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Mining

Prospector ::
Image from Juan Ochoa

The extraction of mineral resources from an asteroid, planetoid, moon, or planet. Includes the extraction of particular types of resource, such as carbon, ice, copper, iron, aluminum, silicon, or uranium (very rarely fossil fuels, as these are limited to Gaian Type worlds). Various mining engineering methods are used, including SCMs, nanobore and nanomining, underground tunneling, and open-cut mining.

Also important is knowledge about safety methods, demolitions, nano, micro, and macro replicators, resource extraction and transportation, one-sophont prospecting, miner living facilities, power supply, and environmental systems, geology, planetology, mass-drivers, pacman miners, and more. In some polities, the prospector or the mining operation is expected to restore the local environment to something of its original condition.

Some mining is performed using very basic tools by small numbers of modosophonts, but large scale mining operation is generally assisted by extensive automation, using a wide range of devices of all scales, from nanoscale to macroscale. Particularly useful are vots, virtual robots which are extremely competent and user-friendly, but are not truly self-aware so are not considered sophont. In some cases a mining operation may be monitored or controlled directly by a transapient or archailect, or their subminds and agents.

 
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Drytech/HylotechManufacturingMaterials Technology
Occupations, Avocations, and Work
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev, modified from the original write-up by Robert J. Hall
Initially published on 08 December 2001.

 
 
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