Basicly a good idea, but there is one thing why a redesign would be neccessary. There are some very big asteroids out there, which would make a extremely large ship neccessary.

Either you have an outside beam to cut the asteroid down into smaller parts that can be taken in. But with such a system you could simply metl the asteroid layer by layer which would enable you to sort throught the material a bit easier using different melting points.

Another way would be the use of a large number of semi-autonomus robots that dismantle the asteroid and bring the parts in for sorting, melting and storage.

Well, it can pick up rocks up to 18km in diameter, but yes, anything bigger would have to be cut or heated up without "capture" or mined mechanically, as they should be dense and solid enough not to fall apart at the lightest touch.

Just checked the known numbers. Yes, this ship should be sufficient. About 30 million asteroids in the solar system are below 1km large. Just over 300.000 are below 10km and just under 2.000 are larger than 30km.

It's a suppository !

It's a 100km long suppository, then! :D

Sounds reasonable and the design is spiff.

Thanks!

No, it's way past Orion -- it's using an "inertialess" gravity field engine, borrowed from David Weber's Honorverse series of books.

I was about to ask about the solar collectors, but noticed the "not pictured". They would have to be REALLY big, especially if the mining was being done in the classic 'tween Mars/Jupiter asteroids. Would also assume you might want to have the smelting enclosed to capture volatiles. Don't know the scenario tech base, so, why the really huge ships?

Yes, there are windows sealing off the chamber -- although most of the capturing is done via artificial gravity creating a "bottle trap" around the asteroid. The size of the ship is due to all the processing, storage and manufacturing done in place, to avoid transporting as much of the extracted mass as possible.

The tech base is close to that of David Weber's Honorverse, obviously extended in some ways.

So, pretty much magic tech that can pretty much ignore conventional engineering or physics. But your explanation of the economics simply makes no sense. The asteroid mass, either in original form or processed final product is still on board, and if your'e staying in place grinding away on asteroids, you're obviously not doing any transporting.

It's not meant to be transporting -- another series of "not shown here" ships do that. The goal of the factory on board is to simply tap directly into the storage and enormous power source already on board.

The 60's space tech with orion drives, artifical gravity by rotation and month-long travel times is my specialty.
Aside of the fusion reactors and the AC's that control the habitats, most of the tech I use is stuff you can buy - when you got the money.

P.S. The solar collector system would span most of the solar system -- it was based on an idea lifted off from John Ringo's Troy Rising series of books. http://www.baenebooks.com/showprodu.....ve-free-or-die

Well, though I meant big, I didn't mean that scale of big, which gets into the level of absurd overkill and again, unlimited magic tech. But let me be clear, I don't have a problem with what is really more like fantasy, but by throwing out some mumbo-jumbo "explanation" usually ends up being dumb or distracting (or lame "showing off") and is poor story-telling. Just do it, without rationale or excuse, make for a fun ride, not boring lecture. (sorry, I'm in a grump over a discussion of the weaker elements of the new Godzilla)

I'm not sure whether you are referring to the original image description or my response to your comment?

To be honest, I don't consider comments here as a place to do "story-telling". The work itself would be the place for that -- and this one was thrown together quickly to show off a particular idea to a group of friends.

Your questions made me think about making an "infographic" about the ship and it's surrounding infrastructure, going more into "why" rather than "how".

An Appology is in order, as I got all grumpy over the afore mentioned Godzilla movie so got all unnessisarily nit-picky here. Though I do have a sore spot for lame explainations or excuses for wonder magic tech. A practical suggestion about asteroid processing though, crunching them up and putting them through a progressive cooking system would both more efficently capture elements as they boil out and reduces the chance of unpleasant surprises, like steam explosions. Brute force cooking a whole object has the complications of trying to capture low temp and high temp elements all at once, as well as the high probability of surprises.