Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

An exploratory prospecting vessel would make an interesting Traveller campaign, but I'm wondering if GURPS has published a system for mining that would give a table of ore availability and yield. The GM could just make it a long task and assign some arbitrary amount of ore available, but it would be fun to have a random ore generator, and a system to see how much prospectors retrieve after working for a set amount of hours.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

There was an article in the old print JTAS that covered mining for Classic Traveller, and was reprinted in Best of Vol 1. Included a two page flowchart and a list of all the required rolls. It doesn't go into a lot of detailed on specific ores that can be found.

Book 6: Scoundrels for Mongoose Traveller has a three page chapter on mining, including two pages of charts and one page of "life in the belt".

Neither are quite what you are asking for, but they are the closest I have available to refer you to.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

In the brand new Xboat issue #2, there is a four page article on asteroid mining "Based on the original charts from JTAS."

But I am not sure if there is a way to get it yet if you weren't in the Kickstarter.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Realistically this is going to be super boring (the geological processes that create concentrated veins of ore don't exist in asteroids, so much a question of whether it's mostly silicates or mostly nickel-iron, plus ice in the outer system), but that doesn't make for much of a game.

I would avoid using random tables, though, because the interesting thing from a campaign standpoint isn't the mining itself, it's the shenanigans around the mining (claim jumping, etc).

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

GURPS Transhuman Space: Deep Beyond discusses asteroid mining (pp. 34-36), but doesn't have any tables.

Classic Traveller offers the Beltstrike module boxed set, which expands on the JTAS article. It has a fairly detailed prospecting procedure, based on somewhat dated (i.e., pre-Grand Tack model) stellar system physics. The asteroid types are still as Anthony says. The discoverable resources are different than the JTAS article: radioactives*, dense metals, crystals, and artifacts.

For what it's worth, I tried to write up belters for GURPS Traveller. I couldn't make the economics of independent prospectors and miners work without some kind of "space diamonds" or unobtanium.



*Radioactives are mostly not, in fact, good asteroidal resources. They are concentrated by the geological processes that occur on planetary surfaces.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

That statement is true of just about any resource you might name. They're a bit better for finding siderophile minerals because most of Earth's supply is trapped in its core, but it's still along the lines of "purify a thousand tons of iron to get a kilogram of platinum", and more problematically, there isn't a "mother lode" out there, one nickel-iron asteroid has the same stuff in it as another.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Fortunately for us (if not so much for the worlds in question) The Ancients blew up a significant number of (formerly) Earth-like planets producing a number of thoroughly unnatural asteroid belts.

The science Anthony and Thrash mention as applying to asteroids untouched by the Ancients is ast least as borign and unhelpful as they imply.

The "geology" of these post-catastrophe asteroid belts is the same as that of the terrestriakl type worlds they used to be enlived by Ancint artifacts or at least semi-melted hyperdense battlearmor.

Remeber: all Traveller problems that can not be solved by Vilani conservatism can be solved by the Ancients!

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Statistically, at least, you are going to have a hard time finding anything very different from regular, remnants-of-planet-formation asteroids. The Earth's whole crust is roughly 0.5% of its total mass. The portion where interesting geological processes have occurred is even smaller.

Pallasite meteorites demonstrate that the results of unlikely events can be found, but it's hard to base an entire industry around them. Larry Niven's stasis boxes (e.g.) were a useful narrative device precisely because they were detectable without a lifetime of searching for each one.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

There are the Dwarf Planets; once you hit self-rounding to solid, you also start having a bit of concentration to the core of heavier elements.

The concentration processes are interesting, because some are gravitational/mechanical, while others are thermochemical.

Sulphur is concentrated by thermochemical - it's dissolved in hot water, and when the water hits surface and cools, the sulphur condenses out. Not going to happen on a dwarf.

But a dwarf planet might have a core... Ceres is expected to...
(Src: Space.com)

Not as differentiated as larger worlds, but still, a core expected to be mixed (chemistry definition) metals and silicates (as opposed to Astronomers' definition of metal being anything higher than helium being, which even a snowball is 8/9 metal). And Ceres isn't all that large as far as Dwarf Planets go.

Plus, Ceres is expected to have an ocean layer; if it does, the thermochemical concentrations may happen.

If the core gets radioactives, the core may be more consolidated than size would otherwise indicate. And might also drive a good bit more thermochemical concentration.

it is possible that some asteroid belts may have remnants of shattered dwarf planets or even proper planets; there's not enough mass in ours to represent that, but it's also possible Ceres is still slowly clearing its orbit... or might have an untimely impact and cease to be a dwarf planet...

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

I suggested once that the surfaces of sulphur moons like Io might be a good source of accessible chalcophile minerals, which no class of asteroids is noticeably enriched with. But I could never quite get a JTAS article out of it.

One problem with the suggestion is that sulphur moons, being of necessity in close orbits around large gas giants, are likely to have a severe radiation hazard from their plasma toruses.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Niven also had monopole magnets, made from ferrous metals that aggregated in the absence of a planetary magnetic field.

I'm not sure how they got magnetized, under the circumstances, but in the Known Space setting, they made fusion reactions so much more efficient that finding one repaid, literally, years of prospecting in the belt.

If a belter found several, he or she had a successful career. If the prospector found a fair number more (but less than a couple dozen, IIRC), he or she could enjoy a long retirement in comfort -- or a short one, and leave a substantial inheritance.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

I assume he was talking about magnetic monopoles, which are a theoretical particle that was reasonable to propose when he was writing those stories, but is currently believed to not exist (there are a number of primordial artifacts like that which theoretically could exist but don't seem to, which is taken as evidence that the big bang may have had a maximum temperature).

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Do you mean "maximum temperature below the exotic particle formation level" or were there people who seriously thought that a big bang involving a finite amount of mass still managed to have a literally infinite temperature?

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Maximum temperature less than the Planck temperature.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

These sources both sound interesting. I'll check them out. Thank you! :-)

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

I see what you mean. It might work if you devised a system that said you can mine X number of silicates per day and your prospectors determined this belt has Y amount of resource. Then you could create problems for them over the duration of time it would take mining a specific belt, moon, etc.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Mongoose Traveller also has rules for asteroid mining that is based upon BELTSTRIKE if that helps.

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Ah, I might actually own that. Thanks, Hal!

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Page 74 of the Mongoose Traveller High Guard 2nd edition if that helps.

Let me know if you want help creating Fantasy Grounds support for Asteroid Mining.

Also - if you're interested, we have Pirates of Drinax starting up shortly. I've put in 19 days straight with a lot of overtime, but that is coming to an end and we're starting up shortly (by January). We're also running characters through Mongoose Traveller creation rules, then converting those over to GURPS via the conversion rules.

Let me know if you're interested.

If you want, email me and I'll send you the Harrier Class Privateer in GURPS stats. Was able to include the electronic warfare, 6G, etc specs on the original. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the Armor value to be comparable with the original specs without making the G rating of the ship drop precipitously.

Catch you later. You have my email, feel free to contact me. ;)

Re: Space Mining: Ore Availability and Yield
 

Will have to pass on this one, Hal, as I'm going on vacation soon. Thank you for the invite though. :)