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

[Kelly St <KellySt@aol.com>]

In a message dated 12/17/97 12:02:04 PM, TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl wrote:

>Kelly wrote:
>
>>>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.
>>
>>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.
>
>?? At most we'd need to rebuild the starship. That still is a lot less
>material than the fuel. Actually we'd need much less than the whole
>starship. Likely most mass of the ship (engine structure, shield, hull,
>wall) does not need to be rebuild. That fraction of the mass left could be
>stored in a refined but raw form onboard the ship. So not much mining would
>be necessary.
>(BTW the heavy parts likely are metal, I believe metals can be quite easely
>recycled.)

The mass to be processed would be greatest for the fuel, but I was refuring to
the mass of equipment you'ld need to bring along for a 2-way vs 1-way mission.
A 2-way mission requires fuel minnig and processing equipment.  It and a 1-way
mission also require ship repair systems, and the spare parts, materials, and
mining and refining equipment for that (i.e. unrelated to fuel processing).
The secound catagory of equipment and suplies would need to be greater for a
1-way mission given its much greater length.  However the 2-way mission
requires far more fuel mining and processing equipment.  A 1-way probably
could save some weight by procesing simple ores (space has extreamly high
grade ores floating around in it), and manufacturing somethings from that
rather then stored raw materials, but in most cases that wouldn't be critical.


>>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.
>
>Timothy

Kelly