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Old 08-11-2015, 04:57 PM   #1
Krinberry
 
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Default [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Hey, apologies in advance if this isn't the right place to ask or if I messed it up etc, but I had a question with regards to resources, in particular on terrestrial worlds that have an icy core (such as moons around gas giants far out in a system, etc).

Specifically, if I am rolling up a system and I get Abundant resources for a moon that's probably mostly ice, what sort of thing would this represent? I know that I can just make things up but are there any good guidelines folks know of or have come up with? Most of the other planet types are fairly easy to imagine, but beyond things like unusually high amounts of D or 3He in the ice, I can't think of a lot that would justify a better-than-average rating for most ice worlds.

Again sorry if this is a dumb question or in the wrong place, feel free to nuke it.
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Old 08-11-2015, 05:00 PM   #2
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Default Re: [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Metal-rich asteroids can and will impact the icy crust. Just expect this one to look more like a dirty snowball than anything shiny.
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Old 08-11-2015, 05:05 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Right off the bat, I think of easily accessible exotic and not so exotic hydrocarbons. Low temperature chemical precursors at the surface. Not to forget things like exotic sub ice lifeforms.

There are a couple right there...
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Old 08-11-2015, 10:10 PM   #4
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Default Re: [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Ice that's not at the bottom of a significant gravity well IS a precious resource... and that's just water ice. Throw in lighter volatile ices and you've got a pretty substantial ice mining opportunity.
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Old 08-12-2015, 03:01 AM   #5
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Default Re: [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Heavy water ice or even tritium ice is also good and realistic as it can form by capturing solar hydrogen ether at the magnetic field lines to the moons auroral zones if there is little atmosphere and a magnetic field the polar ice will collect and or make all sorts of cool things in unusually high quantities. Bare ice with no field will also tend to collect odd particles from solar plasma and without a comet freeze thaw cycle hold some of them better while still collecting relatively large amounts.
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Old 08-12-2015, 11:28 AM   #6
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Default Re: [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeta Blaze View Post
...ether at the magnetic field lines to the moons auroral zones...
I'm not sure how an ice ball would have a magnetic field.
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Old 08-12-2015, 11:40 AM   #7
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Default Re: [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Ooh, thanks folks. Those are all awesome ideas, definitely lots of stuff for me to work with. :) And I keep forgetting about the sub-ice ocean possibilities.

Thanks a bunch!
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Old 08-12-2015, 11:55 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
I'm not sure how an ice ball would have a magnetic field.
Both IO and Europa have notable magnetic fields solid ice surfaces tenuous to trace atmosphere and liquid oceans below the surface leading to ice tectonics.

I assume those two are pretty definitive of the ice ball Moon trope.

If there possible nickle Iron cores is an issue tidally heated spinning water may or may not make a magnetic field Id on not know but water can do lots of weird things and is a polar molecule.
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Old 08-13-2015, 02:25 AM   #9
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Default Re: [Space] Resources on Icy Terrestrial World

Where did you read that Io or Europa have magnetic fields?
I can't find confirmation that any rocky, let alone ice, bodies having anything approaching Earth's magnetic field.
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Old 08-13-2015, 09:06 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Where did you read that Io or Europa have magnetic fields?
I can't find confirmation that any rocky, let alone ice, bodies having anything approaching Earth's magnetic field.
I do not remember the first place herd that I think it was in collage when discussing the water ice based vulcanism of the two moons.
The flowing links looks promising as a single scholarly confirmation.
A Magnetic Signature at Io: Initial Report from the Galileo Magnetometer
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8662516
an excerpt can be found
http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1056.html

This is consistent with what I remembered when I wrote my post. Io appears to have a notable, though not earth scale, magnetic field. Without doing the math I assumed that would be strong enough to at least concentrate interesting charged particle impacts, and thus captures, around the moons magnetic poles.

As for Europa you appear to be correct it seems to have a tiny induced field from Jupiter but would likely not have one if not in orbit of a huge Magnet like Jupiter. That being said the magnetic bombardment i talked about is still a phenomenon that Europa experience because of Jupiter's magnetic field.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa/faq.cfm

If the body in the OP is orbiting a gas giant that could be the explanation. If Krinberry likes that explanation but the moon is not orbiting a suitably magnetic host then it could be an escaped moon that ether settled into an orbit in say the asteroid belt or around another planet.

Last edited by Zeta Blaze; 08-13-2015 at 09:17 AM. Reason: added info on europa and lunar migration speculation.
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