Asteroid use

--- "Combs, Mike" wrote:
> From: Marcel Williams [mailto:newpapyrus@...]
> Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 3:35 PM
> To: spacesettlers@egroups.com
> Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Asteroid use
>
> You could probably mine these chemicals even more
> cheaply on a large asteriod like Ceres but the
> gravity
> is so low (significantly lower than even the Earth's
> moon's gravity) that it could have a significant
> deleterious effect on people who work on its surface
> for a long period of time. So in order for a worker
> to
> maintain his, or her, health they may have to
> frequently take shuttles to an orbiting rotating
> space
> station with Earth level similated gravity. This of
> course we add to the expense of have people work on
> this asteroid.
>
> I can conceive of a system where a space habitat
> orbits an asteroid with a
> tether system connecting the two. In that case
> "space travel" between the
> asteroid and the habitat would be accomplished via
> electric motors. But
> even if this turns out to not be workable, surely
> the transportation costs
> for commutes between an asteroid and an orbiting
> habitat would be pretty
> small.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
MW: Of course, living on a 1G space station would mean
that you would have to provide cosmic ray protection
for your workers. Doing this by mass shielding would
dramatically increase the weight of your rotation
habitat and stress on your cables.
Alternatively, you could provide cosmic ray protection
by positively charging the metalic exterior of of the
rotating habitat to repel ionizing protons while
beneath the metalic exterior, providing a small
magnetic field by internal coils to deflect the
significantly less massive electrons.

But if your going to live in an orbiting space station
anyway, it might be more efficient-- as Ian pointed
out in an earlier post-- to process smaller asteroids
imported into orbit around Ceres and just make Ceres
orbit one of the main central processing points in the
asteroid belt for small asteroid processing and the
production of finished products. The surface of Ceres
could then avoid industrial exploitation altogether
and would then just be a place to explore on
occassion for more scientific reasons-- or just for
fun. However, if any large deposits of precious metals
such as gold, platinum or elements like uranium and
thorium are discovered on the surface of Ceres then it
still might be worth setting up a mining facility
there.

Marcel F. Williams
1/8/01