Asteroids as Islands, or More Ghost Towns
While writing yesterday's post about Amelia Earhart, I ended up doing a bit of research on Pacific islands. Being a space geek, this led me to think about space - specifically asteroid colonization. Basically, the economics of asteroid colonies could be similar to Pacific islands
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It would help a great deal if I could lay hands on the actual article - I think it was one of Asimov's columns for F&SF - which looked at this romantic 1930s fable of asteroid pirates and asteroid bases and &c. What he was saying was, this is not a feasible idea. Asteroids large enough to be worth landing upon are so vanishingly few (almost literally) and so difficult to reach - regardless of your drive efficiency the fuel requirements are simply ridiculous, with nothing at the end of your journey but a rock a few miles across - that in practice no one is likely ever to bother.
That's not to say, he went on, that you cannot have planetoids and bases and far-flung worldlets with tramp spacecraft trundling along on their Hohmann transfer orbits: Welcome to Jupiter. With 63 known moons, one of which (Ganymede) being actually larger than Mercury, with others being flying icebergs of shattered cometary debris yielding water for oxygen and reaction mass (and trade)… Well, as he said, we may regretfully bid farewell to the Emperor of the ( ... )
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Having said that, asteroid mines could be surprisingly vulnerable to sudden spikes in mineral prices.
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Oh yes, which in an advanced spacefaring civilization could happen quite often. You might be mining an asteroid because it has decent amounts of platinum, only to find a huge lode of platinum on another asteroid. Instant ghost-town. Or, more exotically, you might discover a new fusion path which made platinum cheaper to synthesize from another metal than to get from either asteroid. Again, instant ghost-town.
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(1) Volatiles The asteroids in the Main Belt, especially as you move outward, have ice. This gives you hydrogen for fusion fuel, oxygen to breathe, and water to drink.
(2) Concealment Asteroids, even small ones, are opaque and hence can be conceal one's activities from hostile sensors. This is important because there is little concealment in space.
(3) Fortification Asteroids are heat sinks and direct obstacles to energy weapons fire: this is important because one can hit a stationary facility in open space at very long ranges with lightspeed weapons.
And in any case, a metal-rich asteroid is worth exploiting in any Main Belt or Greek/Trojan orbit, assuming the existence of an extensive space infrastructure and hence off-Earth demand ( ... )
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That explains the “Emperor of the Asteroids” text fragment I specifically recall. I concede your better recollection - and I'm amazed that you do!
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