Author Topic: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining  (Read 1876 times)

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Offline Thiosk (OP)

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Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« on: March 15, 2011, 02:33:00 AM »
So, theres a great comet in my system.   Started out fairly close, fairly slow moving body.   If the comet orbit period is given by the length of the orbital path, then it appears this comet will head about 200 billion kilometers out before returning.

Unfortunately, this baby is a monstrous source of materials and I loaded a buttload of automated mines and a driver on it post haste.   (ill have upwards of 60 or 70, with available install base of 70 more, if I should so choose to use).

What are the practical limitations related to deep orbit packet flinging?  Once it heads way out, if I want to pick those mines up, i'll have to have a special fleet of hyperdrive capable freighters.   On the other hand, it shouldn't greatly affect production; it will happily fling packets back from deep space, resulting in a lonnnnng train of minerals on their way to my homeworld.

What do you think?
 

Offline Sheb

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2011, 07:39:43 AM »
Well, if for some reasons your mass drivers on earth get destroyed, you won't be able to cut the stream of minerals coming in easily. Other than that I really see no problems.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2011, 07:47:03 AM »
Its going to take a while for the minerals to reach Earth :)

Mass driver packets travel at 1000 km/s, which is 60,000 km per minute, 3,600,000 km per hour and 86.4m kilometers per day. So when the comet is at 200 billion kilometers, it will take 6.34 years for the packets to reach Earth :)

Steve
 

Offline Decimator

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #3 on: March 15, 2011, 12:35:03 PM »
Of course, 6 years in Aurora isn't a big deal.  Has anybody tried to figure out what the economy doubling time is in Aurora?  I know it's a really long time.

If he's concerned that the minerals might hit Earth, he could launch them at the moon instead and then forward them to Earth.
 

Offline voknaar

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #4 on: March 15, 2011, 12:48:40 PM »
I smell a Starship Troopers plot line here somewhere....  :-X http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #5 on: March 15, 2011, 02:53:14 PM »
I smell a Starship Troopers plot line here somewhere....  :-X http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/

I'd enjoy that film a bit more if they hadn't recieved permission to use that title.   
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics - paraphrase attributed to Gen Omar Bradley
 

Offline Thiosk (OP)

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #6 on: March 15, 2011, 03:02:59 PM »
Since the comet is sending a mineral packet every 5 days, I'll gradually see an increase in transiting material, but I should recieve a new packet every five days like clockwork, even at the extreme end of the orbit.

Thats a good idea to send it to the moon.

 

Offline Narmio

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #7 on: March 15, 2011, 07:28:57 PM »
Since the comet is sending a mineral packet every 5 days, I'll gradually see an increase in transiting material, but I should recieve a new packet every five days like clockwork, even at the extreme end of the orbit.

Thats a good idea to send it to the moon.


Actually, when the comet is travelling away you will receive a packet every slightly-more-than-5-days, as the distance the packet needs to travel will be a little longer every time.

Then, on the return trip, the packets will arrive every slightly-less-than-5-days.  Luckily the comets travel a LOT less than 1000km/s, so this is probably negligible.

That does raise an interesting suggestion, though.  I can't find comet speeds listed anywhere. Is there some way to see how fast they're going?  If not, could that be displayed on their body info?  It would make it easier to judge how long a comet is going to be in-system.
 

Offline Mel Vixen

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #8 on: March 15, 2011, 09:56:11 PM »
If i see that right you could calculate it with the Orbitdistance and the length of the year.  The comet-path should be an extremly narrow ellipse with the sun at one of the two focal points, the one thing you need now is the distance of the second focal point to the sun which should be in the database.  You should be able to calculate the speed by the circumfence of the ellipse and time the comet needs for one trip.  This thought leads you to integral mathmatics.

From the plottet cometh-paths i would say Aurora is pretty simple on that stuff and just asumes that the path is actually a line but i am not a VB-crack so look yourself or ask Steve.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2011, 10:00:12 PM by Heph »
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Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Practical limitations of deep orbit mining
« Reply #9 on: March 16, 2011, 09:36:51 AM »
IIRC, when Steve originally put commets in he decided to go with just a straight line path that they follow.  I don't think they even have variable speeds, so once you know how far they move it is just dividing the total orbit distance by the speed to figure out where they will be.  He was going for simplicity

Brian