Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

A tangent in another thread threatened to derail it, so I felt it would make sense to split it off here. The discussion is between the merits of processing asteroids for their raw materials and getting those same materials from mining planet-side deposits.

You speak of "concentrations" and "deposits" and asteriods probably lack those due to a lack of geological processes. It's probably easy to mine for water ice or similar things but if you're going to grab all those precious metals in those M-type asteroids be prepared to take the whole thing apart atom by atom and then sift those one at a time.

In a certain sort of fiction from the late 70s this was done with a "Santa Claus machine" which was a fusion torch that ionized the asteroid material and then separated the different isotopes in a giant magnetic ring.

A couple of decades alter they started doing it all with magic nanotech but yo don't do it at all with any process comparable to a TL7-8 terrestrial mining operation. Maybe your space setting has Santa Claus machines or magic nanotech but decide that first before people there routinely do asteroid mining for heavy elements.