Solar Alchemy (IF)

Solar Alchemy — What it was for

Solar mining meant building hardware in the low corona and riding obscene heat, light, and fields to make things you couldn’t make anywhere else. Antimatter was one target. Not the only one.

Pair-Production Skims (antimatter)

Gamma caustics and magnetic catchers to harvest positrons/antiprotons from flare belts; feed trap cassettes or JIT pearlizers. (Covered above.)

Solar-Wind Isotope Harvest

Electrostatic/magnetic scoops at perihelion to collect high-flux solar wind — H, He, a trace of heavies. Value was in **isotopic separation at scale** (³He, ²H, rare Ne/Ar mixes) for fusion R&D, cryo/laser standards, and medicine. Post-Fall: marginal without the big grids.

Radioisotope Brewing

Use flare neutrons and high-energy secondaries to **spallate** custom isotopes (⁷Be, ¹⁰Be, ²⁶Al, niche Mo/Tc lines). Fed radiochemistry, imaging, and calibration sources. Some were strategic for reactor materials testing.

Irradiation-Hardened Materials

Deliberate coronal bombardment to seed **pinning centers** in superconductors, toughen ceramics, and pre-age alloys for radiation duty. “Sun-baked” coils and mirrors were prized in Jovian service.

Extreme Solar Furnaces

Mega-mirror arrays for **kiln jobs** you can’t do in yards: diamond/carbyne films, lonsdaleite coatings, ultra-pure graphene, cured meta-optics and sails. Also mass sterilization for bio-labs. Surviving pieces still show up as salvage.

Sun-Diver Logistics (Oberth yards)

Throw bulk with **mass drivers at perihelion** to buy Δv cheap. Pellet streams, fuel cans, even probes got flung system-wide using the Sun’s gravity well and free power. After the Fall, most tracks are lethal debris corridors.

Beamed Power & Light Sails

Tight, phased mirror fields to push **sail probes** and to drip power to inner-system relays. Worked until storm season turned beams into weapons and guidance into guesswork. Politically toxic now.

Muon/Secondary Factories (on-site only)

Flares make showers. You could tap **muon flux** for catalysis experiments and exotic spectroscopy. Not storable — lab toys, not commerce — but they unlocked materials data you can’t get elsewhere.

Solar-Wind Volatiles to Prop

Hydrogen/helium capture at perihelion → crack, bottle, and **ship high-purity propellants**. Never beat outer-system ice on cost per kg, but unbeatable for local near-Sun ops.

Field-Shaping Experiments

MHD “tuning” of loops and flux ropes to calm windows, steer particle drifts, and protect workzones. Useful — and exactly the sort of hubris blamed for Daedalus’s cascade.

Meta-Optics & Shade Fabrication

Cure **thin-film mirrors and climate shades** in bulk under raw UV. These fed Earth’s recovery and big telescopes. Post-Fall, fragments still clutter weird orbits.

Data & Tomography

Flares lit the inner system like an X-ray. Solar-side arrays did **materials and structure tomography** on passing payloads and even small asteroids. Niche, but real.

Status now — Most of this died with Daedalus. A few covert lines limp on (isotopes, irradiated coils, sun-diver micro-shots). Everything else is salvage, rumor, or a court case waiting to happen.