Belters Guide to Asteroid Mining (IF)

Hard Science-Fiction Setting

Belter’s Guide to Asteroids

Belt prospecting is high-danger, high-profit. A single rich pocket can make a crew wealthy for life — or paint a target on their backs. 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.

Not all prospecting is in the Belt, near-Earth asteroids and Jupiter's trojans are also heavily mined, and salvage around Mercury is dangerous but very rich.

1. First Approach From kilometers out, basic classification is possible. Albedo and thermal readings reveal ice, rock, or regolith. A pulsed laser can ablate a few milligrams for spectroscopy, mapping surface minerals. Multiple readings help chart variation across the body. Dust plumes from collisions or mining can be sampled and backtracked, sometimes exposing hidden activity. 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.
• Drill cores for assay and structure.

Spin state, stability, and proximity to trade routes can matter as much as ore content. Many easy-to-handle bodies are already claimed, but new orbits and unsettled zones appear as mining expands. Distant targets hold richer secrets, but leave you far from help.

3. High-Value Prospecting Small, rich pockets of rare material — the kind worth keeping — demand precision. Belters cut minimal access tunnels, extract what they 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?

4. Registering and Selling the Claim Large deposits of common ore — nickel-iron, silicates, carbonates, or volatiles — are medium-value. The quickest profit is to sell to a mining company. They’ll bring a tug to move it to refinery orbit, or send a portable processor. The body is bagged to contain debris, churned to powder, and refined.

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 making 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.