[ExI] Asteroidal mining was Nukes was less expensive > energy

[Dennis May]

Tom Nowell wrote:
 
"One method mentioned was constructing a large plastic film 
in a sphere around your asteroid, metallising half of it to form 
a reflector which then heats up the asteroid. The most volatile 
parts vaporise and form a shell on the inside of the film. You 
cut this apart, then repeat the process for higher and higher 
temperatures, each time getting a different set of 
temperature-controlled vapor, until you are left with highly 
refractory stuff in the centre."
 
Each cycle would leave a certain amount of vapor in the space
between the asteroid and the film which would be lost when
you cut away the film.  This would be a larger amount for
vapor created at low temperatures and less when at high
temperatures.
 
The idea is generally sound and resembles distillation of
hydrocarbons into different fractions but I would favor the
container remaining intact the whole time and removing the
fractions as they are generated instead of starting and
stopping the process.
 
Dennis May
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110925/c13e34c4/attachment.html>