On 8 Dec 2014 at 18:25, Ian Whitchurch wrote:

> Nickel-iron simply isnt worth going to an asteroid belt to mine.

Actually, it is. With Traveller tech, it's not that expensive to get
there. And it's many times higher concentration than even the best
iron ores. *Way* higher than the nickel ores.

Plus, when you refine it, you get all the siderophilic elements that
were mixed in. Lots of gold, for instance.

Even the carbonyl process would seperate things nicely. But given
fusion power, they might even try stuff like applying electrolytic
refining to the nickel-iron.

Heck, I could even see situations where you'd use the *unrefined*
nickel-iron when you just need a lot of metal of reasonable strength.

Either just nachine it out, or more likely, melt it, cast it, and
machine the parts,

For that matter, given the shielding it'd provide from things like
solar flares, it might be worth digging in and processing the
material you dig out as a secondary goal.

True, you can do the same with stony asteroids, but I bet you are
less likely to have cracks in the nickel-iron. And what you cut out
is more valuable than the "country rock" of the stony asteroid.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com