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Belting 101

Thnaks Bill,
Good sources of info. As you discuss it further I'm liking the picture the science as we know it paints. The collisional heating brings prospecting back to the picture of Belt mining. The big ones like Vesta etc. (besides being prime base/habiatat sites) will be mined out early, so the initial comapny/group that settles will do well. It sounds like the follow-on belters will be looking for that lucky strike (a hunk of differentiated material from maybe a broken up larger asteroid).

I like the many parallels that can be drawn between belt mining and 19th century mining when the undifferentiated nature of asteroids comes into play.

I agree, density and differntaition are two different things. Just brought it up because of the Mathilde data you referenced. Likewise composition (as determined by spectroscopy) and differentiation are different things. In addition, spectroscopy from a distance is only going to give you an indication of "surface" composition. So in the end, there is going to still be the need for a lot of going and looking work. The use of small robot probes makes sense (along with probe jumping, probe spyware (have the other guys probe tell you what it found etc.)).

Have to read E2-4601's stuff, it looks very good.
 
Originally posted by epicenter00:
I've always had this image that belting is similar to gold mining in California during the Gold Rush - there's money to be made, but mostly by those exploiting the miners as opposed to by the miners themselves.
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Epicenter,

A good point! Standford and all the rest made their millions supplying the miners, not mining themselves. IIRC, the upscale US department store Nordstrum's got it's boost from single store shoe sales to goliath by supplying the Yukon gold rush.

I'd also like to add that belting will resemble the actual, decades long, gold/silver rush in California and Nevada and not our 'Grizzled Forty-Niner' mythic version. Vast portions of the Sierra Nevadas terrain were literally remade by gold mining outfits.

Read McPhee's 'Assembling California' for the details but hydraulic mining was so profitiable and eventually so destructive that it was outlawed during the late 1800s heyday of capitalist excess. Entire rivers were diverted for water pressure and volume needed, then miles upon miles of banks of ancient gravels were washed by huge water cannons into miles upon miles of sluices. The firms even wanted to wash out the gravel beds the Union Pacific railroad stood on because the gold they contained!

That industrial power could be brought to bear because gold was so vitally necessary to the world economy. Currency was backed by gold so, if you needed more money because your economy grew, you needed more gold!

Whether huge capital intensive processes like the 1800s hydraulic mining in California or the current strip mining of an entire mountain in Australia for diamonds will replay out among the planetoids is another matter. Iron and nickel are going to be dirt cheap. Their 'ores' will be byproducts of mining for other minerals. You could stuff large chunks of planetoid through a solar smelter to retrieve the materials you want; that belt version of mining seawater for gold, but the results have to be worth the cost and effort. That numbers in that equation will change all the time.


Have fun,
Bill
 
The first thing I thought of after reading the above is the protesting that members of an Asteroidal Sierra Club might do.

"We must preserve the asteroid's natural beauty for future generations! The current Imperial-industrial complex is destroying all of these scenic vistas for a profit!"
 
Not too far fetched a notion. Saturn's rings would look pretty shabby half-mined and with a Pizza Hut logo on it. What about objects like Comet Halley and such? I am sure cultural icons such as that would have some sort of restriction applied to them.
 
Then there is the notion of an irregular floating chunk of rock being the prime place for a base or installation, or that asteroid ship you always wanted. Some 'roids would be preserved I'm sure..
 
Whether huge capital intensive processes like the 1800s hydraulic mining in California or the current strip mining of an entire mountain in Australia for diamonds will replay out among the planetoids is another matter. Iron and nickel are going to be dirt cheap. Their 'ores' will be byproducts of mining for other minerals. You could stuff large chunks of planetoid through a solar smelter to retrieve the materials you want; that belt version of mining seawater for gold, but the results have to be worth the cost and effort. That numbers in that equation will change all the time.


Have fun,
Bill [/QB]
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That's precisely the point.

The profit margins after all this backbreaking labor by wildcatters would be very low. These guys are probably breaking even if they're lucky. Traveller is probably full of ex-Belters doing something else after belting for a few years but then realizing there "wasn't any money to be made." Dedicated Belters, no matter what they tell you, probably stick with the work because they like the freedom of working in space without a boss as opposed to any realistic hope of striking it rich. Most belters probably consider it a good month if they make like a few hundred credits after basic expenses, nevermind if their ship gets damaged or has to recertify or something...

Common metals probably aren't even worth shipping back. It's only when they find some (estimated) exploitable percentage of rare earths and such that they ship rock chunks back. Then they're probably manipulated by companies that buy the materials who price fix and such to further rip-off the Belters.

But checking out collision craters would be pretty interesting as well. I can't really imagine that being particularly profitable either. Belt miners probably use all sorts of crazy technology, as well. A lot of surplus ordinance probably ends up in the hands of Belters. I imagine them doing a lot of things of dubious sanity, like directing the thrust of their ships into rocks to smelt them, buying up surplus spinal mount mass drivers to fling rocks at other rocks to make collision craters (woe be to anyone who is on the target), or using high-G ships to tow rocks for the same purpose as mass drivers.
 
This is more or less what goes on in EVE Online.

Also, the idea of a giant combo ore miner / refinery, slowly moving through the belt, strip-mining it.

EVE has that flavor a bit, too. Not exactly, but close. You got to have a large corp do do strip-mining, but it's a lot faster, and by then you have huge haulers to carry it back and forth or just store it in a geostationary, passworded cannister of huge size, till your haulers can carry it out.
 
Originally posted by Ptah:
Likewise composition (as determined by spectroscopy) and differentiation are different things. In addition, spectroscopy from a distance is only going to give you an indication of "surface" composition.
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Ptah,

Yup! That's the bits that has been driving planetary scientists batty. They have their spectroscope results, the meteorite chrondites, they know the thermodynamics of the situation, the few probes have confirmed things, and they couldn't get all the pieces to fit.

Themodynamics, telescopes, radar, and probes all point to undifferentiated bodies. Yet, meteor chrondites and radar also pointed to thermal changes that couldn't be explained with isotopes and thermodynamics. Collisional heating tied everything up.

So in the end, there is going to still be the need for a lot of going and looking work.
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Yes again! The belter as grizzled prospector is back!

Have to read E2-4601's stuff, it looks very good.
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2-4601's stuff is uniformly excellent. He has his own folder on my hard drive.


Have fun,
Bill
 
Bill, Ptah, how does introducing the nearly limitless power from fusion alter things, though? You can slag that rock with your mining laser all day to do the processing, can't you?
 
Of course every part of a planetoid might be of some value, and well you can accomplish some molecular separations more easily in a vacuum-like the way tungsten is formed. Perhaps planetoids are not so much "mined" as processed.

Perhaps the hand wave is that technology advances to the point where getting cold out of seawater is not so impossible, particulary if all the other things are being broken down into componet parts.
 
The profit margins after all this backbreaking labor by wildcatters would be very low. These guys are probably breaking even if they're lucky.
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Yeah but I hear they’re digging up Uranium in chunks over in the Domias System. I just need that one lucky strike. . . .my lucks gotta change!

It’s the Las Vegas mentality. I’m gonna be the winner cuz I am lucky and good. As long as there is the promise of.

Most of the belters IMTU don’t own starships. They own old gigs and converted modular cutters that bring the ores into “town” to the assay office.

All it takes is Sternmetal Horizons to sweep in with an armada of geologists (term ?) and minimum wage workers to blast an entire community of belters into oblivion.
 
Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:
All it takes is Sternmetal Horizons to sweep in with an armada of geologists (term ?) and minimum wage workers to blast an entire community of belters into oblivion.
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This is one of the reasons why the Solar Triumvirate IMTU doesn't like independent Belter much (apart for the government being in bed with megacorp interests, that is) - they're prime candidates for Matriarchate-funded guerilla efforts. A corp (especially T-Y-C; mining is that speciality and their hand is HEAVY) moves in; the belters get heavy weapons from the Matriarchate wqith a discount in order to resist. And if the entire thing is on the Matriarchate-Triumvirate border, this could lead to an incident as the Matriarchate might try to come in force to support "their downtrodfden belt-sisters"
 
Originally posted by Fritz88:
Bill, Ptah, how does introducing the nearly limitless power from fusion alter things, though? You can slag that rock with your mining laser all day to do the processing, can't you?
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This would work, you are providing the heating yourself to differentiate instead of looking for collision craters. Add in gravatics to help speed differnetiation and your well on your way. Instead of heating with a laser a beam diameter at a time, a more efficient approach time-wise might be to break off chunks and run them through a smelter on-ship.

I guess the question is how long does it take and is it profitable to do so, given the credits generated per day and the need to make a minimum amount per month say to pay the ship mortgage, buy life support, power plant fuel, extra wear and tear on the mining laser etc. Is piracy also an issue because your staying in one spot mining away?

I tend to think it is possible and even done but the looking for impact craters is much more profitable and what the wildcat belter mentality is after.
 
Originally posted by Fritz88:
Bill, Ptah, how does introducing the nearly limitless power from fusion alter things, though? You can slag that rock with your mining laser all day to do the processing, can't you?
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Fritz,

That's where economics enters the picture.

How much does it cost you to generate that power? Or apply it in the method you need? How much energy and time is involved. We're moving away from prospecting - which is something I'd think players-as-belters as more likely to want to do - and on towards smelting and ore processing - which something that corporations are going to be doing.

It's a matter of emphasizing one aspect over another that's all. Some ore processing could very well be done in situ, some ore processing could be done elsewhere, and it all depends on the economics of the particular situation. What is rhenium selling for on Strouden now? Can we find it and mine it cheaply enough at Zaibon? Will we need to process it or will they take 'raw' ore of a certain 'richness'? Can we pay someone to process it and still make money?

As you can see, there are a myriad of questions and the answers all depend on how you as the GM set things up! What could be better!


Have fun,
Bill

P.S. They're prospecting for loads to sell but that doesn't mean the players can't work claims for themselves. During the various gold/silver/diamond rushes, miners slipped in and out of business relationships. Some worked for a 'corporation' part of the day and worked their own claims for part of the day.
 
Well, of course, Bill, hydrogen is pretty cheap (at least if you're within short hop of a GG) in OTU. I'm not really talking about processing, but the idea of torching it and sucking it into your hold.

Or, you could use the laser to cut out the "crater" filling, I guess.
 
Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:
What do belters belt for IYTU? Radioactives, iron, gold?

What could you expect to find in a chunk of space rock?
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Tantalum (I use Stutterwarp along with Jump Drive) and magnetic monopoles (I grew up reading classic Larry Niven, so this is my nod to him) are the big ticket items people are always looking for, across Known Space. Radioactives are of secondary in demand as well as are the always precious "precious metals." I've also included some stuff that are considered to be not common on Earth but more common on certain kinds of rocks, like Buckyball dust and petrochemicals (useful for the synthesis of plastics and other materials in lifeless systems).

Conversely, diamonds and other gemstones aren't a big deal - with reasonably priced fusion power, diamonds just treated coal. Synthetic diamond is used as construction material.
 
Fritz,

Well, it all depends on the money again.

Your seeker holds 20 dTons of whatever you cram into those two holds, right? The economics of the situation will determine if 20 dTons of 'easily gathered' undifferentiated silica containing 5% Fe-Ni is worth your effort or whether your should spend the time looking for different concentrations or different materials.

Mining is a wild business even here on Earth. I know a fellow who spent 3 years in Labrador getting a load of nickel ore ready for exploitation. They paid off the local Inuits, cut them in on jobs and supply deals, leased land for structures, made plans to improve a small harbor, platted out company housing, and did a thousand other chores. Then the bottom fell out of the nickel market and the company just walked away. Something like 5 million USD spent and they didn't move a single shovel of ore.

The plans are all there neatly filed away so they can go in easier/faster/cheaper next time when or if the market supports the work, but they didn't pull out an ounce of nickel ore and spent 5 million bucks.

In northwestern Australia outback there's a diamond 'mine' that would blow your mind. They're strip mining an entire mountain range and processing megatons of gravel for a daily handful of industrial grade stones. Not the artifically high priced gem types, indsutrial stones. These days everything is flown in, EVERYTHING. When they built the facility however, they DROVE in all the equipment making their own road for hundreds of miles. Dozers, trucks, everything waddled along in a convoy towing a trailer behind them. All the structural steel they needed for the processing facility - and it is HUGE - was dragged in the same way.

In the Canadian Artic there are mines worked for just a few months each year. All the equipment is left on site over the long winter. Again, people fly in with some supplies dragged in across country. The equipment gets a work over, production starts, and they work 24/7 until the weather makes them stop.

Why did they walk away from that nickel load? How can they strip mine an entire mountain range in the back of beyond? Why can a mine be operated for 90 days a year? The answer is simple: Money.

As the GM, you control the money so you control what sort of mining the players can do. Simple huh?


Have fun,
Bill
 
Hey Bill

Actually a lot of the mines in the high arctic are worked only in the *Winter* since in the summer the tundra turns into a sucking bog, and nothing is solid enough to support an airstrip. Come winter the tundra freezes, and many rivers are ploughed and used as highways.

Most vehicles are left running 24/7 except during maintenance (which happens inside) since turning them off risks never being able to restart them.

Anyone for a frozen world adventure seed?

IMTU there is a lot of smelting of "undifferentiated hunks of rock". Nickel-iron gets refined (Steel is an excellent, and cheap structural material) Ice balls have obvious applications, and Carboniferous (SP?) objects are refined into proto-soil and useful long-chain organics. Short-chain organics are easier to get from neptune-like bodies (I have some issues with GG "Skmming" type refueling)

Most of the work for belters or "prospectors" is going out and figuring out which rocks should be refined first, which is a dance between their composition, the materials in short supply in the system at any given time, and the distance from a processing platform (which generally have stellar 0.1 m/s/s accelleration rates) It's possible for PC's to set up shop doing their own refining, but it isn't really cost-effective in a system with significant processing capability.

Bootstrapping a manufacturing operation in a system that will likely have a transport corridor or naval outpost on the other hand is an excellent way to get rich (or killed...) and is a nice place to steal all of the gold rush plots from the wild west (Claim jumping, corporate intimidation and outright corruption: just pretend that the railroad is coming through, and stake your claims!)

Scott Martin
 
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