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Space mining concept: an in-vacuum absolutely enormous mass spectrometer as a way to naturally sort plasma-ified asteroid matter into buckets of 100% pure eleme
by JulianMorrison 11y ago
Space mining concept: an in-vacuum absolutely enormous mass spectrometer as a way to naturally sort plasma-ified asteroid matter into buckets of 100% pure elements. Which can then be pushed with small ion engines onto slow orbits that will eventually deliver them to Earth.
- mr_overalls 11y agoUnfortunately, the first step of mass spec is to ionize the sample. And the process you're suggesting wouldn't work so well for composite matter like, say, chunks of space rock. And I'm afraid some rather large energy inputs would be needed to convert space debris into plasma.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoFree electron laser powered by a solar array. Matter gets dug up and pulverized small by asteroid surface robots, squirted out as a dust stream, laser heated to plasma, charged by beaming electrons towards the catch-buckets. It flies through a large magnet (which keeps its position with ion thrusters), then coasts through vacuum, spreading out according to atomic content, falling into catch buckets and getting its charge neutralized.
- mr_overalls 11y agoWell, you're not short on ideas.
- Hockenbrizzle 11y agoJust visited European XFEL a few weeks ago. The linear accelerator was about 2km long and I believe the total cost of the laser is over 1 billion Euro, but nevertheless this is an awesome idea :)
- JulianMorrison 11y agoShould be cheaper to build both of those sorts of things when the "making a vacuum" bit is already taken care of, and large amounts of space are available at no cost.
- Lambdanaut 11y agoWhy sort them in space? That work can be done on Earth.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoBecause sorting them on site and just moving the valuable ones is (probably) a lot less work than moving raw ore umpty squillion miles and then landing it softly somewhere it can be processed. Also it means that the things you are throwing in Earth's general direction are comparatively small and not capable of wreaking havoc.
- jerf 11y agoA: You've got access to a lot of solar power, on a completely predictable schedule. Especially convenient since in this particular case you don't need to convert it to electricity first. B: Anything you release as a gas flies harmlessly out into the universe, so your environmental restrictions are a great deal less. (Also, this is not "cheating regulations" or anything... this is truly an environment with fewer restrictions. If you can vaporize it, it can be made to truly go away forever.) C: You've got zero G, and this sort of "massive mass spec" plan, while I question the numbers in general, is probably a great deal more practical in zero G than not zero G. And it would all tie together; if the exhaust is in excess of escape velocity, which it probably is by an order of magnitude or two, you can just let anything you don't care to catch fly into space. I'm not saying this is practical or necessarily a good idea, just pointing out that you do have some options in space that you don't have on Earth.
- zardo 11y agoI actually expect it will be something like that (eventually). Only with the resources mostly going to other in-space activities. Like the Disney Deathstar/StarWars theme park.