money is in short supply

Forgive me for sounding too conventional, but how about this for asteroid
mining:
1. Launch a rocket derived from shuttle external tank.
2. Assume it (with side mounted boosters) could send 25-30 ton of equipment to
an asteroid.
3.Mine a chondrite, which is high in water.
4. Bake mined material to remove volatiles.
5. Split volatiles between water and other stuff.
6. Split the water for H and O to go to the repective tanks in the rock. The
other volatiles go to the nitrogen tank (mounted above the other two in a
shuttle external tank design)
7. The remaining solids might be desiccated rock and powder which can be put
into Santa Claus sized bags alongside the ship.

Over the course of a few years, both liquid fuel tanks could be filled and many,
many tons of asteroid solids bagged.
A followup ship could take the rockbits and remove some iron and other metal to
cast structural members. These standard parts could for the framework of a
cylinder built around the first ship (now fueled). As the second ship gets
restocked with volatiles, the scaffolding is built for slag.

Pack the slag in the framework and fuse together.

If you wanted a 20 meterring for radiation shielding for transport, put a
Bigelow inflatable inside and there you go.

Solar sails can be used for bits, but the one shuttle derived vehicle could
provide the plenty of manuevering thrust - alternatively lots of water for
radiation sheilding.

From: Frank
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Cc: brooksn
Sent: Fri, February 25, 2011 7:02:11 AM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: money is in short supply

On 24.02.2011 21:51, brooksn wrote:
>
> Yeah even if that's the case it seems a little light. With those 5
> tons you'll have to have the ability to land on an asteroid, analyze
> the asteroids make up.
>

The mothership does not land on the asteroid, the daughter units do.
The mothership provides only long distance transportation and recharging
possibility to the daughters, evtl. also melting services
since it could carry a laser to melt or cut out ice from the asteroid.

The first missions would only extract materials and bring them back to
the ISS or another deflatable laboratory in LEO. There the processing
and separating processes and equipment have to be developed and tested.
If they are developed the next mission goes back to the locations where
the best suited ores have been found.

At this near asteroid construction site the daughters mine the asteroid
and unload the materials to the construction sites/molds.
One single operation of one miner might need only two or three hours to
scoop up the material and deliver it to the construction/separation
site, which is freely floating in space. Than the next operation could
start. This is the advantage of low gravity asteroid operations for
habitat construction against gravity well construction. You can use
relatively small equipment with efficient but weak propulsion and carry
(Earth mass) tons of materials,
which you couldn't even move on Earth.

And you have more than one miner per mothership and can use more than
one mothership to speed up the
operation if needed.