Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Why not? If you an imagine it, then it will be possible to someone, somewhere, some when.
Seekers & More
- Thread starter MUELLERBADENER
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Why not? If you an imagine it, then it will be possible to someone, somewhere, some when.
Since we know (by inference) that Traveller does have magic radiators (or subspace heat sinks, as I prefer to call themHaving written that I'm wondering is a "Space Refinery" viable considering the amount of waste heat that will need to be dealt with (unless magic Traveller radiators :CoW.
), there's no problem, is there?Hans
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Yes thats a good example. Its interesting too because if I recall correctly the "platform" that the Nostromo was towing was actually refining away as it was towed from the harvesting/mining site to the market.
The image I had in my head was a smaller version of Babylon 5. A large long cylinder divided into segments for each process. Earthworm like, lumps of nickle/iron are fed in at the front by barge and ingots are dispatched to cargo vessels at the back.
Maybe they could be built like battleriders and store the pure iron, nickle and other ingots. A tender drops off the refinery close to where Belters are working. Once its filled its holds the tender picks it up and drops a new one, jumping to the nearest market to dispose of the product.
There's no mention of such a thing in canon as far as I know. If the Belters own such a tender/refinery then whoever controls it will be very powerful in the Belter community. Alternatively they could be owned and operated by a MegaCorp, but would they allow themselves to depend on Belters to propect for and harvest raw materials.
No, no problem but a good excuse to use the new :CoW: by referencing a perennial Traveller debate.Since we know (by inference) that Traveller does have magic radiators (or subspace heat sinks, as I prefer to call them
A couple of other thoughts:
The Tender/refinery idea above is just one possibility and it strays a bit from the "Belter" idea. It does have another advantage though. you can have several types of refinery based on one tender. so you can have nickle/iron refineries producing ingots, Carbonaceous refineries fracking hydrogen, oxygen and hydro-carbon products, and an Ice refinery producing something similar.
Belters might find it easier to "farm" a number of claims using 30ton modules. Drop a module mounted mini-refinery and a number of robotic harvesters to feed it on an asteroid. Repeat through-out a belt. Visit each one periodically in your 50ton Modular Cutter to collect your ingots of iron and other metals/minerals. Think the movie "Moon" with smaller scale unmanned operations.
For some reason I'm envisioning these Belters a bit like Moonshiners visiting their stills. A certain level of stealth might be needed to avoid claim jumpers and avoid the refined product being stolen (a whole range of booby traps might be employed on refinery modules and asteroids being worked by paranoid Belters).
esampson
SOC-13
This is sort of an idea I was thinking of when I was working on the Seeker for T5. Because of the way you are able to attach things to a hull that has the proper brackets it occurred to that it would be possible to make a jump-1 with a 'subhull' that was up to 149 tons, as long as you additionally used drop tanks, or a jump-2 with a 49 ton 'subhull' (again, with drop tanks). Earlier versions of Traveller rules would have different restrictions on the 'subhull' that the Seeker could carry but you could always do a Jump-1 with a 100 ton 'subhull' provided you used drop tanks.
All of that is, of course, in addition to whatever the Seeker might carry in its cargo bay on the way in, and since what we are talking about is displacement tons a refinery could actually be a good deal larger once it has been placed and 'unfolded'.
I wasn't viewing these in terms of automatic mining plants, however. I was thinking of them in terms of small smelters. A miner places one and then they bring raw material to it. Smelting helps them concentrate the valuable ores so they are a great deal more valuable, but they will still need additional refining. They wouldn't be much use for iron since FeN planetoids tend to contain over 70% iron but for more valuable precious metals such as iridium, platinum, gold, etc. you could very well be talking about going from concentrations of 5-10% (or less) to concentrations of over 90%. Likewise 'concentrator' plants that process volatile organics from ice could fulfill similar roles.
In my case I envisioned these units placed onto the surfaces of large planetoids because they could use the body of the planetoid itself as a heat sink or to provide shielding from the primary star (if the rotation of the planetoid can be arrested and controlled) so that radiators can be placed on the dark side of the body.
I figured a 'prospector' who set up such a thing might be able to charge a small price for its use similar to medieval millers who would receive something like 1 bag in 10 when they ground grain. They probably wouldn't be able to charge too much, however, because at a certain point it would just become cheaper for a prospector to buy their own and fly it in (or have it flown in). In fact I would guess that in most developed belts there would be a fair amount of competition that would result from smelters flown in when a big strike was made and it was determined by the prospector that it would be more cost effective to buy their own smelter, then when the strike ran out and the prospector retired to spend their riches they sold off the smelter.
Great ideas.
Expanding or unfolding pods are a great idea and you can of course link several together
I was actually thinking about the best way to transport the "ingots" produced. I'm thinking that they might be produced in standard shipping container sizes. So in T5 terms 1dt, 3dt and 5dt sizes and loaded aboard a 30dt module for transport. Depending on the rules system the density of several 1dt iron "ingots" might affect ship performance.
This is actually what I was trying to describe. An automatic ore crusher, smelter and storage all in one. Ore would be brought to it by self loading drone trucks. There's no need to sink a shaft, this is more like open cast mining where the entire surface becomes the pit. More pealing a potato than digging a hole.
Given the high TL available a concentrator plant could could use gravitics, nanotech or biological means to separate metals.
esampson
SOC-13
Well, this wasn't even that. What I was thinking of was the prospector might be bringing in ore from a totally different (but nearby) planetoid or something. The smelter is to reduce longer runs/jumps so that the prospector only has to make a day long round trips (or even week long if they have to go out of system) 1/10th or 1/20th as often.
Here's the thing, it stands to reason that a large immobile plant will be of a similar tech level. Whatever mechanism is used the large plant will be better at it than the smaller mobile plant. It's just sort of one of those things of engineering. While the theory says that with technology X you will remove 100% of the impurities of a substance IRL there's always elements of contamination that remain. Maybe those elements are down to parts per million or something but they are there.
That said, the industrial standard is going to be based around that. It won't be at a level that requires massive effort on the part of the refinery but it will be at a level that requires a concerted effort, so if we assume that with a concerted effort a refinery produces a product that is 99.99% pure that will be the standard. There is simply no reason large industry will want an extra .09% contamination if it can be relatively easily removed.
That said, if a prospector is bringing in something that is 99.95% pure it is still going to have to be refined. As a result what you would probably find is that rather than squeezing out those last fractional bits the designers of the portable smelters are probably going to be more focused on things such as cost and portability.
Think of it this way, if you are a prospector are you going to spend twice as much to buy a less portable smelter that refines the ore to 99.9% (where it will still have to be refined again) or are you going to go with the cheaper and easier one that refines the ore to 99% and subsequently gets you about 98% of the same payout per load (the refinery would mostly be concerned with the total amount of 'pure product' since they have to refine it either way, though I'm sure they take any opportunity they can get to push the price down an extra point or two) and which has almost no effect on the number of runs you are required to make?
Hi,
I purchased deckplans of a seeker from Scrying Eye games via Drivethru RPG
for about $3-4. You do need to print them out though, so a colour printer is a must.
Regards
David
Patron Zero
SOC-13
Mind the personalities and mind-set of typical Belters and prospectors tend to be solitary self-reliant individuals but for reasons of security, safety and need for human contact one might suppose that co-operatives have been formed for the reasons mentioned as well as to increase output which equals profits.
IMO Traveller Universe, small conclaves of miners, surveyors and prospectors had invested in having retired-decommissioned starships refitted for service as mobile support platforms to better 'work' rich deposits of ores and recoverable gases.
Said platforms would each have specific features for work-duties of refining-separating materials, casting 'ingots' of industrial and precious metals as well as one or two ships that acted as a habitat and company 'store' for members of said conclave.
Also one platform was a small scale dedicated dry dock-repair facility for repairs and maintenance of the conclave's smaller auxiliary craft and the member's individual starships.
Essentially, a small Boom-town that could collectively ferry itself from one promising 'field' of resources to another and operating under a 'commonwealth' charter to support profit for all members.
IMO Traveller Universe, small conclaves of miners, surveyors and prospectors had invested in having retired-decommissioned starships refitted for service as mobile support platforms to better 'work' rich deposits of ores and recoverable gases.
Said platforms would each have specific features for work-duties of refining-separating materials, casting 'ingots' of industrial and precious metals as well as one or two ships that acted as a habitat and company 'store' for members of said conclave.
Also one platform was a small scale dedicated dry dock-repair facility for repairs and maintenance of the conclave's smaller auxiliary craft and the member's individual starships.
Essentially, a small Boom-town that could collectively ferry itself from one promising 'field' of resources to another and operating under a 'commonwealth' charter to support profit for all members.
Theophilus
SOC-13
Also Fasa published material in High Passage #4.
Arzhent class Prospector/Surveyor
RimReach Products MI-014 Mining Robot
Plus the Fanzine Frontier Report 1 has several articles on mining.
So there's stuff out there with a little searching.
Arzhent class Prospector/Surveyor
RimReach Products MI-014 Mining Robot
Plus the Fanzine Frontier Report 1 has several articles on mining.
So there's stuff out there with a little searching.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Bryan Gibson artwork, but I can't think of the Traveller book or magazine it showed up in.
Also, I second Timerover51's suggestion for using T.A. Heppenheimer's book Colonies in Space as a source. It is older, but all the fundamentals in it are still sound.
Zephyrinus
SOC-6
The Mongoose version of Beltstrike Has a belter singleship and a Mining Platform which includes a 400 ton "processing bay".
