What Will Asteroid Mining Look Like?

[Neil1993]

Dominatus came out with a post earlier asking about the challenges of asteroid mining, and one of the responders, Laie, asked an excellent question:

I'm still wondering what the mining is supposed to look like. Conveyor belts, crushers, pretty much all mining & processing equipment I can think of relies on gravity. What kind of machinery do you need when dust virtually never settles and the particles can be any size?

So what will the mining look like? How will the drills work? Will they use lasers? how will the ore be refined? how will it be transported throughout the refinery?

A lot of good thinking can happen here!

[WestAir]

If you've ever mined an asteroid in space engineers you can imagine how dangerous and clumsy the whole process COULD be without proper planning.

[Neil1993]

If you've ever mined an asteroid in space engineers you can imagine how dangerous and clumsy the whole process COULD be without proper planning.

Automatic mining drills never work as well as I think they will...

[RainDreamer]

I imagine it would be a structure firmly attached to the surface of the asteroid, drilling and crushing rocks while pumping a fluid in, then drain them right away, using the fluid as a form of conveyor belt to carry captured particles in that fluid. The fluid will travel through a series of even more grinders to crush the particles finer, before running through a series of filters and collectors, depending on what is being mined for.

Just something I think top of my head.

[WestAir]

It might work to: Burrow a hole with a laser, insert explosives, pulverize the inside to hollow it out then collect the debris from the chasm you just made. In this way you reduce freefloating, hyperfast debris while keeping all the ore in one place, which also happens to be indoors.

You could also slowly liquify the ore and collect it before it solidifies, bit by bit.

Thirdly, you could do a KSP maneuver and place RCS thrusters on the body and move it to where your equipment is as opposed to moving your equipment to it.

The above ideas were made in haste on 2.5 hours of sleep and should not be taken as hard science.

[sal_vager]

Interesting question, refining may be along similar lines to existing NASA ideas for ISRU but how do you get material in a weightless environment into your converter in the first place?

My first guess was for an excavator style system, with a double sided bucket to prevent material escaping, but how could the material be transferred from the bucket to the converter?

On thinking about it more though, you could have something like an Archimedes screw that would both scoop up loose material and transfer it to your converter, as even in zero gravity the material would bump against the inside of the screw and be directed along it.

[Neil1993]

I had a similar Idea to Mr. RainDreamer. I had thought that transporting the ore using liquid (so basically turn it into a sort of slurry) would be a good option.

[RainDreamer]

I had a similar Idea to Mr. RainDreamer. I had thought that transporting the ore using liquid (so basically turn it into a sort of slurry) would be a good option.

It is Ms. RainDreamer, actually. But I prefer to be called Rain.

Anyway, I wonder how exactly we would maintain pressure at drilling point, because I imagine it would be difficult to suck things back in when surrounded with vaccum.

[zxczxczbfg]

Anyway, I wonder how exactly we would maintain pressure at drilling point, because I imagine it would be difficult to suck things back in when surrounded with vaccum.

Probably some sort of airtight telescoping "sleeve" around the drill.

[Neil1993]

It is Ms. RainDreamer, actually. But I prefer to be called Rain.

Anyway, I wonder how exactly we would maintain pressure at drilling point, because I imagine it would be difficult to suck things back in when surrounded with vaccum.

I apologize for my assumption

I was thinking that the ore mixture could be turned into a slurry within the craft. If the drilling tip was something like sal_vager proposed, the ore would first be transported by an archimedes screw and then mixed with a liquid of some kind (probably not water) and turned into a slurry at the other end for internal transport. Still there has to be some way to maintain pressure within the system, otherwise most liquids would simply vaporize.

[Rakaydos]

Probably some sort of airtight telescoping "sleeve" around the drill.

At that point, why not inflate the tarp you're using for containment? give the whole asteroid a minimal pressure to keep the slurry from evaporating.

Also, I would prefer asteroid mining be done in-situ, because that way you can have asteroids in useful orbits (like, a mars cycler) be turned into habitation on the spot.

[Sirrobert]

At that point, why not inflate the tarp you're using for containment? give the whole asteroid a minimal pressure to keep the slurry from evaporating.

Also, I would prefer asteroid mining be done in-situ, because that way you can have asteroids in useful orbits (like, a mars cycler) be turned into habitation on the spot.

For that the question would be, is it cheaper to make multiple transport runs between the asteroid and the target, or to haul the asteroid to the target.