Questions tagged [mining]
The process or industry of obtaining inorganic resources from a location.
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Reality Check: Meteor Shower buried supermetal in the earth's crust, that is now being mined out
Centuries ago, a localized meteor shower deposited rare "supermetal" in the side of a mountain range. Due to the force of the impact, it created a pockmarked area with the metal at varied ...
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How can I determine the radius of turn a 4.6m diameter Tunnel Boring Machine could have? (im building fictional underground labs in the desert)
I have chosen this kind of Tunnel Boring Machine to make the tunnels (4.6m diameter). The curvature of the tunnels depends on the radius of turn the machine has.
The idea is to build underground ...
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What role do chain gangs play in a technologically advanced iron mine?
Somewhere in the far future, an iron mining corporation has worked an ethically questionable deal with the government in which federal prisoners are sent to the mines in chain gangs. The government ...
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Is it possible to mine a close asteroid without being noticed? [closed]
Technology level, close future.
A scientist observing 101955 Bennu calculates the rotation it should have according to the Yarkovsky–O'Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack effect and finds out that it does not ...
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Possibility of forced labour on a comet
Something I've pondered in a work of mine, in which a corrupt authority figure threatens the protagonists with being sentenced to forced labour "chiseling ice off of (insert name here) comet.&...
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How many different mines and extraction industries would a colony need in order to be able to produce equipment similar to what we have now?
Help me, you benevolent geology nerd!
This is a question I'm trying to find a workable (but not necessarily precise) answer for a colony-building sci-fi RPG game that I am GMing for some of my friends....
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Geology and tidal forces on moon with Earth-life surface, but very unstable underground
I am writing a story set on a mining colony moon with some very odd geological conditions, and while this idea is admittedly likely impossible to fully make geologically plausible but I wanted to see ...
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On an Earth-like planet, what geologic features would contain which important minerals (such as gold, iron, copper)? [closed]
I'm writing a book that's set on a planet very similar to earth, meaning it has all the same gravity, mineral compositions, and geologic features. With that in mind:
What geological features are the ...
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Would salt mines, lakes or flats be reasonably found in high, snowy elevations?
I have multiple regions in my fantasy kingdom one of which is largely high elevation tundra, ice fields and snow covered mountains (the ice fields and tundra are not in the same area of the region). I ...
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Where would an interstellar society mine phosphorous and rare earth metals?
I know that rare earth metals aren't too rare and the name is mainly due to their low density. I also know that phosphorous is comparatively rare but is hyper concentrated on Earth due to its ...
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How to tunnel to a planet’s core
One of the main problems with creating a magnetic field around Mars, (which would be necessary for terraforming the planet) is that most proposed systems require some artificial device to sustain it. (...
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How difficult would it be to find today a meteorite impacted on a mountain during the Middle Ages?
I have the following scenario: a large group of enslaved people (one hundred or so?) looking for a meteorite on a mountain. It struck at some point in the Middle Ages.
It is an asteroid of unknown ...
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What types of environments and geographic features can uranium be found in? [closed]
There is a magic society, created by sorcerers to escape persecution. Their society is isolated from the main kingdoms, though they eventually will trade with them again in less than a few decades. ...
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What might happen to plastic after millions of years of geological activity?
I'm considering a worldbuilding exercise focusing on a "second generation" civilization, which arises after a previous civilization from millions of years ago either died off or left the ...
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What are the best places in the solar system to mine for fission fuel?
Aliens show up in a generation ship. They don't particularly care about living on a planet specifically, and they don't have any interest in conquering Earth for our land or our water or our ...
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How to properly mine an explosive ore
In my world, there is a dangerous ore that is very explosive if struck harshly, making picaxes useless. Despite this, the kingdoms want to mine it to clear room for construction, and use the substance ...
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Making plutonium and tritium nuclear fuel with N.I.C.E. (Nuclear Ice Contained Explosions)
I want to produce fissile material.
I want to produce a lot of fissile material.
Fortunately, I read the Wikipedia page on Ted Taylor. It states that:
Apart from bombs, Taylor also explored concepts ...
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Aluminum in a renaissance era civilization
While trying to figure out how a civilization with 16-17th century technology could make airships I started to wonder how the wide availability of aluminum would affect a civilization. In our timeline ...
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How could large scale mining operations render an arid region unlivable?
A story I am working on sees the characters returning to a fairly arid planet that was mined heavily by an interplanetary corporation. This left most of the planet uninhabitable and forced the local ...
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What is the ideal 'mouth' shape for rock eating robots?
The question is literally the tittle above. You're wasting your time reading this.
For context: The planet Abios is inhabited by a race of sentient robots. They're mechanical. They need infrastructure ...
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Could the extraction of rare earth elements (REE) be more efficient on asteroids as opposed to on earth?
Could we mine or extract REEs in asteroids more easily than on earth? The following conditions apply:
Ease of extraction does not include getting to the asteroid or transferring materials back to ...
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In my story, a new metal is found, but an overlooked mineral is in the ore of the metal. Why wouldn't prospectors be able to identify it?
The story takes place in the far future. It involves space exploration and inhabiting new planets.
The new overlooked mineral is an "associated mineral" - it occurs where the new metal is ...
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What could be ethical reasons for deep sea mining? [closed]
Unfortunately in real-life on our planet (Earth) deep sea mining for rare earth minerals is devastating to biological ecosystems and has very little motivations beyond the capitalistic/industrial ones,...
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Building a Dyson sphere while preserving moons/other objects?
Humans want to build a Dyson sphere around the Sun. They have noticed that Ganymede's icy composition would be perfect for mining to get the icy resources needed to build the sphere, or Mercury could ...
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Is this asteroid realistic?
I would like to know if the following properties of this asteroid are realistic without conflicting with each other.
situated in the inner part of the asteroid belt in the Solar System
S-type ...
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What material could be found (Mining) on this planet? What could I do to have more important materials on this planet?
The planet is Earth-like with gravity: 1.05 Earth's, an Atmosphere of N2: 94% / H2O: 1% / CO2: 1% / Ar: 3% / 1% Other gases with 1 atm pressure at sea level, 40% of the land is H2O water, there is ...
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How feasible is it for one Medieval-era man to mine ore in real life?
I've been curious about just how well RPG mining would compare to real world mining. Assuming the proper ore was visible on the surface (therefore easy to find), how well would ol' John be able to ...
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Would drilling up magma be a viable method to obtain resources?
Would drilling up magma be a viable method to obtain resources?
The way this drilling up of magma works is by drilling a hole 0.5-2 meters wide. Magma come up & once it is a few 100 meters below ...
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What are some non-military reasons for a country wanting to control an impact crater where the Strait of Gibraltar used to be?
Let's say that there's a 2-million-year-old impact crater where the Strait of Gibraltar used to be, and that there's an impact peak or a series of impact peaks in the middle that are far enough above ...
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What is a plausible way to maximize the amount of NATIVE silver deposits in a given area?
I have a region on a 'Eurasia' style continent that is surrounded by large mountains. The reason that I came up with was a very dense and volcanically active microplate that was being compressed on ...
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Why would one live in space [closed]
In my world build I want a civilization that lives in space and does astroid mining for resources, to build a giant moon sized AI computer orbiting the planet.
However something i have trouble ...
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Can cold thrusters be improved for work in space
This belter got Mr.X thinking and it is a stroke of genius this time.
What do we do with all that oxygen we get when extracting metals from their oxides? we liquify and use them as a reactive mass of ...
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Delivery of minerals to Earth from the asteroids by artificial meteorite or solid metal glider
Scenario
Mining of asteroids is a successful venture in the future. However much of the resulting mineral yield is required on Earth and the problem is delivery. Carrying thousands or millions of tons ...
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Asteroid mining and Newton's 3rd law
Imagine mankind has established mining facilities on NEOs
Some of them send raw ore directly to other processing stations in space, others refine on site.
All of them use a system based on cargo '...
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How long until my army men can produce metal? [closed]
After a bit of fighting, both green and tan team army men decide that they need more than plastic bullets to defeat each other, they want metal to make super armored metal tanks.
Green team sets up ...
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Is the composition of the major asteroid belt bodies different enough to make trade between colonies worthwhile?
For my question I'm assuming that we're talking about colonies on the very biggest bodies that are 100s of kms in size. I'm assuming that by this point humans have become cyborgified/roboticized ...
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Using pre-steam technology how can a large bore tunnel be used to drain a lake from below?
General scenario
A planet similar to Earth but with only 1% of Earth’s water supports a civilization with pre-steam levels of technology that live near a river on the south side of a mountain range.
...
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Most efficient way to break up planets for material harvesting
Rocky planets are terrible. Convenient Earth like planets are rare, but most are too cold or too hot. They are covered with sand. I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets ...
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How fast can one mine talc?
A bit of background for this question first. I am working on a high fantasy universe that I have been expanding quite a bit over the months. I have three generic species: Men, Dwarves, and Elves. All ...
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How to decide if a Planet is better off to be Terraformed or Stripmined?
In Science Fiction, when civilizations grow powerful enough to conquer the planet and are in need for room, they turn to the planets in outer space. Obviously, the other planets have very different ...
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How could a world develop where it was necessary to mine all soil for agricultural use
I want to create a world were soil mining is a major industry. Imagine a vaguely Earth sized world where almost the entire surface of the planet is under, ocean, ice caps or is a hot or cold desert ...
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Discovery of advanced titanium alloys by medieval civilization?
Within the backstory of my world, I’m trying to justify the preeminence of a smaller nation as a result of its abilities with metalworking. We’re working under the assumption that this nation happens ...
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What would make people choose open-pit quarrying instead of tunnel mining? [closed]
I want to describe a mining town, but I envision the tunnel-type of mine, not an open quarry. All the stones/minerals that fits with the world, however, seem to have been typically extracted from open ...
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What effects would large-scale hydraulic mining have on the landscape?
Premise/question
Hydraulic mining is the process of spraying high-pressure jets of water into the ground to dislodge sediment and rocks. The muddy water from this is directed into sluices where ...
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How would someone actively search for titanium ores or other minerals?
I'm working on a story where the main character has to search for titanium (or rather ores containing titanium) in order to repair the hull of a ship. She's on a habitable world that's essentially a ...
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Would a glass chisel be possible?
In a society, where everything is made up of glass, everything would break rather easily. Things like swords and mallets couldn't function in such a world. As to still have something o work with, I ...
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Most cost effective way of mining a giant cube tungsten
A cube of pure tungsten, 1000 feet wide on each side, sits flat in the middle of a grassy field on Earth. The owner of the field wishes to sell the tungsten. What is the most cost effective method, ...
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Logistics of how to mine an asteroid [duplicate]
How would one go about mining an asteroid in a broad sense?
This question not in the mining itself, but location of the mining.
Say you have located an asteroid in that would like to mine. Which ...
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Extracting all water from Ganymede?
Is it theoretically possible to extract all ice and water from moons with subsurface oceans like Ganymede or Enceladus?
What would the consequences of isostatic rebounding be if this was done on a ...
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How do you get steel outside Earth?
I'm looking for a more economical and efficient method of making steel for my project Death Star Unlimited, a mega infrastructure orbiting Mars with a mass of 500,000,000 metric ton give or take 1%. ...
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