Asteroid belt

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A treasure trove of resources.

While the total mass of the asteroid belt is rather minute compared to the planets
the exposed and easily accessible surface area is enormous.
Plus the material is not locked in deep gravity wells like
it is very much the case for the planets and less so for the moons.

A disadvantage for gem-gum manufacturing systems is
that the resources come in solid state rather than gaseous form
which makes the development of more complex mining technology necessary.

What about mining induced interplanetary space debris?
Interplanetary space is probably too big for this to become a danger any time soon.
And if technology reaches a point of space mining of unfathomable scale is should have means to prevent such debris.
(TODO: maybe investigate this somewhen)

Colonization of asteroids

Any humans living there will want to go underground. This gives:

  • Radiation protection
  • Micrometeorite protection

There are many asteroids that are made out of loose material. This makes for easy digging. But with advanced deep drilling and underground working technology harder ones (even solid metal ones) should also pose not much of a problem.

Low gravity allows for:

  • very deep digging.
  • very very big chambers

Communication

Light speed lag between the asteroids and towards earth is severe.
Live calls obviously impossible.
Big local data-caches on each asteroids backing up large parts of earth's internet likely.

Energy

Between Mars and Jupiter solar energy is already quite low but still usable.
beyond that in most cases there might bot be much other options than nuclear.
With a few exceptions maybe like geothermal energy on Ceres.
Which is big enough to be a differentiated dwarf planet.

Big chambers

One big asteroid could house many big chambers.

We are not talking about chambers of a size of O'Neill cylinders here.
Much smaller and a dug cavity leaving very thick "walls" of asteroid material.

Big chambers allow for (several) centrifuges such that:

  • Coriolis forces are not nausea inducing
  • speeds are slow calm and not dangerous

Big chambers:

Intuition about life in such a colony

Big cambers would likely be mostly leisure and relaxation spaces.

Chambers could be made in interesting shapes like natural caves or some bobby foam. Lets assume the chamber is of uneven bean-shape in the biggest centre part with some dendridic extensions here and there at the ends.

Imagine being in one corner of that chamber just leaving behind a 3D micro-gravity sports and playground for both children and adults. With climbing structures and other interactive sports devices inside. You won't worry about of falling down and hurting yourselve here. Just do not speed up to much. You will have been informed about the dangers of inertial mass.

You feel powered out and hungry. So you plan to meet up with someone in a nearby restaurant.

Upon leaving the structure you peer "above" the horizon of a hill/mountain that is the concave part of the asteroid cavity. You peer over to some brightly yellow lit open centrifuges on one side of the long bean shaped chamber that are inset into the asteroids cavities walls. In each centrifuge there are several restaurants. Eating drinking and what comes after is much nicer with gravity you know.

The centrifuges are huge but they are still so far away that they seem rather small from this vantage point.

The hill you are peering over is a park. It is covered with plants and greenery that is somewhat chaotically and oddly growing due to micro-gravity.

The park at the horizon of the hill is crisscrossed by some "ladder-paths" and "anchor-points" for both the robotic maintainers and the curious humans to handle along and relax. There are some spot lanterns in that park on sticks giving off some atmospheric warm light. It simulates a twilight mood of an earth evening right now it seems.

Also in that park a little more near towards you there is a chain of funnily shaped huts in that park. They look like wood but they are most likely some gem-gum.

After enjoying the view for a while you decide to get a move on. Since there is for many hundreds of meters just free space without anything to hold on first (and just for fun) you use your grappling gripper gun to lathch onto the last of the sport structure bars on this side of the camber and make some nice intense spiderman like accelerating. While you aim and shoot with your hand the ropes pull on your waist so it won't rip out your arm and you wont start to spin tumble and rotate uncontrolledly.

Now you are a ballistic missile and will litterally will crash a party in one of those restaurant cetrifuges on the otherside in a few minutes. Just kidding. Grappling gripper guns come only in medium mover suits. You know the strange micky mouse ear looking disks sticking out from your sholders waist and side of the feet. These can accelerate air quite vigorously. And that without any macroscopically visibly moving parts and completely silently. Except the sound of air turbulence on high tilt.

Look out for the "free-space-lighting-buoys". They also use medium movers to move around. Albeit automatedly. But mostly they are static. Since they have a big chemical battery inside they only rarely need to come back to their docks for a recharge.

So you make your way to the other side of the chamber. Steering the medium mover suit with some sort of hand-joystick that is integrated in the suit. Hopefully abiding traffic rules for free-space-high-speed-pedestrians. Unfortunately you're flying was a bit too sporty and now you come in at a worryingly high speed. So it's crashing the party after all. But the system automatically detects that an helps you decelerating just right. Only that this "just right" was a full 4g of deceleration. Wow that was intense. You wonder wherther some of the guest might have seen that and have worried too.

Finally you arrive in front of the "landing-srtipe" of the "restaurant-centrifuge". You wait till the right restaurant slowly swooshes by grab on onto the narrow and inset ladder. You're dragged along and suddenly you feel like lying on the ground with earth gravity. After a bit of reorientation you stand up. Easy for you. You just work out all the time. That is keeping you top fit. You spot your friend and walk up to them.

Your lazy friend looks at you in bewilderment. They have taken the efficient path. You see: The walls of the cavity are littered with stations of an efficient and fast human transport system.

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