so hard to come by that you need to do anything insane to get it other than mine it.