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

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Kelly,

>>>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.

So was I.

>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 second catagory of equipment and supplies would need to be greater for a
>1-way mission given its much greater length.

Indeed you'd need more to repair more, but would you need to do that much
more mining? I was argueing that several materials could be easely recycled
and those that couldn't be recylced would not necessarily need to be mined,
but could also be stored on board in raw but refined form.

>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.

My arguement was the opposite for a one-way mission: Rather than taking
large and specialized mining equipment with us, we'd recycle some of the
easiest substances and take with us that what we can't recycle in its purest
form.
Recycling equipment would likely be little different from refining
equipment, and recycling has the advantage that it already has quite pure
materials to start with. (Metals are still pure, but merely a bit brittle)


Timothy