Mining Suns

[Hydrofoil (OP)]

Im not sure if this has been mentioned already but there are these Great Balls of Fire (Had to be done ) that sit in the center of our solar systems and Science tells us these things have massive amounts of resources just bubbling on the surface. Im suggesting that we mine them!

Now i realise they are hot and mining them should require some very advanced tech just to even survey them im thinking high levels of armour and shield research as well as a specialised mining technology. This would help give those systems with no planets in them some use in late game.

[ollobrains]

I dont think anyone really gets to the endgame mostly because of all the bugs that pop up, and the game slowing to a grinding halt, but mining suns as in a ramscad scoop i think its spelt.  Is a good idea

[Theodidactus]

Science tells us these things have massive amounts of resources just bubbling on the surface.

It does? what resources? Certain isotopes of hydrogen and helium okay, what else?

[swarm_sadist]

It does? what resources? Certain isotopes of hydrogen and helium okay, what else?

Everything from Hydrogen to Iron, including all their isotopes. It just depends on the age, mass and type of star.

[Theodidactus]

I realize we're already into to some pretty heady techno-improbability if we're dropping scoops into the sun, but pulling up a "cupful of sun" won't reliably get much besides hydrogen and helium. Separating out the tiny fraction of everything else just seems to be not worth the effort. It just seems easier to simply digest a whole asteroid belt or something.

Saying "There is iron in the sun" is like saying "There's gold in seawater" ...it's there, but it's distributed throughout in such a way that you're mostly going to get hydrogen and helium, especially if you're not willing to "go deep"

[Theodidactus]

And more to the point I think iron and potassium and whatever are pretty useless to a transnewtonian civilization. We'd have to talk to Steve about whether the "minerals" we want are found in suns (IE Mercassium)

[swarm_sadist]

"The final stage occurs when a massive star begins producing iron. Since iron nuclei are more tightly bound than any heavier nuclei, any fusion beyond iron does not produce a net release of energy—the process would, on the contrary, consume energy. Likewise, since they are more tightly bound than all lighter nuclei, energy cannot be released by fission. In relatively old, very massive stars, a large core of inert iron will accumulate in the center of the star. The heavier elements in these stars can work their way to the surface, forming evolved objects known as Wolf-Rayet stars that have a dense stellar wind which sheds the outer atmosphere."

Ninja posted

In trans-neutonian terms, it would most likely be sorium since jupiter type planets becomes stars when they reach a certain size.

[Rich.h]

I thought once a star begins to produce heavier elements like iron then it's days were numbered down to mere minutes before a bunch of chain reactions set off a super nova?

[Theodidactus]

"The final stage occurs when a massive star begins producing iron. Since iron nuclei are more tightly bound than any heavier nuclei, any fusion beyond iron does not produce a net release of energy—the process would, on the contrary, consume energy. Likewise, since they are more tightly bound than all lighter nuclei, energy cannot be released by fission. In relatively old, very massive stars, a large core of inert iron will accumulate in the center of the star. The heavier elements in these stars can work their way to the surface, forming evolved objects known as Wolf-Rayet stars that have a dense stellar wind which sheds the outer atmosphere."

Ninja posted

In trans-neutonian terms, it would most likely be sorium since jupiter type planets becomes stars when they reach a certain size.

Unless I'm mistaken there are currently no Wolf Rayet stars in Aurora,
obviously there could be but you're not really petitioning for a sun mining mechanic so much as a new kind of system, at that point. Supernovae would also be full of all kinds of elemental goodies, but my point still stands that for pretty much every star you'd bumble across while exploring the galaxy (everything from Wolf 359 to sirius) what you're going to find is hydrogen and helium. and for any start that that's not the case for, they system itself is going to be very different.


Now obviously transnewtonian wise we can do pretty much whatever we want: the halo around most stars could be rich in corbomite, or perhaps there's a perfect ring around white dwarfs that is rich with Sorium and Tritanium.

[Theodidactus]

I thought once a star begins to produce heavier elements like iron then it's days were numbered down to mere minutes before a bunch of chain reactions set off a super nova?

broadly speaking yes, when iron starts to become more common, but you're still talking about extremely long timescales, given that most aurora games don't last longer than a century or two.

[Rich.h]

broadly speaking yes, when iron starts to become more common, but you're still talking about extremely long timescales, given that most aurora games don't last longer than a century or two.

Ah I recall that part now yes, but is not the threshold between safe and imminent boom a tiny window? If this is so then would it not make mining a sun somewhat redundant as to have enough heavy elements worth mining would it not also be in possesuion of enough heavy elements to destroy itself?

[Theodidactus]

It's not a question of "is it worth the risk" so much as "why does a civilization that can move faster than the speed of light to a distant star and drop in scoops capable of withstanding adjacent fusion reactions then perform high energy reactions to separate the finely blended elements care about getting a bunch of iron?"

Surely we could just...I dunno,transmute some or something




in answer to your question we're talking about timescales of thousands upon thousands of years when even we're in the "danger zone".

We've been staring at some "any day now" candidates for decades and by any indication we could stare for centuries and still know nothing about the day or the hour.

I imagine if there were like, superfuturistic mining ships they could analyze the star every day and know months in advance, perhaps even down to the hour....but this is like worrying about supervolcanoes blowing up your mine outside of yellowstone. The odds of it happening in the given series of years that your ships circle around it are pretty low...unless you like, develop a civilization around that star, then things get fun.

...and obviously this would be a cool mechanic but once again we're talking about very specific stars, many of which are quite far away from us and cosmically quite aberrant. One in a million. I think that's probably why steve hasn't included a "supernova simulation mechanic" in the first place

[Rich.h]

Ah the old Dyson sphere problem then that once a civilization reaches such technological heights to achieve such a thing, it no longer has any actual need to do the thing anymore other than for the sake of doing it.

[Theodidactus]

Well that's one reason steve was so nonspecific about exactly what transnewtonian resources are or why they are necessary.

[xeryon]

Back to the feasibility of mining a star.... (yeah, I know its the register.  Highly scientific journalism there...)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/24/y_dwarfs/

It doesn't take highly sophisticated equipment to collect resources from a brown dwarf that has achieved our room temperature at the surface.  Many of the new WISE stars that were added to the database have relatively low surface temperatures.