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.

1. First Approach From tens of thousands of 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. 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. 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. Corporate runs recover trace amounts of rare material, feeding the market and undercutting your own prices.

4. 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 range from micro-detonations to vacuum-safe chemical processes.

5. Claims and Cleanup Leaving an asteroid in worse 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.