Re: starship-design: Does a one-way mission need mining?

[Kelly St <KellySt@aol.com>]

In a message dated 12/14/97 10:57:30 AM, TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl wrote:

>Hi Kelly,
>
>>>-- If not, then you probably can carry more
>>>than enough supplies instead of the fuel for the return trip.
>>>So assuming we get the fuel in the target system, there has to be some not
>>>so small unit (probably multiple units) that mines asteroids or planets for
>>>fuel.
>>>For a one-way mission that not so small unit can be replaced by many small
>>>specialized units that can be used for all (un)thinkable repairs.
>>
>>Possibly.  If you alot a few thousand tons of specialized gear for mining
and
>>refining, you could asume a similar amount for extra spares and suplies.
>
>I wasn't thinking of so much of mining. It would probably be more useful to
>store some amount of refined materials onboard. With smaller equipment these
>materials and broken (but still rather pure) parts could be made into
>whatever new parts are needed.
>(Maybe some of these refined materials could be used in the shielding)
>Furthermore we wouldn't need to use the same refinement methods used here on
>Earth. Earthbound economic refinement methods likely have to be energy
>efficient and usable for bulk amounts, these requirements wouldn't be needed
>for a starship where energy is supposed to be abundant.
>
>Timothy


Oh, I was thinking of fuel minning.  If you want to manufacture things from
local resources, you'll need to do some ore refining.  Since you'll need to do
more of that for a 1-way mission, you can't save any weight by leaving that
stuff off.  On the other hand in a one way mission you don't need to do fuel
minning and processing.  So for the sake of argument I was assuming a couple
thousand tons of specialized equipment just for that.

Kelly