Moonlet Metal Miners

 

A Starship waits to take a load of moonlet metal to an orbital factory.

Jove North Star is the oldest asteroid mining company in the Jupiter system. They mine the swarm of small, unnamed moonlets orbiting Jupiter.

They dig out metals like iron, nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, gold, and magnesium.

But they also mine water! Even these cold, rocky asteroids have some water ice and other minerals with water.

All it take is some heat from their nuclear furnace to release all the treasures.

Most of the water is stored for future use by the miners and passing ships. Most of metals are used on Mars and other deep space factories.

A small amount of material goes all the way to Earth, mostly for novelty purposes like jewelry. An exotic origin like Jupiter makes it hard to resist.

If you ever visit an moon mine, tell me about it at

RamoneRocketeer -at- gmail -dot- com.