Questions tagged [mining]
The process or industry of obtaining inorganic resources from a location.
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Why are metal ores dredged from coastal lagoons rather than being extracted directly from the mother lode?
Why are metal ores dredged from coastal lagoons rather than being extracted from the mother lode?
I want to arrange a situation where the easiest /cheapest way of obtaining metal ores is by dredging ...
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Could asteroid mining be made viable if there were a resource rich asteroid in orbit just beyond the moon?
Two of the biggest issues with asteroid mining is the issue of actually getting materials from the the asteroid in question back to earth, and the relative abundance of resources on earth vs in space. ...
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Would mining asteroids cause meteorites
I wanted to know if the mining of Asteroids would cause a problem with meteorites for nearby planets. Like if a company came in and started blowing up moons, asteroids or dwarf planets would the ...
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Economy of hardened wood versus metal in medieval times
People of science have learned how to make hardened wood that can be sharpened and behave like a metal blade, roughly half as soft has mild steel and on level with bronze.
The process of hardening ...
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How early technologically could manganese nodules be economically dredged if there was a serious desire to do so?
While the idea of deep sea mining has only started to see significant effort in recent times, there were earlier efforts in the 1960s and 1970s. While they were first discovered in 1868, first ...
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How much mining can we get out of Pasiphae?
Pasiphae is an irregular moon of Jupiter in a retrograde orbit. It's probably an asteroid capture and is only about 60 kilometers across (compare to Europa's 3121.6 km diameter).
Suppose that I set up ...
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Rate at which jackhammer excavates asteroid
I've got a family using a jackhammer to excavate an asteroid habitat they intend to homestead in.
The jackhammer is large, and would normally need mounting on
a column or tripod like this mining ...
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Reality Check: Meteor Shower buried supermetal in the earth's crust, that is now being mined out
Centuries ago, a localized meteor shower deposited rare "supermetal" in the side of a mountain range. Due to the force of the impact, it created a pockmarked area with the metal at varied ...
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How can I determine the radius of turn a 4.6m diameter Tunnel Boring Machine could have? (im building fictional underground labs in the desert)
I have chosen this kind of Tunnel Boring Machine to make the tunnels (4.6m diameter). The curvature of the tunnels depends on the radius of turn the machine has.
The idea is to build underground ...
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What role do chain gangs play in a technologically advanced iron mine?
Somewhere in the far future, an iron mining corporation has worked an ethically questionable deal with the government in which federal prisoners are sent to the mines in chain gangs. The government ...
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Is it possible to mine a close asteroid without being noticed? [closed]
Technology level, close future.
A scientist observing 101955 Bennu calculates the rotation it should have according to the Yarkovsky–O'Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack effect and finds out that it does not ...
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Possibility of forced labour on a comet
Something I've pondered in a work of mine, in which a corrupt authority figure threatens the protagonists with being sentenced to forced labour "chiseling ice off of (insert name here) comet.&...
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How many different mines and extraction industries would a colony need in order to be able to produce equipment similar to what we have now?
Help me, you benevolent geology nerd!
This is a question I'm trying to find a workable (but not necessarily precise) answer for a colony-building sci-fi RPG game that I am GMing for some of my friends....
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Geology and tidal forces on moon with Earth-life surface, but very unstable underground
I am writing a story set on a mining colony moon with some very odd geological conditions, and while this idea is admittedly likely impossible to fully make geologically plausible but I wanted to see ...
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On an Earth-like planet, what geologic features would contain which important minerals (such as gold, iron, copper)? [closed]
I'm writing a book that's set on a planet very similar to earth, meaning it has all the same gravity, mineral compositions, and geologic features. With that in mind:
What geological features are the ...
