Asteroid mining
From Biohack
Go to the nearest asteroid field, track and tag at least 10,000 asteroids, and then identify the rocks that have the most valuable resources and start mining. Fire packages of mined material back at a central processing node, and give each 'pellet' a solar panel and some ability to propel itself and navigate, but not much, at the other end send a signal that would cause the pellet-guider (fins, I call them) to detach and let the pellets continue on for further processing.
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Asteroid tagging
Asteroid following
Asteroid landing
Hitting one dead-on would be a really good start.
Asteroid mining machinery phase
In this phase, deploy the machinery on to the surface, begin drilling process and start mapping out the internal infrastructure of the asteroid. Explosives might be required if the asteroid gets too dense.
Pellet system
The fins need to be reusable and somewhat programmable as for their destination.
Pellet processing system
Maybe a giant net can be used to pick up incoming pellets, which are conveniently tagged kind of like an RSS feed. Except it's a physical, constant feed.
Biofuels
Biofuels might be a good option, if we have orbital algae farms -- glass boxes that have water and algae pointed at the sun. To get to this point, you can use the LOX ideas. Once you get biofuel production in orbit thanks to the surface area you can create. You can scale up the photosynthetic process and make lots of energy. Then you can use this in combustion engines or other liquid-propellant rocket engines.
Surface area maximization
Nutrient diffusion
- Mine the nutrients from the asteroid.
- Until then, import sea water from earth.
Blocking asteroids and rocks from hitting the glass tanks
- Projectile defense system
- Move the tanks (have many tanks so that each one can be maneuverable) -- however, as you increase the number of tanks, the harder it is to get nutrients diffused sufficiently.
Refs
- Need to get the paper with "asteroid surface mineralogy" in its title.
