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Tucked Ballerina Asteroid Mining

 Use Centripetafugal force to mine asteroids
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This would be a strategy for mining asteroids. Once you have started mining a small asteroid and you have a hole all the way through, put the heavy loose residue material all at the center of the asteroid so that gradually the asteroid will start to spin faster like a ballerina in a tuck. The increased spin will make it easier to get stuff off of the surface level.
—JesusHChrist, Aug 23 2005

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       Aren't asteroids solid to start with? Therefore mining the hole through will slow 'em down, and replacing the material will restore their speed. And anyway, how does the speed of rotation help the mining procress.   

       And sp: centripetafugal.
—Texticle, Aug 23 2005
   

       It doesn't help with the mining, but it does help with flinging stuff off towards where you want it to be (presumably Earth).   

       [Texticle]'s got a point with the solid thing, I think. Maybe... most asteroids (I believe) are potato-shaped. If you mine them and reorganize the bits so that they are more spherical then this might increase their rotation. That might work. Is that what you were getting at, [JHC]?
—moomintroll, Aug 23 2005
   

       You can virtually jump off most asteroids, so why bother?
—ldischler, Aug 23 2005
   

       >>the solid thing   

       I was thinking that if you pulled more of the mass toward the center then the whole thing would spin around faster and it would be easier to get other stuff off the surface. Maybe, say if there were two kinds of metal on an asteroid and you only wanted one, you could melt one down into a heavy rod that ran right along the axis of rotation and thus speed the rotation up making it easier to fling the other off the surface.   

       >>why bother   

       If you scale it up you could do planets.
—JesusHChrist, Aug 23 2005
   

       So... scaling it up further, if you put a colossal point mass at the centre of the galaxy, we could depart the galaxy more easily?
—david_scothern, Aug 23 2005
   

       Now that's an sf story I'd like to .see.
—moomintroll, Aug 23 2005
   

       I think the big problem with mining will be keeping the loose stuff under control. Think of gravel and windshields.
—normzone, Aug 23 2005
   

       I think you would have to do quite a bit of reshaping away from the center of the rotational axis, like a ballerina or a skater switching to a tuck.
—sleeka, Aug 23 2005
   


 

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