Thread: Mining

In Traveller, there's plenty of background about belters mining the asteroids and other small rocks for enough ore to make a living. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I can't recall any other official mining vessels besides Seekers (Type J in the CT vernacular), which is just a converted Scout Ship (Type S). Does anyone know of any other official ships because I can't see megacorps relying on these little buggers to get the job done on an affordable level.

And are there any rules for mining rates? How about the equipment? The write up in Sup7 doesn't mention how any of the mining is done. There's just some moon buggy. TL-12 pick axes perhaps? ;)

I could see robots being utilized for mining (Certainly easier on the back). And they'd fit inside a Seeker without a problem, assuming they were designed small enough. I designed an Excavator once using FF&S and Vampire Fleets. I suppose I could try and build some mining robots.

Lego has come out with their "Power Miner" series and the pictures of the vehicles look cool. If they're not realistic, well, they at least look the part. I was hoping there would be something along the lines of this stuff. (Reference: http://powerminers.lego.com/en-us/Products/8960.aspx)

Maybe there's something in Tarsus Beltstrike? I think it was one of those Traveller games that one played outside of any actual RPG-ing. Maybe there's something in DGP's 101 Vehicles or 101 Robots? Any one of those three products always cost a fortune on eBay and you're not going to find them on DriveThruRPG.com.

Input anyone?

\_/
DED

DEDly

There s the classic 5ktn mining platform in beltstrike and a 180tn prospector in one of the old FASA high passage mags. I have seen a couple of mining vehicles (about the size of an ATV and armed with a mining laser). One of the high passage mags has a mining robot (again grav and armed with a laser carbine.)

I will check and see if there is anything on mining rates

Cheers
Richard
----- Original Message -----
From: DED
To:
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 4:38 AM
Subject: [Traveller_TNE] Mining

In Traveller, there's plenty of background about belters mining the asteroids and other small rocks for enough ore to make a living. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I can't recall any other official mining vessels besides Seekers (Type J in the CT vernacular), which is just a converted Scout Ship (Type S). Does anyone know of any other official ships because I can't see megacorps relying on these little buggers to get the job done on an affordable level.

And are there any rules for mining rates? How about the equipment? The write up in Sup7 doesn't mention how any of the mining is done. There's just some moon buggy. TL-12 pick axes perhaps? ;)

I could see robots being utilized for mining (Certainly easier on the back). And they'd fit inside a Seeker without a problem, assuming they were designed small enough. I designed an Excavator once using FF&S and Vampire Fleets. I suppose I could try and build some mining robots.

Lego has come out with their "Power Miner" series and the pictures of the vehicles look cool. If they're not realistic, well, they at least look the part. I was hoping there would be something along the lines of this stuff. (Reference: http://powerminers.lego.com/en-us/Products/8960.aspx)

Maybe there's something in Tarsus Beltstrike? I think it was one of those Traveller games that one played outside of any actual RPG-ing. Maybe there's something in DGP's 101 Vehicles or 101 Robots? Any one of those three products always cost a fortune on eBay and you're not going to find them on DriveThruRPG.com.

Input anyone?

\_/
DED

On 5 Dec 2009 at 9:18, Richard Perks wrote:

> DEDly
>
> There s the classic 5ktn mining platform in beltstrike and a 180tn
> prospector in one of the old FASA high passage mags. I have seen a
> couple of mining vehicles (about the size of an ATV and armed with a
> mining laser). One of the high passage mags has a mining robot (again
> grav and armed with a laser carbine.)

speaking of which, I should be listing my unused copies of Belter and
Beltstrike on ebay in a few days.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com

I am about to put the finishing touches on Traveller Beam Factory. And I would like to get suggestions for mining laser variants. How to design and how to use. Ranges, effects and so on.

--
Roger Malmstein
www.travellerfreeport.com

From: Richard Perks
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:18 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Mining

DEDly

There s the classic 5ktn mining platform in beltstrike and a 180tn prospector in one of the old FASA high passage mags. I have seen a couple of mining vehicles (about the size of an ATV and armed with a mining laser). One of the high passage mags has a mining robot (again grav and armed with a laser carbine.)

I will check and see if there is anything on mining rates

I hate to say this, but mining, as a profession at least, has never been
shown any love in travellers. As in, how to use sensors to locate Ore,
determining Ore quality, Quantity of Ore, difficulty of extraction and how
in Handwavium hell does a laser mine anyway besides makin a hole in whatever
your trying to dig out anyway? For example, Chemistry would be invaluable
in determiniing ore quality, Geology would be useful in finding likely spots
to find Ore, and how big a Lode is found. Sensors use also, neutrino sensors
for radiactives and densitometers for Heavy Metals. (on a side note, how
useful are lower tech sensors at finding ore? thermal sensors might be
useful if the ore deposits are close to the surface and have measurable
thermal variances from surrounding terrain. Active sensors such as
millimetric radar can penetrate surface layers of 'earth', but to what
depth?)
The only way I have figured, in my limited technical knowledge, that a
mining laser could be useful in zero gravity, is if it works purely in a
thermal function, melting materials at a known temperature, allowing heat
expansion to separate elements over time (and at a considerable distance! to
avoid contact with molten materials) Then wait for the materials to cool
before collecting and storing in the ore bay.
At Tech 13 this is easy to do as lasers are tuneable if I remember the
charts correctly. so they are still useable as full powered weapons. but at
tech 12 and less, how is a dedicated mining laser going to perform as an
actual weapon at the ranges that combat occurs in?
On the flipside, how the mining profession can be used as a plot motivator
for artifact retrieval needs far less going over but would still be of great
use to some gearheads.

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 4:41 AM, Roger Malmstein <
> wrote:

>
>
> I am about to put the finishing touches on Traveller Beam Factory. And I
> would like to get suggestions for mining laser variants. How to design and
> how to use. Ranges, effects and so on.
>
> --
> Roger Malmstein
> www.travellerfreeport.com
>
> *From:* Richard Perks <>
> *Sent:* Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:18 AM
> *To:*
> *Subject:* Re: [Traveller_TNE] Mining
>
>
>
> DEDly
>
> There s the classic 5ktn mining platform in beltstrike and a 180tn
> prospector in one of the old FASA high passage mags. I have seen a couple of
> mining vehicles (about the size of an ATV and armed with a mining laser).
> One of the high passage mags has a mining robot (again grav and armed with a
> laser carbine.)
>
> I will check and see if there is anything on mining rates
>
>
>
>

--
"Here at Ortillery Command we have at our disposal one hundred megawatt
laser beams, mach 20 titanium rods and guided thermonuclear bombs. Some
people say we think that we're God. We're not God. We just borrowed his
SMITE button for our fire control system"

Belters has never been given much attention in Traveller other than in Beltstrike and maybe in the adventure "Expedition into Zhodane"

The only function I see for a mining laser is to cut asteroids or large rocks into smaller ones that are gobled up by ships/robots of different sized and crushed to smaller pieces before large ovens melts the ore out of the collected rocks.

Lasers simply replaces the need for use of explosives to break chunks of rocks apart. No one in their right mind would blow a rock into pieces. It will send shrapnel all over the place, and it my damage both crew and equipment. On a planetary surface this is of minot concern as gravity and air resistance will make sure that shrapnel from blasts doesn't fly too far.

With this in mind I suspect a mining laser will have way different properties than a weapon grade laser. Much like a over sized surgical laser. Instead of steady pulses it sends a continous beam that burns through the rock. The effect is also relatively low compared to weapon grade lasers. neither gravitic focusing or a-ray technology is required as ranges are usually just a few hundred meters at most.

I expect a focal array for a continious laser beam is will have different properties than a weapon grade laser. Effect may be limited to just a few MJ.

Finding ore would probably be done with a wide variety of sensor scans. Both to find asteroid density and mass. Knowing these things will help determine if there might be anything valuable inside. Deeper scans with earth penetrating radar or just landing and do seismic tests may reveal other properties. And lastly chemical and spectroanalysis. This can be done by using the mining laser.

--
Roger Malmstein
www.travellerfreeport.com

On 5 Dec 2009 at 11:33, allen carpenter wrote:

> I hate to say this, but mining, as a profession at least, has never
> been shown any love in travellers. As in, how to use sensors to
> locate Ore, determining Ore quality, Quantity of Ore, difficulty of
> extraction and how in Handwavium hell does a laser mine anyway
> besides makin a hole in whatever your trying to dig out anyway? For
> example, Chemistry would be invaluable in determiniing ore quality,
> Geology would be useful in finding likely spots to find Ore, and how
> big a Lode is found. Sensors use also, neutrino sensors for
> radiactives and densitometers for Heavy Metals. (on a side note, how
> useful are lower tech sensors at finding ore? thermal sensors might
> be useful if the ore deposits are close to the surface and have
> measurable thermal variances from surrounding terrain. Active sensors
> such as millimetric radar can penetrate surface layers of 'earth',
> but to what depth?)

Well, mining on a planet is way different than mining asteroids. For
one thing, there isn't any ore on asteroids. While they are somewhat
differentiated, you need a planet sized mass (and likely, water) to
produce ore bodies.

So if you are mining asteroids, you have icy bodies (if you are far
enough from the star), carbonaceus chondrites (what icy bodies turn
into if they spend a lot of time closer to the star), stoby asteroids
and nickel iron asteroids.

You can also get a mix, but thatis going into more detail than I want
to right now.

> The only way I have figured, in my limited technical knowledge, that
> a mining laser could be useful in zero gravity, is if it works purely
> in a thermal function, melting materials at a known temperature,
> allowing heat expansion to separate elements over time (and at a
> considerable distance! to avoid contact with molten materials) Then
> wait for the materials to cool before collecting and storing in the
> ore bay.

You can use the laser to convert the material to a plasma and use EM
fields to sort the atoms (basically an overgrown mass spectrometer)

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com

I don't recall anything official in pictures, line drawings or stats ...
there was a novel that described a fellow in a deep space rig that was essentially a one man ship
arms as normal but the feet were encased in the single tubular shell of the bottom part of the suit ... (early NASA artist drawings perhaps gave teh inspiration?) the feet controlled the 'jets' rocket motors for attitudinal controls, main thrust etc. That could be looked at and tweaked I suppose ... beefing things up to a larger hull for a larger prospector, minor mining operation would be another thing but you'd have to do the work yourself

________________________________
From: DED
Sent: Fri, December 4, 2009 10:38:46 PM
Subject: [Traveller_TNE] Mining

In Traveller, there's plenty of background about
belters mining the asteroids and other small rocks for enough ore to make a
living. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I can't recall any other
official mining vessels besides Seekers (Type J in the CT vernacular), which is
just a converted Scout Ship (Type S). Does anyone know of any other official
ships because I can't see megacorps relying on these little buggers to get the
job done on an affordable level.

And are there any rules for mining rates? How about
the equipment? The write up in Sup7 doesn't mention how any of the mining is
done. There's just some moon buggy. TL-12 pick axes perhaps? ;)

I could see robots being utilized for mining
(Certainly easier on the back). And they'd fit inside a Seeker without a
problem, assuming they were designed small enough. I designed an Excavator once
using FF&S and Vampire Fleets. I suppose I could try and build some mining
robots.

Lego has come out with their "Power Miner" series
and the pictures of the vehicles look cool. If they're not realistic, well, they
at least look the part. I was hoping there would be something along the lines of
this stuff. (Reference: http://powerminers. lego.com/ en-us/Products/ 8960.aspx)

Maybe there's something in Tarsus Beltstrike? I
think it was one of those Traveller games that one played outside of any actual
RPG-ing. Maybe there's something in DGP's 101 Vehicles or 101 Robots? Any one of
those three products always cost a fortune on eBay and you're not going to find
them on DriveThruRPG. com.

Input anyone?

\_/
DED

For my 2cents worth I figure the 'mining' laser would also be used in the prospecting phase of things as it melts/vaporizes a portion of the material and would allow for spectral analysis.
While many asteroids will be nickle-iron, chondrites (sp?), or even more akin to the iceballs that are thought to be the primary form of comets (iceballs-plus?) those are not the only kinds. The metorite that caused the air-burst explosion in Siberia left traces of iridium IIRC and it is supposed to be a large metorite that is the source of the USSR's supply of titanium. They certainly have an abundance of the metal that others do not considering that they were able to build a number of submarines using it for the hulls (Akula class I believe). So while the iron-nickels, stoney, and ice-balls may predominate they shouldn't be the only ones.

Consideration could also be given as to how the asteroids in a particular system were created... are they 'left overs' from the creation of teh planets in the system? Are they the remnants of a planet that was destroyed? (was the planet ripped apart by a couple of jovian class planets getting to close or some super eco disaster or war by an earlier race?) When novas and supernovas go off the planets of nearby systems must take a pounding, what was the original class of the planet (sub-jovian, jovian, terran, venutian?) what is left after the nova radiation and blast front passed through? (asteroids, barren airless, tainted thin, what else may have occurred?

Since traveller essentially is hand-wavium in any number of essential respects one need not hold too tightly to any specifics but apply ones imagination ... what would happen to an essentially iron-nickel asteroid that got caught 'to close' to such a stellar event? Would it be compressed in some manner? What other products are out there? IMTU I took the idea of collapsium (steel that was compressed using all sorts of hand-wavium grav fields and spread the idea to a few other metals including titanium ... these were rolled for on a percentile die and if something in the really rare column another roll was made to see if it was something like this ...

iron-nickel asteroids of sufficient size could be worth quite a bit in and off their own right, at least they were out of some planets gravity well and therefore somewhat easier to haul to a space based refinery/manufacturing center.

________________________________
From: Roger Malmstein
Sent: Sat, December 5, 2009 1:50:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Mining

Belters has never been given much attention in Traveller
other than in Beltstrike and maybe in the adventure "Expedition into
Zhodane"

The only function I see for a mining laser is to cut
asteroids or large rocks into smaller ones that are gobled up by ships/robots of
different sized and crushed to smaller pieces before large ovens melts the ore
out of the collected rocks.

Lasers simply replaces the need for use of explosives to
break chunks of rocks apart. No one in their right mind would blow a rock into
pieces. It will send shrapnel all over the place, and it my damage both crew and
equipment. On a planetary surface this is of minot concern as gravity and air
resistance will make sure that shrapnel from blasts doesn't fly too
far.

With this in mind I suspect a mining laser will have way
different properties than a weapon grade laser. Much like a over sized surgical
laser. Instead of steady pulses it sends a continous beam that burns through the
rock. The effect is also relatively low compared to weapon grade lasers. neither
gravitic focusing or a-ray technology is required as ranges are usually just a
few hundred meters at most.

I expect a focal array for a continious laser beam
is will have different properties than a weapon grade
laser. Effect may be limited to just a few
MJ.

Finding ore would probably be done with a wide variety
of sensor scans. Both to find asteroid density and mass. Knowing these things
will help determine if there might be anything valuable inside. Deeper scans
with earth penetrating radar or just landing and do seismic tests may reveal
other properties. And lastly chemical and spectroanalysis. This can be done by
using the mining laser.


--
Roger Malmstein
www.travellerfreepo rt.com

On 6 Dec 2009 at 16:35, Tim O'Reilly wrote:

> For my 2cents worth I figure the 'mining' laser would also be used in
> the prospecting phase of things as it melts/vaporizes a portion of
> the material and would allow for spectral analysis.
> While many asteroids will be nickle-iron, chondrites (sp?), or even
> more akin to the iceballs that are thought to be the primary form of
> comets (iceballs-plus?) those are not the only kinds. The metorite
> that caused the air-burst explosion in Siberia left traces of iridium
> IIRC and it is supposed to be a large metorite that is the source of
> the USSR's supply of titanium. They certainly have an abundance of
> the metal that others do not considering that they were able to build
> a number of submarines using it for the hulls (Akula class I
> believe). So while the iron-nickels, stoney, and ice-balls may
> predominate they shouldn't be the only ones.

"Nivkel-iron just means that's the predominant components. There are
a lot of other elements in there in small amounts (which add up fat
in a large body). Iridium is one of them. Most of the iridium in
Earth's crust is meteoric. The iridium from when the planet formed is
down in the core.

Titanium isn't all that rare. It's just a pain to extract and more of
a pain to machine and form.

> Consideration could also be given as to how the asteroids in a
> particular system were created... are they 'left overs' from the
> creation of teh planets in the system? Are they the remnants of a
> planet that was destroyed? (was the planet ripped apart by a couple
> of jovian class planets getting to close or some super eco disaster
> or war by an earlier race?)

Ripped apart planets are unlikely. Except as the result of
intelligent life form deliberately destroying one (which is a lot
harder than you think.

They'll have some ore bodies from the remnants of the crust. The
deeper stuff (from the mantle and core) are going to be a lot less
differentiated.

The types I mentioned are the result of the way systems form from
interstellar dust and gas.

Icy bodies form.

Then if they are at all large, the heat from the radioisotopes in the
"dust" will cause the body to melt inside. Rememver that the clouds
are usually compressed to the point where they start forming systems
by shock waves from nearby supernovas. So they'll be a lot richer in
short lived isotopes than our system currently is.

Small ones will be "dusty snow" with an ice core.

Bigger, you get ice crust over liquid (water/ammonia/[methane?]) with
the dust settling to the core. The liquid will slowly freeze from the
center in, while the core may actually get hot enough in the center
(still from radioactive decay) to dry out and melt. That gives you a
stony core.

Even bigger ones will have the molten stony core have nickel-iron and
other elements that will dissolve better in that separate out as an
inner core.

Eventually things cool off and freeze thru. Smaller bodies first.

Collisions will break things up, given you chunks of the various
layers.

If you are close enough to the star the icy parts melt and evaporate
the lighter things, while the more complex things react with UV to
form really complex stuff. That's where you get the carbonaceous
chondrites (CHON from C, H O and N, the symbols for carbon, hydrogen,
oxygem and nitrogen, the primary components of chondrites)

> When novas and supernovas go off the
> planets of nearby systems must take a pounding, what was the original
> class of the planet (sub-jovian, jovian, terran, venutian?) what is
> left after the nova radiation and blast front passed through?
> (asteroids, barren airless, tainted thin, what else may have occurred?

Novas won't affect anything outside the system they occur in.
Supernovas will have varying effects up to hundreds of light years
away.

> Since traveller essentially is hand-wavium in any number of essential
> respects one need not hold too tightly to any specifics but apply
> ones imagination ... what would happen to an essentially iron-nickel
> asteroid that got caught 'to close' to such a stellar event? Would
> it be compressed in some manner?

Nope. Not even if it was in the same system. It might melt over
evaporate some, but there just isn't enough *density* in the
gases/plasma going past to apply significant pressure.

But you might get a lot of *really* interesting elements deposited on
it from the cloud. That's the premise of one of Poul Anderson's
novels.

> iron-nickel asteroids of sufficient size could be worth quite a bit
> in and off their own right, at least they were out of some planets
> gravity well and therefore somewhat easier to haul to a space based
> refinery/manufacturing center.

Well, consider that a cubic kilometer of nickel-iron asteroid is
about 8 *billion* tonnes. And if only 1 *millionth* of that is (for
example) gold, you are talking about 1000 tonnes of it. Which is
billions of dollars at current prices.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com

Sorry if I'm coming into this a bit late. Here's a list of articles that might interest you.

Alien Star #3: customized small craft (fighter, lifeboat, shuttle, mining craft)

High Passage #4: rimreach mi-014 mining robot & grav mining vehicle

JTAS #3: mining the asteroids

Working Passage #6: mote: mining operations tunneling equipment (asteroid mining vehicle)

Signal GK #12: dagmet (dagudashaag metals & mining company, corporation)

Stardate 3/4: siverstrike class 4 mining scout (a starship, but I'm not sure what game system it's for)

Stardate v3n5: vallinor class mining survey vessel (starship for 2300ad)

--- In , "DED" <dedly@...> wrote:
>
> In Traveller, there's plenty of background about belters mining the asteroids and other small rocks for enough ore to make a living. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I can't recall any other official mining vessels besides Seekers (Type J in the CT vernacular), which is just a converted Scout Ship (Type S). Does anyone know of any other official ships because I can't see megacorps relying on these little buggers to get the job done on an affordable level.
>
> And are there any rules for mining rates? How about the equipment? The write up in Sup7 doesn't mention how any of the mining is done. There's just some moon buggy. TL-12 pick axes perhaps? ;)
>
> I could see robots being utilized for mining (Certainly easier on the back). And they'd fit inside a Seeker without a problem, assuming they were designed small enough. I designed an Excavator once using FF&S and Vampire Fleets. I suppose I could try and build some mining robots.
>
> Lego has come out with their "Power Miner" series and the pictures of the vehicles look cool. If they're not realistic, well, they at least look the part. I was hoping there would be something along the lines of this stuff. (Reference: http://powerminers.lego.com/en-us/Products/8960.aspx)
>
> Maybe there's something in Tarsus Beltstrike? I think it was one of those Traveller games that one played outside of any actual RPG-ing. Maybe there's something in DGP's 101 Vehicles or 101 Robots? Any one of those three products always cost a fortune on eBay and you're not going to find them on DriveThruRPG.com.
>
> Input anyone?
>
> \_/
> DED
>

Thanks to all who replied!

JimV: It's never too late to join a discussion. Thanks for the list of sources.

Mining Lasers: There was a very brief blurb in the Sept issue of Wired (www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/17-09/st_drills) that mentioned the use of lasers in mining. Basically, an old industrial laser is being repurposed by Argonne National Laboratory. It's only rated at 1.6 kW. There's some more info at ANL's website: www.ne.anl.gov/facilities/lal/laser_drilling.html . There's also a list of PDF's and video links near the bottom of the page.

Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but power requirements should be determined by the target rock's melting point and heat capacity. That ANL laser was designed for shale and sandstone, which aren't as demanding as other rocks.

It seems that mining lasers are the way to go for not only Zero or Low grav environments but also for those societies with sufficient TL. With the prevalence of fusion power in Trav, there's an abundance of energy available to power lasers and they eliminate the downtime required for conventional mechanized driller maintenance (replacing drill bits, etc).

\_/
DED

On 8 Dec 2009 at 11:43, DED wrote:

> Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but power requirements should
> be determined by the target rock's melting point and heat capacity.
> That ANL laser was designed for shale and sandstone, which aren't as
> demanding as other rocks.

Actually, the melting point doesn't really matter as you are rarely
using a continuous beam, especially at lower powers. Instead you use
short, high energy pulses which fracture the rock or even cause bits
to explode.

So think "fast drill that doesn't wear out bits" rather than "carving
up rock"
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com

Indeed.
2 papers I found useful when I developed my rule set for laser damage, when
used in an orbital bombardment role:

"Application of laser simulation method for the analysis of crater formation
experiment on PALS laser", by S. Borodziuk, A. Kasperczuk, T. Pisarczyk
and

'"Studies of laser-produced plasmas", a summary prepared by J. Wolowski on
the basis of relevant papers already published or submitted for publication,
Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion, Warsaw, Poland'

They provide a nice, though technical, summary of the 'blast' effects of
laser strikes.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 5:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Re: Mining

On 8 Dec 2009 at 11:43, DED wrote:

> Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious, but power requirements should
> be determined by the target rock's melting point and heat capacity.
> That ANL laser was designed for shale and sandstone, which aren't as
> demanding as other rocks.

Actually, the melting point doesn't really matter as you are rarely
using a continuous beam, especially at lower powers. Instead you use
short, high energy pulses which fracture the rock or even cause bits
to explode.

So think "fast drill that doesn't wear out bits" rather than "carving
up rock"
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com