1. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    Off-Earth mining/prison colony logistics

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Rzero, Feb 17, 2020.

    So there's a mining/prison colony at the crux of my story. It's the setting for at least the whole second act, but I need to figure out several things.

    It can't be too far away. We're talking maybe Avatar technology at best, not Star Trek. Hell, I'm not even going to use chryo for the journey. It can't take forever, but it can take a good while. Neither the government nor the mining company cares how much of the prisoners' lives are wasted in transit. (In fact, most prisoners never make it home. The company charges for everything, even transport to and from the colony, so even if they manage to make it through their sentence - with time added for even the most minor infractions - they're generally indentured for life at would have been their release date.)

    First, I need a location. Time and profit margins are major factors, obviously. They would only launch a new batch of slave labor periodically, when planetary placement is ideal for shorter distances and slingshot opportunities. With sub-light-speed tech though, What distance do you think is reasonable, and how long would it take to get there? (again, using near-ish future tech) I don't think I want the journey to take more than a year or two.

    I'm thinking maybe a Jupiter moon? The Kuiper Belt might work, but that's a long damned way, and I need gravity. The whole Kuiper region would only be good for dwarf planets, but I'm open to it. It doesn't need to be a place that could sustain life on it's own. They can pump in oxygen and regulate temperatures in the prison, and work in suits. I have plenty of severe hazards planned, so I might as well wave away any "But you can't live there" complaints with "Sure you can, and you probably would if you found gold in them thar hills. (They won't be mining gold, obviously.)

    *Edited for clarity. :)
     
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2020
  2. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    Titan?
     
  3. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Coming from a family of accountants where I am the sole little bohemian interpreter, this feels plot-holie to me.

    Okay, so, if the end result is that they become indentured servants for life, then the economic drive of the company not to put them in cryostasis cancels out. The monetary debt becomes an abstract concept. It won't ever be paid, so it's not real money anymore. It's a write-off. It would make much more sense for them to be put into cryo and just charge them for that. Cryo, as typically deployed in Science Fiction, is a narrative tool that allows the writer to forgo the real-world issues of feeding, watering, clothing, and housing these people in an environment that at least marginally suits a homo sapiens body. In cryo, you could even have their cryostasis tubes be self contained. The ship could breach and the tubes would remain intact, thus the slave labor (let's call it what it is) is not lost.
     
  4. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    That's just not an available technology. I want this grounded. No imaginary tech.
     
  5. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    That's kind of the go-to, so it's the first I thought of. I'm open to it, but I have an idea for a story on Titan, and I'm trying to keep all my unrelated stories in the same universe. Either way, the tech and time and other logistics involved in traveling to Titan would get us to most of the other moons at the same expense.
     
  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Understood. The way I originally read it, I thought it was available, but that these guys weren't worth it.
     
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  7. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    That's because I worded it wrong. :) I totally implied that it existed, forgetting that I had multiple reasons not to employ chryo-tech.
     
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  8. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    You might want to consider what is being mined. Almost anything we want is really not that far away. If you have the technology to send people to live on alien worlds, you also have the technology to stripmine entire asteroids with robotics. Humans are very expensive to keep alive, even slaves, so there'd have to be a very good reason to send people rather than robots. I can't imagine there being anything we'd want way out in the Keiper Belt. Most objects out there are mostly water, and there is plenty of that much closer in.
     
  9. KiraAnn

    KiraAnn Senior Member

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    If you choose any of the Galilean moons, keep these little facts in mind. They may actually help you with hazards for these salves.
    1. Europa is the closest to Jupiter and receives enough radiation to kill a person within a day - 3600 rem/day.
    2. Io is the next out, and could be livable if the settlement is underground.
    3. Ganymede is next and would be livable in the surface if you don’t care about long-term survivability - 8 rem/day.
    4. Callisto is farthest out but is an ice moon, I think. Radiation is about .1 rem/day
     
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  10. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    It has to be a really fun story to pull off mining/space/convicts. It can be done. Parody might be easiest. That's just my perspective. As long as there's no 'corporation.'

    The quality of the write is the bottom line. I remember reading 'boy scouts on Jupiter' and was hooked immediately.
     
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  11. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    I'll check that one out. Yeah, there's a company involved, of course, but I thought it would be more like a cross between Halliburton and the Texas prison system, you know, privatized but inextricably tied to the government. I hate the idea of a "The Corporation." The only thing more YA than that is dividing people into super power classes and assigning them each a color. So no one's trying to overthrow the corporate overlords in this one.

    If I actually get around to this story, I don't think I could pull off much comedy. It's tentatively called La Cavale, and it's about a prison break. Actually, scratch that. It's about a lot of escape attempts and horrible ramifications a la Papillon. And that's only the second half of the book. The first half takes place on Earth and involves abusive relationships, drugs and other destructive/self-destructive behavior, while in the background, the conservative element manages to slowly recriminalize homosexuality resulting in an eighteen month sentence that's tantamount to life for the MC. You know, fun stuff! And I know most of the folks that would have homosexuality criminalized again wouldn't push for hard labor for life as the standard penalty, but these two situations happen to have develop simultaneously and spiral out of control together. The "war on drugs" and several other misguided crusades will have all taken similar turns in the story.
    I've been giving this some thought since the beginning and still haven't settled on a solid answer. These and other reasons are bending me toward Jupiter moons instead of the belts. One's too close with nothing interesting in it; the other is ridiculously far away. I'd like to say the trip takes a year or two, something like that. I figure we wouldn't be going that far unless we could move that fast anyway. I still don't know if that sounds right though: a year and a half to the Umbriel (or wherever) prison colony?

    Anyway, I hate to do too much hand-waving, and I don't want them mining unobtanium, but any time we talk about space travel for any purpose other than research, we're automatically discussing something impractical in reality. It would be easier to dig underground cities or populate the arctic than it would be to colonize another planet. It would be easier to clean up a trashed environment than it would be to create a new one through terraforming, but we do these things in sci-fi anyway for no better reason than we want the book to take place in space.

    I'm having an idea. Maybe we do our mining elsewhere even for totally common elements due to the physical and political fallout from a catastrophic environmental disaster years back. Hmm. Maybe. Otherwise, they're mining something we don't have here, and I've considered everything from unobtanium to spice. It's all been done to death. As long as it makes some kind of sense though, I almost don't care. Precisely what they're mining is a minor element in the story. I just don't want it to be too big a plot hole.
     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2020
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  12. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    A year and a half could probably be done. Is mining / prison necessary for your story. I mean, a moon of Jupiter is basically a prison anyway. Even if you have a ship, you'd likely only make journeys between Earth and the colony once every 16 months or so (you'd want the planets to be as close as possible to each other for the journey, and real missions launch at very specific dates to ensure the shortest journey.) Also going from Jupiter to Earth is way harder than going from Earth to Jupiter. The reason for this is that on your way away from the sun, the gravity of the sun is constantly pulling against you, so your speed is always reducing slightly, making orbital insertion very easy. When going towards the sun, you are constantly accelerating, so entering an orbit requires putting on the brakes very hard. It takes about twice as much energy to get to Venus than to Mars, even though Mars is further away.

    Could your station simply be a research facility? Your main characters don't have to be researchers, a large colony likely needs plenty of blue collar workers. Europa looks like there is a very good possibility of life inside of it. We'll probably have a real answer in less than 30 years. Your crew could be there to research the biosphere deep inside. You'd probably have to have your station deep under the ice to protect against radiation, so it'd certainly seem like a prison, especially if things go wrong.
     
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  13. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Depends on the tech they have for their ship drives.
    This is a brief explanation of the Epstein drive from
    The Expanse, and how quickly they can get out to
    Pluto ~40 AU, and to Eris ~50-60 AU out in the
    Kuiper Belt. (Sub-light speed).
    Now, we do not know how much of Rocinante is fuel, but it nowhere near 95%. More like 50% — 2:1 mass ratio. Let’s be generous and say that if the crew wants to skimp on the cargo, they can get mass ratio up to 3:1 — 2/3 of the ship’s initial mass is fuel. That mass ratio and 5,000 km/sec exhaust velocity give us delta-V of 5,500 km/sec. So Rocinante’s maximum practical speed is 2,750 km/sec, if it wants to come to a stop at the target.

    At 1 G, which seems to be the standard acceleration in Expanse universe, a ship takes 78 hours to reach 2,750 km/sec. During these 78 hours it will travel 386 million km. That means Earth-Jupiter run can be done at constant acceleration; in fact Rocinante would not even use up half its fuel before it starts decelerating. But Pluto and Eris are a different matter. Say, 40 astronomical unites to Pluto (with these distances, it really does not matter whether you are starting from Earth or from Mars). That’s 6 billion km. First 386 million km are under acceleration, and take 78 hours. Same with the last 78 hours. In between are 5,230 million km of free fall. At 2,750 km/sec, that free-fall phase will take 528 hours, i.e. 22 days. Total trip time: 684 hours, or 28.5 days. You can shave a little off both acceleration and deceleration phases via higher G’s, but you won’t get less than 25 days.

    Eris, not too different. It might be at 50–60 AU’s instead of 40; that adds another 6–11 days to the free-fall phase.

    Yeah Jupiter would be at about 2 years to get there if the planets are in
    a favorable position to give you extra gravity acceleration as you go with
    solid fuel based drive standard that we have now. Getting back may vary
    time wise, due to favorable gravity wells changing position the later you
    want to get back.
    Though to make the operation easier and a bit cheaper, you might consider
    having a space elevator and launch/landing pad to maximize the amount of
    fuel for your ships, since they will not have to expend so much to escape Earth's
    gravity and atmosphere from the ground. Little bit easier and less wasteful to
    reach escape velocity in a near friction free environment.
    Granted we may have slightly more efficient solid/liquid fuel engines, they would
    in theory only shave off a little bit of time off of travel, but not much given that
    they would have a little more fuel to burn for accel/decel.
    Can't forget that micro-gravity in open space will create a negligible drag when
    in free fall between engine burns, but like solar sail travel it will add up over time.
    https://www.space.com/18383-how-far-away-is-jupiter.html

    Granted you could burn like hell towards the sun using Venus and the Sun to slingshot
    you to much greater speeds towards your destination to conserve on fuel, but that would
    add more travel time.
     
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  14. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    Well, making a prison book into a book about researchers would basically mean writing an entirely different book in every possible respect, including scrapping the first half, which I'm pretty proud of in outline form, so I'd rather figure this out. It would be easier to scrap the space element than the entire premise, but I'm not going to do that either. Plenty of absurd reasons to go to space have been made into great books. I'm okay with some slightly flawed logic, if that's what it takes.

    You mentioned launch dates. I actually wrote that into the outline the other day. I said most prisoners have a six to eighteen month wait in a holding facility. You make an interesting point about the trip home though. I'll be sure to mention that. Transporting people there was always going to be less of an issue than bringing back tons upon tons of ore (or whatever I end up using. What they're mining is basically scenery. It's far from being the point of the book.) They would have ships coming and going as often as is feasible. The thing is, speaking of logistics, transporting a box of junk toys here from China is insanely cost prohibitive too, until you load up thousands of toys times hundreds of other types of goods. I figure if the load were big enough and the demand high enough, it would be worth it.
    This is good stuff. I was thinking of launching from a massive Lagrange point station between here and the moon. I might not explain much tech though. Future tech is almost incidental to the story. As long as the travel time and things like that makes sense, I'm good. I did have a neat idea for artificial gravity, but I think I'll save it for another story. I doubt we'll be able to generate gravity any time soon, regardless to which theories you subscribe. See, and I guess that makes a point right there. Almost no one explains how they have gravity on a space ship. Readers/viewers just have to assume it works. It's been in a thousand sci-fi stories, and very few explained how.
     
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  15. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    In the moon is a harsh mistress (heinlein) the moon was a prison... although it was more hydroponic farming rather than mining
     
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  16. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    Interesting. I hadn't considered the moon any longer than it took to remember there's nothing there, but I could come up with all sorts of back-breaking work there anyway. Hell, if people can die from exhaustion on an Earth chain gang, then why not? In a prison-for-profit scenario, the profit margins can be made up almost entirely of tax money. They almost don't have to produce at all. They could be farming or doing construction or excavating (probably excavating. I do so have my heart set on a cave-in) for colonial use. Again, there's no logical reason to colonize the moon, but it's something to consider.

    Also, I read my first Heinlein recently, The Puppet Masters. It wasn't great. Should I keep trying? I do love mid-century sci-fi, Bradbury, PKD, Sheckley, Simak, etc. It's one of my favorite genres.
     
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  17. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    The moon is a harsh mistress is probably my favorite heinlien - its definitely worth a look if you're thinking about this (its actually about the luna prisoners revolt and fight for independence)
     
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  18. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Do we know if there is any rock worth mining on the moon? Even if there isn't it would be a good place to launch from, if we were mining asteroids, or something like that—as there would be no exit/reentry issues for either large craft or small craft. You just pull up and land. I can certainly imagine a colony getting set up there. It's stable enough, and we kinda know what to expect when we get there.
     
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  19. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    I don't think there is, but that doesn't mean I can't make something up.
     
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  20. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    No one really knows - theres not much on the surface, but there could be anything in the middle. (In the Heinlien book they were mining ice to use for irigation to grow wheat and ship to earth, and also creating tunnel complexes for living space)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon
     
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  21. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    I'm not above making up wildly speculative potential nonsense, but if I can, I'll avoid anything that will almost definitely be disproven in a decade or two.
     
  22. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    I’ve only dabbled in Heinleim - I was frustrated by ‘Moon...’/didn’t enjoy...but liked the kidstuff - I’m trying to remember the one where the family emigrates to Jupiter. And now I’m doubting myself, maybe it was Enid Blyton? But then I didn’t like High Rise so much...[I know, another different man..]
     
  23. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Also I advise against the Moon. I went to the Moon five years ago...unsuccessfully...but I may return to the draft. I think it was ‘The Moon.’

    yea, cease and desist. Pluto is available.
     
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  24. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Space family stone - and its mars and then the asteroids... they had to jupiter at the end but getting there isn't in the book... random point of note the grandmother in space family stone, is the little girl hazel from moon..
     
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