Rare Earths and Interstellar High Tech

[whulorigan]

Przybylski's Star, which has lanthanide elements at 1000 to 10'000 times the abundance of these in the Sun, would be a candidate for having worlds with large amounts of the rare Earth elements. It's 110 parsecs from the Sun, so it would be within the range of Charted Space, too (though, obviously, Charted Space doesn't obey existing stellar data. Hmm... would that star be at the right angle to be in Mikhail Sector, the only sector at that distance from Terra still uncharted?).

Przybylski's Star, (also called "V* V816 Cen" or "HD 101065" lies at bearing 290^o in the constellation Centaurus, which (after accounting for some inaccuracies in Charted Space's coordinate axes as compared to real Galactic Coordinate axes), would mean that you can reasonably place the star at 110pc anywhere along a bearing roughly between due-Trailing and due-Rimtrailing.

 

[whulorigan]

There is also the possibility that one day we may find evidence of the stable elements predicted beyond our periodic table...

And that has always been a mild curiosity of mine.

I'll also add that at higher tech levels, fusion technology should become sufficient capable of "synthesizing" or manufacturing heavy elements.

Note that just this month in Science News (Feb. 6 Issue) it has been confirmed that the 7th Period of the Periodic Table is now complete - the last "holes" in the 7th period up thru Element 118 "Ununoctium" (Traveller "Onnesium") have been synthesized in the laboratory (although they still have not all been officially named).

Also note that the old "island of stability" from ~ 114-122 has since been judged to be skewed due to Relativistic effects on both the nuclei themselves as well as the electron orbitals of the sizes found in high atomic number elements. Element 118 (were it stable long enough to be observed macroscopically) might actually be a solid instead of a gas, and may not be chemically inert (as the skewing of the electron orbital energies changes the chemical properties and messes with the "periodicity" of the physical and chemical properties of the elements in the chart).

 

[Enoki]

Found it! It lists the 4 most valuable precious metals in the mix: Platinum, Iridium, Palladium, and Gold.

100 tons of Earth ore yields 5 ppb platinum, 1 ppb Iridium, 15 ppb Palladium, and 4 ppb Gold for a total value (2012 prices) of $74.

100 tons of asteroid yields 1400 ppb Platinum, 760 ppb Iridium, 870 ppb Palladium, and 215 ppb gold for a value of $11,578.

The big factor in profitability of asteroid mining is how fast you can turn over loads. The longer it takes to move material from the belt to a smelter / refinery for processing, the less credits per time period you get. I rough calculated from that table that a seeker on a 2 week turn around schedule would make about 4,000 to 5,000 cr per month gross. When you take the cost of fuel, maintenance, paying the crew, etc., into account you are on a pretty thin margin.
It helps to dump the jump drive and everything associated with it if you can keep transit times under a week. That gives more room for ore.
If you also add some sort of automated mining robot that can store the ore, you do better again as you waste little time loading and unloading the ship. I designed one that would be the size of a standard cargo container and a seeker that could carry 7 of these. You'd need 21 to operate at peak efficiency though ( 7 mining in the belt, 7 on the ship going to the refinery, 7 waiting at the refinery to be picked up and taken back for more ore).
The ship wouldn't be jump capable and the crew is reduced to two or three (pilot, robot operator, mechanic / engineer. You might not need the engineer if the ship is reliable and can be serviced regularly).

The mining robots are the size of a standard shipping container. At the rear it contains a small power plant and grav propulsion module. The front is just a space for holding the ore. There are clamps / attachment points to allow it to latch onto the asteroid. The mining equipment then basically breaks up material and loads the box.
You might even add separate equipment doing the mining on the asteroid and loading these. When full the containers move into position for the transport ship to collect and move to the refinery.

 

[Timerover51]

The article that I saw on super-heavy elements was in the January 1978 Analog. I still have it, but I am not sure about the copyright status.

 

[Timerover51]

Found it! It lists the 4 most valuable precious metals in the mix: Platinum, Iridium, Palladium, and Gold.

100 tons of Earth ore yields 5 ppb platinum, 1 ppb Iridium, 15 ppb Palladium, and 4 ppb Gold for a total value (2012 prices) of $74.

100 tons of asteroid yields 1400 ppb Platinum, 760 ppb Iridium, 870 ppb Palladium, and 215 ppb gold for a value of $11,578.

The big factor in profitability of asteroid mining is how fast you can turn over loads. The longer it takes to move material from the belt to a smelter / refinery for processing, the less credits per time period you get. I rough calculated from that table that a seeker on a 2 week turn around schedule would make about 4,000 to 5,000 cr per month gross. When you take the cost of fuel, maintenance, paying the crew, etc., into account you are on a pretty thin margin.
It helps to dump the jump drive and everything associated with it if you can keep transit times under a week. That gives more room for ore.
If you also add some sort of automated mining robot that can store the ore, you do better again as you waste little time loading and unloading the ship. I designed one that would be the size of a standard cargo container and a seeker that could carry 7 of these. You'd need 21 to operate at peak efficiency though ( 7 mining in the belt, 7 on the ship going to the refinery, 7 waiting at the refinery to be picked up and taken back for more ore).
The ship wouldn't be jump capable and the crew is reduced to two or three (pilot, robot operator, mechanic / engineer. You might not need the engineer if the ship is reliable and can be serviced regularly).

The mining robots are the size of a standard shipping container. At the rear it contains a small power plant and grav propulsion module. The front is just a space for holding the ore. There are clamps / attachment points to allow it to latch onto the asteroid. The mining equipment then basically breaks up material and loads the box.
You might even add separate equipment doing the mining on the asteroid and loading these. When full the containers move into position for the transport ship to collect and move to the refinery.

I would need to check, but those are pretty low values for ore recovery on Earth. That looks a lot more like relative abundance, not what you would get in actual ore bodies.

 

[Enoki]

I would need to check, but those are pretty low values for ore recovery on Earth. That looks a lot more like relative abundance, not what you would get in actual ore bodies.

It likely is, the article really doesn't make that clear. But, once you've recovered what's easily available on the planet asteroid mining looks pretty attractive, particularly at tech levels well above where the Earth is at.

But, the caveat to that is that it would have to be run as a big mining business rather than some individual prospector hoping to hit the mother load. You have a company that is literally gobbling up every asteroid in its path and turning it into processed materials.

With better efficiency I could see as much as 75% or more of an asteroid being turned into something that is usable as a end product.

 

[Timerover51]

The most recent report from the US Geological Survey Service on Platinum group metals, for 2013, can be located here.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/platinum/myb1-2013-plati.pdf

Information on Rare Earths can be found here.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/myb1-2013-raree.pdf

 

[Blue Ghost]

mike wightman
aramis
kilemall
timerover51
77topaz
« whulorigan »

Some very insightful replies on stable heavy elements.

And yeah, it just seems likely that grav and welding / fusion tech would be able to synthesize the real exotic stuff, and even produce alloys unheard of. And to repeat your thoughts the real issue is how much juice does the thing suck up to produce how much material.

To me this is really fascinating, because it means that in theory you might be able to produce vessels that could withstand incredible temps, pressure and other conditions. Again, that would be dependent on the capability of the technology; i.e. is it something that's practical, or is it something that even with the best Ancient technology, can only be done in lab?

Either way it's pretty interesting.

 

[Timerover51]

mike wightman
aramis
kilemall
timerover51
77topaz
« whulorigan »

Some very insightful replies on stable heavy elements.

And yeah, it just seems likely that grav and welding / fusion tech would be able to synthesize the real exotic stuff, and even produce alloys unheard of. And to repeat your thoughts the real issue is how much juice does the thing suck up to produce how much material.

Thank you for your kind words.

To me this is really fascinating, because it means that in theory you might be able to produce vessels that could withstand incredible temps, pressure and other conditions. Again, that would be dependent on the capability of the technology; i.e. is it something that's practical, or is it something that even with the best Ancient technology, can only be done in lab?

Either way it's pretty interesting.

Sort of like the Puppeteer's General Product Hulls from Niven's Known Space series. Not sure if I would like to see the Puppeteers added to the mix. They could have been manipulating Grandfather behind the scenes.

 

[aramis]

mike wightman
aramis
kilemall
timerover51
77topaz
« whulorigan »

Some very insightful replies on stable heavy elements.

And yeah, it just seems likely that grav and welding / fusion tech would be able to synthesize the real exotic stuff, and even produce alloys unheard of. And to repeat your thoughts the real issue is how much juice does the thing suck up to produce how much material.

To me this is really fascinating, because it means that in theory you might be able to produce vessels that could withstand incredible temps, pressure and other conditions. Again, that would be dependent on the capability of the technology; i.e. is it something that's practical, or is it something that even with the best Ancient technology, can only be done in lab?

Either way it's pretty interesting.

Another concern (and an extremely hard limit) - at what point does the target material's density collapse...

The minimum mass for a singularity is 22μg... 1.325e+19 AMU... but damper tech may affect that number, and a glitch could result in a snowball that exceeds that...

 

[77topaz]

Przybylski's Star, (alao called "V* V816 Cen" or "HD 101065" lies at bearing 290^o in the constellation Centaurus, which (after accounting for some inaccuracies in Charted Space's coordinate axes as compared to real Galactic Coordinate axes), would mean that you can reasonably palce the star at 110pc anywhere along a bearing roughly between due-Trailing and due-Rimtrailing.

Between due-Trailing and due-Rimtrailing? That's precisely the bearing from Terra to the last uncharted sector 110 pc away, Mikhail Sector! How convenient! :rofl:

 

[77topaz]

Sort of like the Puppeteer's General Product Hulls from Niven's Known Space series. Not sure if I would like to see the Puppeteers added to the mix. They could have been manipulating Grandfather behind the scenes.

Traveller already has the Puppeteers, we just have another name for them...

 

[Enoki]

mike wightman
aramis
kilemall
timerover51
77topaz
« whulorigan »

Some very insightful replies on stable heavy elements.

And yeah, it just seems likely that grav and welding / fusion tech would be able to synthesize the real exotic stuff, and even produce alloys unheard of. And to repeat your thoughts the real issue is how much juice does the thing suck up to produce how much material.

To me this is really fascinating, because it means that in theory you might be able to produce vessels that could withstand incredible temps, pressure and other conditions. Again, that would be dependent on the capability of the technology; i.e. is it something that's practical, or is it something that even with the best Ancient technology, can only be done in lab?

Either way it's pretty interesting.

Certainly this is not just possible, but actually doable even today. Look for example at powdered metal and sintering the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_metallurgy

You can make very specific and controlled alloys, control grain size, and form materials that were unheard of decades ago.

Using a Hot Isostatic Press (HIP) you can even arrange grains and the alloy such that it has directional strength, hardness, that sort of thing. You can exceed naturally occurring densities of metals as well.

Super dense iron? You could have "super dense" alloys of all sorts.

Ceramic metals (Ceramets) are another type. They combine metals and ceramics to get the best properties of both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cermet

With fusion as a working process and a knowledge of how to manipulate gravity (or use the lack thereof), all sorts of new stuff could be made that even exceeds the above without a doubt.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Ah, but not on an atomic level?

 

[77topaz]

Ah, but not on an atomic level?

Our current technology can produce only a few atoms of very heavy elements at a time, but that could obviously change with higher TL.

 

[whulorigan]

Our current technology can produce only a few atoms of very heavy elements at a time, but that could obviously change with higher TL.

And with damper technology, said heavy & super-heavy elements can be made stable indefinitely.

 

[kilemall]

Those stable theoretical elements don't have a name?

In the same group as unobtanium, we need the most powerful element in the Traveller universe- handwavium.

Handwavium makes all our technology go, so it is the uberelement we MUST have, makes spice and stroon and unobtanium pikers by comparison.

So what should Handwavium look like on the trade table?

 

[Enoki]

In MTU the preferred substance for higher technology working is PFM, or Pure F....ing Magic. "That's right it runs on PFM..."

 

[Blue Ghost]

:rofl: Package it and sell it in stores.

Sidenote (but relevant); as some of you know, I despise Star Trek the Next Generation, so you'll scratch your heads when I say I bought the "technical manual" for STTNG when the show was airing its first season way back in 1987.

Anyway, apparently the Ent-D maintains it's structure by way of an "integrity field", otherwise it's shape would deform (according to the book, which I've since gotten rid of). On that loose note, one wonders if there isn't some Traveller equivalent for stable heavy elements used in whatever application.

 

[Enoki]

Of course, you can always go with one of these (there are several variants out there...).