Asteroid mining

            Though the Federation attempts to maximise sustainability, there are always large construction projects that require substantial resources. Though sufficiently rich mineral reserves are often found on planets, the ecological damage, and depletion of planetary reserves prohibits extraction. Instead bulk materials are often sourced from asteroids, neatly avoiding the ecological cost on planets, or the visible exploitation.

            Asteroids are a very diverse group of bodies, and their composition is no exception, some bodies are almost pure metal, others a mixture of ice and rock. Because of this diversity, it is important to carefully match the resource needs with the correct type of asteroid, for this reason metallic asteroids are particularly favoured for the shipbuilding industries, and the carbonaceous and icy ones for terraforming.

            The machines used to mine these minor bodies are often automated, and have been subject to evolution since the Trenoc started using them in the Expansion era, nowadays the only decisions to be made are which bodies to mine, and to what extent. Because these bodies have such low surface gravity, all the vehicles are essentially modified spacecraft, though in any project there could be a number of different machines each fulfilling a role in processing. The most crucial machines are those which perform the excavation, often these machines rely on mechanical means to break up the regolith, on the surface this task is complicated by low gravity, and often machines have to either secure themselves to the surface, or direct thrust in the direct of excavation to ensure good physical contact with the surface body.

Though the whole asteroid could be surface mined in this way, it is more common for the interior to be hollowed, not only does this come with the advantage of a good surface for physical contact, but also such hollowed asteroids can easily be converted into construction facilities or even asteroid habitats. Mobile collectors often transfer the excavated material from the cutting machines, thus freeing them from having to make multiple journeys, and ensuring the excavation process is continuous. The mobile collectors transport their loads to refineries or bulk materials complexes which either perform on site processing or pre-processing, or transports these materials out to remote refineries by transport or wormhole gate.

In ring planes, like the Forge system, particle size is frequently very low, the bodies often less than a hundred metres, though the complete processing of a body a hundred metres in size can yield several million tonnes of material. These particles can be processed in a different way than mentioned above, where as dropping mining machines on an asteroid to begin to mine away its resources, these smaller particles can be pushed towards processing arrays which can process whole particles simultaneously.

A processing array differs from the other mining equipment because it is essentially one very large mining vehicle rather than fleet. The technology for such arrays need not be very different from the smaller mining vehicles, and the Trenoc have used such arrays on ring planes for a very long time, though modern technology is favouring some very advanced designs, including plasma furnace designs that burn away the particle to plasma, and sorts these ions to separate the materials. The other major difference in using these arrays is that it is generally the case that the whole body is converted and refined, for this reason small vehicle mining equipment is used to create asteroid facilities and habitats, where as processing arrays are solely used for bulk material extraction.

Construction systems, like Forge, have a lot of asteroid mining activity, and rely on continuous supplies not only from processing arrays but other mining techniques. In such activity dense systems, the raw material is often shifted either to specialised refineries, or to larger processing arrays where the material can be refined efficiently. Although plasma furnace and advanced materials extraction techniques can be used to render any material in one step to its component parts, this is not necessarily the only step used. Often material goes under pre-processing before more advanced techniques are used, pulverisation of the bulk material not only helps with the advanced methods but greatly increases the working surface area of the material. In addition to these physical alteration the pulverised dust may be irradiated or heated to liberate any gases, these can be separated off as molecules rather than atoms, and can be distilled for terraforming measures. The pulverised dust can then be vapourised by using a fusion flame to separate the parent material into atomic ions which can then be separated by magnetic deflection.

Asteroid mining is an important activity for the Federation and per year Tera-tonne quantities of material are processed. Though a lot of this material goes into ongoing terraforming projects, a good fraction goes into shipbuilding and other heavy manufacture such as other space infrastructure and habitats. Though a lot of material is being processed, the Federation oversees that extraction procedes in a considered fashion. Where possible processing will be absolute, leaving little evidence of the original excavation, likewise in terrestrial world systems the extractions that are made done so in a way that does not make the remainder look artificial. This is not so much a consideration of maintaining the original state, but a measure to limit any possible interference on any potential emerging race on these worlds.