Gas Mining

Specifically in the Casimir raid, but with other references to deeper space mining operations, the question comes up as to what they are mining. The obvious main candidates are for elemental hydrogen and isotopes of hydrogen that are useful for fusion reactors, but -- for example, the Jovian atmosphere has a number of other potentially useful molecules "high in the sky" so to say, such as hydrazine which is a useful monopropellant, often used for attitude control, etc.

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:Specifically in the Casimir raid, but with other references to deeper space mining operations, the question comes up as to what they are mining. The obvious main candidates are for elemental hydrogen and isotopes of hydrogen that are useful for fusion reactors, but -- for example, the Jovian atmosphere has a number of other potentially useful molecules "high in the sky" so to say, such as hydrazine which is a useful monopropellant, often used for attitude control, etc.

Thoughts?

I really need to get my hands on In Fire Forged and read that story. Grrr.

Anyway - I figure they are probably taking up everything that can be grabbed with whatever means they are using and sorting out everything that can be sorted and sold more economically than tossing it out as waste. So we'd have to know or guess (1) what's there, (2) how it's being pulled up, (3) costs to sort, (4) costs to keep, and (5) the market for each of them.

With a tech base we only kinda know, for an economy we only kinda know.

I expect a lot of shrugging and hopefully frank admissions of insufficient data all over the place.

Edit in: Bad form perhaps, but I'm adding a question to my original post: I was thinking more for our "on the board chemists", out of the stuff that we read as being in the jovian atmosphere, Saturn, etc. for raw materials, what kinds of stuff that we know is in the Honorverse would they be looking for.

AKA mining being a process of finding some useful stuff and mostly discarding the rest, vs. harvesting or collecting which is "go get all of it from patch of place A".

Given that the tech base is somewhat loosely defined by RFC, so any of our guesses or surmises have an element of hand-wavium [whoever came up with that term, pure genius!] in it... for example I have heard of argon lasers, but have no idea if they are hot enough for asteroid smelting, etc. Don't know that there's enough argon in a jovian atmosphere to "mine" but mebbe? So if it's your Honorverse, chemists, whatdaya willing to pay for that I can get with this here gas mining ship I won in yon Wages of Sin poker game, and what can ya make from it?

SharkHunter wrote:Edit in: Bad form perhaps, but I'm adding a question to my original post: I was thinking more for our "on the board chemists", out of the stuff that we read as being in the jovian atmosphere, Saturn, etc. for raw materials, what kinds of stuff that we know is in the Honorverse would they be looking for.

AKA mining being a process of finding some useful stuff and mostly discarding the rest, vs. harvesting or collecting which is "go get all of it from patch of place A".

Given that the tech base is somewhat loosely defined by RFC, so any of our guesses or surmises have an element of hand-wavium [whoever came up with that term, pure genius!] in it... for example I have heard of argon lasers, but have no idea if they are hot enough for asteroid smelting, etc. Don't know that there's enough argon in a jovian atmosphere to "mine" but mebbe? So if it's your Honorverse, chemists, whatdaya willing to pay for that I can get with this here gas mining ship I won in yon Wages of Sin poker game, and what can ya make from it?

I'd call your mining vs. harvesting ends of a spectrum more than entirely distinct categories. It's a useful spectrum to note though.

I'd also guess that, with very clever chemistry, very cheap transport and storage, and a stupendous economy in the Honorverse (even the late 19th century PD, in Silesia) - most operations will tend toward the harvesting end of the spectrum. If it's got a use, it'll be collected and sold for it: if you've got an operation that has you bothering to go to X and fetch A, and you're picking up B, C, D, and Q with it, you'll likely sort out, store, and sell B, C, D, and Q too.

At any rate, that's my take based on the tone of the series and the relevant very broad dimensions of the problem. Other people are going to be able to fill in details vastly better than I am; probably no one would be able to nail them all down definitively.

JeffEngel wrote:snip
At any rate, that's my take based on the tone of the series and the relevant very broad dimensions of the problem. Other people are going to be able to fill in details vastly better than I am; probably no one would be able to nail them all down definitively.

I suspect that RFC wouldn't have too much problem nailing them down definitively, but you're right about anyone else.

SharkHunter wrote:Specifically in the Casimir raid, but with other references to deeper space mining operations, the question comes up as to what they are mining. The obvious main candidates are for elemental hydrogen and isotopes of hydrogen that are useful for fusion reactors, but -- for example, the Jovian atmosphere has a number of other potentially useful molecules "high in the sky" so to say, such as hydrazine which is a useful monopropellant, often used for attitude control, etc.

Thoughts?

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Whether Casimir, Myers, Grayson or Manticore, most of the planetary systems presented in this series have shown mining in the asteroid belts or gas mining at any available gas giants.
What's not to like about it ? an abundant supply of multiple elemental isotopes. Many, if not most, will have a market. Any H2-rich simple compound (like your example of Hydrazine) can be chemically separated (even with our technology) to provide H2 fuel for ship reactors -- think Saudi Arabia, the Alaskan N.Slope and US / Canadian Shale Oil in one convenient location with little extraction costs.

-- Stewart