3 ms·

> manage to escape the gravity well and make it back to us. A more efficient design would probably be to have a miner full-time there, sending payloads in high

> manage to escape the gravity well and make it back to us. A more efficient design would probably be to have a miner full-time there, sending payloads in higher orbit, and a transport ship that approaches on a parabolic orbit, so it only needs engines to accelerate the payload, counteract friction and adjust trajectory It would still be very expensive, though.

simias 7y ago
Regardless of how many complications you had you still need to get the mass of "mined" helium out of the gravity well, you can't avoid that. That means that you'll also have to lift whatever type of canister used to contain the gas and the propellant to reach your transport ship. I suppose that the good news is that wherever you're getting your helium from you'll probably also have copious quantities of hydrogen available so you won't have to carry that over. Managing to oxidize it however is left as an exercise to the reader (apparently there's a tiny amount of water in Jupiter, but of course then you'd need some other energy source to electrolize it).
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  > That means that you'll also have to lift whatever type of canister used to contain the gas and the propellant to reach your transport ship. Or you just push it through a pipe, space-elevator style, exactly how many hard science fiction authors do it for mining gas giants for reaction mass/other fuel. Should be considerably cheaper from an energy standpoint. If you're to a point where you can create such a station and manage regular transport between two bodies, you're going to be able to build some sort of pipe that should be able to contain the helium enough to pump it far enough out to considerably reduce the cost of leaving orbit.
takeda 7y ago
To make it even more cost effective we could have a clone of a miner work there in a 3 year contract, unaware that he is a clone. As the contact approaches he would be replaced with a new clone and things would start all over again.

simias 7y ago

Regardless of how many complications you had you still need to get the mass of "mined" helium out of the gravity well, you can't avoid that. That means that you'll also have to lift whatever type of canister used to contain the gas and the propellant to reach your transport ship. I suppose that the good news is that wherever you're getting your helium from you'll probably also have copious quantities of hydrogen available so you won't have to carry that over. Managing to oxidize it however is left as an exercise to the reader (apparently there's a tiny amount of water in Jupiter, but of course then you'd need some other energy source to electrolize it).

ryanmercer 7y ago
> That means that you'll also have to lift whatever type of canister used to contain the gas and the propellant to reach your transport ship. Or you just push it through a pipe, space-elevator style, exactly how many hard science fiction authors do it for mining gas giants for reaction mass/other fuel. Should be considerably cheaper from an energy standpoint. If you're to a point where you can create such a station and manage regular transport between two bodies, you're going to be able to build some sort of pipe that should be able to contain the helium enough to pump it far enough out to considerably reduce the cost of leaving orbit.

takeda 7y ago

To make it even more cost effective we could have a clone of a miner work there in a 3 year contract, unaware that he is a clone. As the contact approaches he would be replaced with a new clone and things would start all over again.