Prospecting asteroids is hard work. There’s no gravity to work against but the rock still has mass and needs force to be moved. Exoskeletons help with the effort, but Sorcha’s has the cheapest second hand one she could afford. All of the armour plates are missing so it’s only good for lifting and isn’t space worthy. Not graceful or glamorous but it works. Her little boxy ship is built around the large grabbing arms on its front with the thrusters offset to give the ship more space to latch onto asteroids. A conformal airlock pushes up against the rock allowing Sorcha to mine and sample without a full space suit.
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If Sorcha finds any precious metals she stakes a claim and stores some samples. She doesn’t do the actual mining herself, her ship is too small for that. She just sells the claims when she gets back to Prospect Central on Ceres. A couple of times she’s had to race back, burning more fuel than she’d like to make sure she didn’t get claim jumped. Thankfully there are still plenty of companies back on Earth willing to pay for asteroid minerals. There’s so much metal out here that prices have all but collapsed. If Earth wasn’t so depleted, these claims wouldn’t be profitable at all. Each time she goes back to Ceres, Sorcha keeps an eye on the news. If the Martians open up another big mine then she’ll have to start looking for a new job.
Image Credit – Engineer in Exoskeleton by Gauntes – CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0