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This ship is a mostly-automated, oversized "tugboat" designed to push asteroids around to the ore extraction plant. It can also be used to clean up dust and smaller objects, using it's gravity lens emitter system.
MoI3D, Modo, DDO (and Photoshop that DDO is a plugin for).
MoI3D, Modo, DDO (and Photoshop that DDO is a plugin for).
Category Artwork (Digital) / Miscellaneous
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 800px
File Size 184.4 kB
Lovely!
Actually, when you're doing in-system asteroid mining on a longer timeframe, and you watch out for tech costs, you can let things boil down to a cannister with fuel ( water / ice , or any other vaporizeable material ) and a fissionables reactor that can reuse ionized materials from other industrial processes and a set of rather primitive electronics and valves.
Such primitive systems have the advantage that they are really cheap, both in material volume needed as well as the level of technological know-how needed to build them.
The sole drawback is that they need many years to travel to the asteroid belt and then even longer back to bring the asteroids to the processing plants.
In terms of a solar system reference, 2 to 5 years outbound travel and then 10 to 20 years back in with an asteroid are pretty slow.
However, due to the low cost of those things ( we talk about the volume of low grade iron of a VW Beetle , a metric ton of any vaporizeable substance, and a few kg of nuclear waste materials reaching temperatures capable to vaporize the fuel, and a handful of low tech circuitry and sensors you get nowadays in a smartphone, and 15 years ago in every desktop-PC ) you don't have one , or a few, but you literally have a few thousands of those, making the resulting system both resilient against cosmic mishaps and tampering, as well as giving it a good flexibility as it is easy to reroute individual "pushpots" to new targets.
And as an additional bonus, as those things are coasting 99% of the time, you have a very widely spun web of sensor and communication nodes, extending any space monitoring network with thousands of robust nodes.
Actually, when you're doing in-system asteroid mining on a longer timeframe, and you watch out for tech costs, you can let things boil down to a cannister with fuel ( water / ice , or any other vaporizeable material ) and a fissionables reactor that can reuse ionized materials from other industrial processes and a set of rather primitive electronics and valves.
Such primitive systems have the advantage that they are really cheap, both in material volume needed as well as the level of technological know-how needed to build them.
The sole drawback is that they need many years to travel to the asteroid belt and then even longer back to bring the asteroids to the processing plants.
In terms of a solar system reference, 2 to 5 years outbound travel and then 10 to 20 years back in with an asteroid are pretty slow.
However, due to the low cost of those things ( we talk about the volume of low grade iron of a VW Beetle , a metric ton of any vaporizeable substance, and a few kg of nuclear waste materials reaching temperatures capable to vaporize the fuel, and a handful of low tech circuitry and sensors you get nowadays in a smartphone, and 15 years ago in every desktop-PC ) you don't have one , or a few, but you literally have a few thousands of those, making the resulting system both resilient against cosmic mishaps and tampering, as well as giving it a good flexibility as it is easy to reroute individual "pushpots" to new targets.
And as an additional bonus, as those things are coasting 99% of the time, you have a very widely spun web of sensor and communication nodes, extending any space monitoring network with thousands of robust nodes.
Oh absolutely! The goal of these ships is more to mine in a hurry rather than mine cheaply. They would also be used to clean up any 'navigational hazards' and miscellaneous junk that would no doubt accumulate around busy space stations.
Their main use however, is in the final mining process -- I'm working on a picture showing that.
Their main use however, is in the final mining process -- I'm working on a picture showing that.
Ah, okay =)
Then the low tech approach is not suitable for your setting.
The Habitats of the Tigers civilization use things as low-tech as possible, in part to camouflage their real capabilities as well as to make everything "basically easy to understand" for their future inhabitants.
Then the low tech approach is not suitable for your setting.
The Habitats of the Tigers civilization use things as low-tech as possible, in part to camouflage their real capabilities as well as to make everything "basically easy to understand" for their future inhabitants.
Take your average city:
You have hybrid cars straight beside carburetor engine cars.
That's very different technical levels of complexity existing in parallel!
Or in my household, where the main TV is still a CRT type TV, whilst every other display unit is LCD , some devices even are AMOLEDs.
I think that keeping low tech makes sense everywhere there where more primitive solutions do the job as good as more complex solutions.
As you use gravity distortion technology - not available in my story setups, at least not by the active parties - you admittedly have a single technology that combines drive system and work tool in one, thus trading costs in using advanced technology with trading costs by reducing the overall amount of components needed, and adding as a bonus a high speed aspect which is important in your story setup.
I use month-long travels as part of my narratives ( => 17th century shiptravels ).
You have hybrid cars straight beside carburetor engine cars.
That's very different technical levels of complexity existing in parallel!
Or in my household, where the main TV is still a CRT type TV, whilst every other display unit is LCD , some devices even are AMOLEDs.
I think that keeping low tech makes sense everywhere there where more primitive solutions do the job as good as more complex solutions.
As you use gravity distortion technology - not available in my story setups, at least not by the active parties - you admittedly have a single technology that combines drive system and work tool in one, thus trading costs in using advanced technology with trading costs by reducing the overall amount of components needed, and adding as a bonus a high speed aspect which is important in your story setup.
I use month-long travels as part of my narratives ( => 17th century shiptravels ).
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