Asteroids vs Planetary Mines

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by ericthered

[*]Phosphates. We mine huge amounts of phosphates every year

You can probably find them okay in space, but they might not be worth sending planetside. And it's possible the concentrations will be lower due to lack of hydrological activity.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Calcium Carbonate. Otherwise known as limestone and the primary ingredient of concrete. I'm fairly sure calcium is fairly abundant in asteroids, but I don't know that calcium carbonate is, and I don't know how much extra work is needed to transform it into the most common TL8 building material.

Transforming calcium to calcium carbonate should be quite easy, but extracting calcium metal from minerals would be pretty expensive.