[ExI] Asteroidal mining was Nukes was less expensive

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 3:22 PM,  Dennis May <dennislmay at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Keith Henson wrote:
> ?
>> Dennis, there is a vast literature on the subjects you have been
>> talking about, much of it where people actually worked the numbers.
> ?
>> Re cooling, there is rule of thumb number anyone can calculate on the
>> radiator area you need per kW of waste heat at room temperature.
>  I
>> suggest you might want to look up the formula and calculate it.
> ?
>> There is a subtle problem with scaling down heaters like induction
>> furnaces and scaling up radiators.
> ?
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
> ?
> "This is so much of a snip that a catching up reader
> has no idea what is?being discussed.  Surely not optimal."
> ?
> I was discussing the fact that large surface area radiators
> are?required in space to reject accumulating heat.
> ?
> Back in 2006 I ran some numbers using the data from
> radiators used on the International Space Station to
> see what was required for a 3,000 megawatt space
> station [Ice_Station on yahoogroups].

If you still have the numbers I would be very interested in seeing
them.  3 GW is up in power satellite scale.

> In my view the industrialization of space would
> start out small doing demonstrator projects for
> low-g mining and processing - done using remote
> control and automated processing.
> ?
> Keith Henson has been providing the numbers for
> powering and cooling a large scale manned nickel
> mining process.

Most of what I have been trying to see if you understand is scale
free, i.e., kW/square meters.

> My numbers were for cooling a mixed living quarters
> light industrial city intended to be located near
> mining and processing centers on low-g ice bodies.
> That mining and processing would be done primarily
> by automated and remote control means.? Ideally
> large scale processing would be done on ice bodies
> using the ice/water for a heat sink thus avoiding
> the large overhead of building heat radiators.? The
> Ice Station rotates inside an ice shell providing
> artificial gravity and radiation protection.
> ?
> The Ice Station could be cooled by a large radiator,
> an umbilical system to the ice body, or as Dan
> Ust suggested - rejecting volatiles.

Might I suggest the cooling an industrial facility in space by
evaporating volatiles isn't the best use of volatiles?