Difference between revisions of "Belters Guide to Asteroid Mining (IF)"

Latest revision as of 17:53, 15 August 2025

Types of Asteroid

Every rock has its own temperament. Knowing what you’re landing on saves lives and keeps your rig in one piece. Here’s the broad strokes — learn the details the hard way if you want, but you’ll only make that mistake once.

C-type (carbonaceous)

Structure: Usually rubble piles with deep regolith; some are solid cores under loose skin. Uses: Water ice, carbon for industry and agriculture, organic compounds. Hazards: Dust clouds from careless mining, weak surface cohesion — anchor wrong and you’ll pull the wall down on yourself. Mining notes: Drill light and slow, bag your tailings, and use electrostatic or vacuum collection for dust. Use harpoons or broad grapples for anchoring. Never rely on a single tie-down.

S-type (silicaceous)

Structure: Solid stony bodies, often fractured; moderate regolith cover. Uses: Building material, some metal ores. Hazards: Shattered interiors from old impacts — voids can collapse under load. Mining notes: Mechanical cutters and shaped charges work well. Watch out for flying shards in low gravity. Sometimes best sold untouched to be used for construction.

M-type (metallic)

Structure: Solid iron-nickel, sometimes with cobalt and platinum group veins. Uses: Bulk metals, high-value catalysts. Hazards: Strong magnetic fields can scramble tools; ricochets from cutting torches or impacts. Mining notes: Magnetic grapples and clamps work best. Use thermal cutting or big industrial grinders; wear mag-shielded instruments.

Icy bodies

Structure: Solid ice or ice-rock mix; surface may be dust-coated. Uses: Water, oxygen, hydrogen fuel. Hazards: Sunlight or waste heat can cause violent outgassing, spinning the body or throwing debris. Mining notes: Work in shadow if possible. Cut and bag in small sections; keep thermal load minimal.

Hybrids

Structure: Mixed composition; regolith over metal, ice veins in stone, etc. Uses: Multiple resource streams from one site. Hazards: Unpredictable structure; what’s safe in one section can kill you in another. Mining notes: Survey in detail before cutting. Be ready to switch tools and methods mid-job.

Exotics

Structure: Variable — from solid crystal to volatile-rich rubble. Uses: Rare minerals, unique reactor fuels, superconductors, strange isotopes. Hazards: Anything from toxic vapors to radiation bursts to spontaneous shattering. Mining notes: Only go in with the right gear and a buyer already lined up. Treat everything as unstable until proven otherwise.

Asteroid Mining

The Belt is the most important mining region in the Solar System, but these notes also apply to asteroid mining in other areas, such as near-Earth asteroids and Jupiter's trojans. Salvage around Mercury is done in a similar way — dangerous but particularly rich. The trojans of Saturn and eventually the Oort Cloud are potential future sites for asteroid mining.

Belt prospecting is high-danger, high-profit. A single rich find can make a crew wealthy for life — or paint a target on their backs if exploited unwisely. Prospecting in the Belt is equal parts skill, patience, and luck. The aim is to find what’s worth hauling or selling while avoiding months of work on a dead rock — or worse, being crushed, irradiated, lost in space, or driven to psychosis. A prospector’s reputation comes not just from what they find, but from how cleanly they work, how well they defend a claim, and how they relate to competitors. In the end, it is all about humanity versus a space that constantly tries to kill you, and humans are expected to aid each other even when competing.

1. First Approach New orbits and unsettled zones appear as mining expands. Distant targets hold richer secrets, but are far from help. From kilometers out, basic classification is possible:

Visual observation over time reveals orbit and spin.
Albedo and thermal readings reveal ice, rock, or regolith.
A pulsed laser can ablate a few milligrams for spectroscopy, mapping surface minerals.
Solar wind ions or X-rays hitting the surface may trigger faint X-ray emissions that hint at composition.
Metallic asteroids can slightly deflect the solar wind — detectable to a sensitive magnetometer.
Dust plumes from solar wind, collisions, or mining can be sampled and backtracked.

Every prospector has their own tricks and superstitions, often kept as closely guarded as the claims themselves.

2. Close Survey Docking means matching spin — easy for a slow rotator, but a tumbler needs grapples, nets, or harpoons. This is where your ship is in the most danger. Once attached, a full survey includes:

Ground-penetrating radar for internal layers and cavities.
Sonic mapping for density changes.
Physical exploration of the surface of a solid asteroid for caves and fissures.
Drill cores for assay and structure.

3. High-Value Prospecting Small, rich pockets of rare material — the kind worth keeping — demand precision. Belters cut minimal access tunnels, extract what their ship can carry, and preserve the rest for later sale. Tools include laser cutting, micro-detonations, and vacuum-safe chemical processes. This might require a supply trip, but dare you leave the claim? Dare you make multiple runs?

4. Registering and Selling the Claim Time to sell out. Spin state, stability, and proximity to trade routes can matter as much as ore content. Large deposits of common ore — nickel-iron, silicates, carbonates, or volatiles — are medium-value. The quickest profit for a large find is to sell to a mining company. They’ll bring a tug to move it to refinery orbit, or send a portable processor. The asteroid is bagged to contain debris, churned to powder, and refined. Smaller independent operations may buy smaller finds. They offer more reputation among Belters but have fewer resources.

5. Claims and Cleanup Leaving an asteroid in bad shape marks you as trouble. Tailings should be bagged or shifted to dump orbits. Netting or electrostatic collectors trap dust; skip this, and you risk leaving a trail to your claim — or creating micrometeors that get you lynched.

Jackpot Finds

Gold is no longer rare — Belt output dwarfs old Earth’s — but still valuable in electronics and plating. True jackpots are materials rare or costly to synthesize:

Platinum group metals — iridium, osmium, platinum, palladium; vital for catalysis and high-performance alloys.
Enriched isotopes — helium-3, lithium-6, other reactor fuels; long-lived radioisotopes for medicine and power.
Exotic crystals — naturally formed semiconductors, superconductors, or optics; impossible or costly to grow in labs.
Valuable rocks — bodies suited for use as shielding from sun storms, or to host habitats, bases, relays, or research sites. Spotting these requires broad expertise.
Contemporary salvage — lost ships, drones, or station modules; value depends on intact systems, structural integrity, and legal claim resolution.
Pre-Fall salvage — remnants of Dedalus-era projects; high-quality materials, specialized components, and rare engineering solutions from the last great wave of solar industry.
Solar salvage — abandoned pre-Fall solar collectors and support trusses knocked from station orbit. Their panels can act as sails, sending entire structures drifting far across the system.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{DF}}
+{{IF}}{{tocright}}
-=== Belter’s Guide to Asteroids ===
+=== Types of Asteroid ===
-Prospecting in the Belt is equal parts skill, patience, and luck. The goal is to find what’s worth hauling or selling, while avoiding months of work on a dead rock or being crushed, irradiated, being lost in space, psychosis, and other dangers. A prospector’s reputation comes not just from what they find, but from how cleanly they work and how well they protect a claim.
+Every rock has its own temperament. Knowing what you’re landing on saves lives and keeps your rig in one piece. Here’s the broad strokes — learn the details the hard way if you want, but you’ll only make that mistake once.
+==== C-type (carbonaceous) ====
+'''Structure''': Usually rubble piles with deep regolith; some are solid cores under loose skin.
+'''Uses''': Water ice, carbon for industry and agriculture, organic compounds.
+'''Hazards''': Dust clouds from careless mining, weak surface cohesion — anchor wrong and you’ll pull the wall down on yourself.
+'''Mining notes''': Drill light and slow, bag your tailings, and use electrostatic or vacuum collection for dust. Use harpoons or broad grapples for anchoring. Never rely on a single tie-down.
+==== S-type (silicaceous) ====
+'''Structure''': Solid stony bodies, often fractured; moderate regolith cover.
+'''Uses''': Building material, some metal ores.
+'''Hazards''': Shattered interiors from old impacts — voids can collapse under load.
+'''Mining notes''': Mechanical cutters and shaped charges work well. Watch out for flying shards in low gravity. Sometimes best sold untouched to be used for construction.
+==== M-type (metallic) ====
+'''Structure''': Solid iron-nickel, sometimes with cobalt and platinum group veins.
+'''Uses''': Bulk metals, high-value catalysts.
+'''Hazards''': Strong magnetic fields can scramble tools; ricochets from cutting torches or impacts.
+'''Mining notes''': Magnetic grapples and clamps work best. Use thermal cutting or big industrial grinders; wear mag-shielded instruments.
+==== Icy bodies ====
+'''Structure''': Solid ice or ice-rock mix; surface may be dust-coated.
+'''Uses''': Water, oxygen, hydrogen fuel.
+'''Hazards''': Sunlight or waste heat can cause violent outgassing, spinning the body or throwing debris.
+'''Mining notes''': Work in shadow if possible. Cut and bag in small sections; keep thermal load minimal.
+==== Hybrids ====
+'''Structure''': Mixed composition; regolith over metal, ice veins in stone, etc.
+'''Uses''': Multiple resource streams from one site.
+'''Hazards''': Unpredictable structure; what’s safe in one section can kill you in another.
+'''Mining notes''': Survey in detail before cutting. Be ready to switch tools and methods mid-job.
+==== Exotics ====
+'''Structure''': Variable — from solid crystal to volatile-rich rubble.
+'''Uses''': Rare minerals, unique reactor fuels, superconductors, strange isotopes.
+'''Hazards''': Anything from toxic vapors to radiation bursts to spontaneous shattering.
+'''Mining notes''': Only go in with the right gear and a buyer already lined up. Treat everything as unstable until proven otherwise.
+=== Asteroid Mining ===
+The Belt is the most important mining region in the Solar System, but these notes also apply to asteroid mining in other areas, such as near-Earth asteroids and Jupiter's trojans. Salvage around Mercury is done in a similar way — dangerous but particularly rich. The trojans of Saturn and eventually the Oort Cloud are potential future sites for asteroid mining.
+Belt prospecting is high-danger, high-profit.
+A single rich find can make a crew wealthy for life — or paint a target on their backs if exploited unwisely.
+Prospecting in the Belt is equal parts skill, patience, and luck.
+The aim is to find what’s worth hauling or selling while avoiding months of work on a dead rock — or worse, being crushed, irradiated, lost in space, or driven to psychosis.
+A prospector’s reputation comes not just from what they find, but from how cleanly they work, how well they defend a claim, and how they relate to competitors.
+In the end, it is all about humanity versus a space that constantly tries to kill you, and humans are expected to aid each other even when competing.
 '''1. First Approach'''
-From tens of thousands of kilometers out, basic classification is possible. Albedo and thermal readings tell you if it’s ice, rock, or regolith. Spectroscopy — often done with a pulsed laser ablating a few milligrams — reveals likely surface minerals. Multiple readings from all over the body help map surface variation. Dust trails drifting from the asteroid can also be sampled, sometimes revealing signs of past or hidden mining activity. Collisions and mining releases plumes and dust that can be analyzed and backtracked. Every prospector has their own favorite tricks and superstitions as well kept secrets.
+New orbits and unsettled zones appear as mining expands.
+Distant targets hold richer secrets, but are far from help.
+From kilometers out, basic classification is possible:
+* Visual observation over time reveals orbit and spin.
+* Albedo and thermal readings reveal ice, rock, or regolith.
+* A pulsed laser can ablate a few milligrams for spectroscopy, mapping surface minerals.
+* Solar wind ions or X-rays hitting the surface may trigger faint X-ray emissions that hint at composition.
+* Metallic asteroids can slightly deflect the solar wind — detectable to a sensitive magnetometer.
+* Dust plumes from solar wind, collisions, or mining can be sampled and backtracked.
+Every prospector has their own tricks and superstitions, often kept as closely guarded as the claims themselves.
 '''2. Close Survey'''
-Docking means matching spin — a slow rotator is simple, a tumbler needs grapples, nets, or harpoons. Once attached, the prospector runs a full survey:
+Docking means matching spin — easy for a slow rotator, but a tumbler needs grapples, nets, or harpoons. This is where your ship is in the most danger. Once attached, a full survey includes:
-* Ground-penetrating radar for internal layers and cavities.
-* Sonic mapping to detect density changes.
-* Drill cores for assay and structural samples.
-Spin state, stability, and proximity to trade routes matter almost as much as ore content — some otherwise marginal rocks are worth working just because they’re easy to reach and handle, but many of these have already been claimed. As mining expands, there are constantly new space and new orbits worth prospecting. Distant areas retain their profitable secrets, but are also less predictable and leave you further away from assistance.
+* Ground-penetrating radar for internal layers and cavities.
+* Sonic mapping for density changes.
+* Physical exploration of the surface of a solid asteroid for caves and fissures.
+* Drill cores for assay and structure.
-'''3. Selling the Claim'''
+'''3. High-Value Prospecting'''
-Large deposits of common ore — nickel-iron, silicates, carbonites, or volatiles — are medium-value. The fastest profit is to sell the claim to a mining company. They bring a tug to shift it into a refinery orbit, or send a portable processor. The body is bagged to contain debris, churned to powder, and fed to the refinery. Even rock asteroids get bagged to control fragments. Company work will always recover trace amounts of higher-value material, feeding the market and reducing the price of any such finds you mine yourself.
+Small, rich pockets of rare material — the kind worth keeping — demand precision. Belters cut minimal access tunnels, extract what their ship can carry, and preserve the rest for later sale. Tools include laser cutting, micro-detonations, and vacuum-safe chemical processes. This might require a supply trip, but dare you leave the claim? Dare you make multiple runs?
-'''4. High-Value Prospecting'''
+'''4. Registering and Selling the Claim'''
-Small, rich pockets of rare materials — the kind worth keeping — call for precision work. Belters cut minimal access tunnels, extract only what they can carry, and preserve the rest for later sale. Tools range from fine mechanical cutters to micro-detonations and vacuum-safe chemical processes.
+Time to sell out. Spin state, stability, and proximity to trade routes can matter as much as ore content.
+Large deposits of common ore — nickel-iron, silicates, carbonates, or volatiles — are medium-value. The quickest profit for a large find is to sell to a mining company. They’ll bring a tug to move it to refinery orbit, or send a portable processor. The asteroid is bagged to contain debris, churned to powder, and refined.
+Smaller independent operations may buy smaller finds. They offer more reputation among Belters but have fewer resources.
 '''5. Claims and Cleanup'''
-Leaving an asteroid worse than you found it marks you as trouble. Unused tailings should be bagged or shifted to a safe dump orbit. A clean, documented claim commands a higher price than a stripped husk drifting through the Belt. Netting or electrostatic collectors are used to trap dust, though careless crews skip this, leaving a trail others may analyze and trace back to the source — risking claim jumpers or quiet theft. This is also how micro-meteors are made, you may get lynched for endangering others.
+Leaving an asteroid in bad shape marks you as trouble. Tailings should be bagged or shifted to dump orbits. Netting or electrostatic collectors trap dust; skip this, and you risk leaving a trail to your claim — or creating micrometeors that get you lynched.
-=== Jackpot Finds ===
+==== Jackpot Finds ====
-Gold has lost much of its rarity value — Belt mining produces far more than Earth ever did — but still sees industrial use in electronics and corrosion-resistant plating. True “jackpot” materials are those rare or hard to synthesize, including:
+Gold is no longer rare — Belt output dwarfs old Earth’s — but still valuable in electronics and plating. True jackpots are materials rare or costly to synthesize:
-* '''Platinum group metals''' — iridium, osmium, platinum, palladium; critical for catalysis and high-performance alloys.
-* '''Enriched isotopes''' — helium-3, lithium-6, and other reactor fuels; long-lived radioisotopes for medicine and power.
-* '''Native volatiles''' — water ice, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, valuable only if near where they’re needed.
-* '''Exotic crystals''' — naturally formed semiconductors, superconductors, or optics, impossible or costly to grow in labs.
-* '''Native metals''' — nickel-iron cores with high cobalt content, prized for advanced alloys.
-* '''Valuable Rocks''' — Some rocky asteroids are valuable because they can be used directly to provide shadow from sun storms, house habitats, bases, relay stations, observation bases, scientific research, or for other purposes. To realize such values your crew needs a wide range of knowledge, or consult with experts, who will claim a flat fee or a share of the proftis.
-Belt prospecting is a high-danger, high-profit operation.
+* '''Platinum group metals''' — iridium, osmium, platinum, palladium; vital for catalysis and high-performance alloys.
-A single rich pocket of the right material can set a crew up to retire in luxury — or make them a target.
+* '''Enriched isotopes''' — helium-3, lithium-6, other reactor fuels; long-lived radioisotopes for medicine and power.
+* '''Exotic crystals''' — naturally formed semiconductors, superconductors, or optics; impossible or costly to grow in labs.
+* '''Valuable rocks''' — bodies suited for use as shielding from sun storms, or to host habitats, bases, relays, or research sites. Spotting these requires broad expertise.
+* '''Contemporary salvage''' — lost ships, drones, or station modules; value depends on intact systems, structural integrity, and legal claim resolution.
+* '''Pre-Fall salvage''' — remnants of Dedalus-era projects; high-quality materials, specialized components, and rare engineering solutions from the last great wave of solar industry.
+* '''Solar salvage''' — abandoned pre-Fall solar collectors and support trusses knocked from station orbit. Their panels can act as sails, sending entire structures drifting far across the system.