- #1
Nik_2213
- 1,103
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TL;DR Summary: Would rocky planets around old, metal-poor Population II stars have more accessible boron than our younger, Pop l Sol's ??
I'm writing an 'As Hard Science As I Can' about a star-ship far astray in the 'Deep & Dark'.
'City of Fresno' has about 20~~25 LY fuel range as-is, currently doing a 360º/4_Pi passive mapping scan. Then they'll travel about a light year, repeat. Another light-year but skew, repeat. After two more such to complete tetrahedron, they'll have a good map of locale out to their fuel range, with stellar spectra.
Icy moons or Oort comets may be tediously mined for H/D fusion fuel, side-streams should provide a lot of micro-nutrients to top-up the 'Ponics.
But Boron is a 'gotcha': It is remarkably rare, produced by random cosmic ray spalling of eg carbon, then concentrated unto 'accessible' by natural leaching of volcanic materials. So, planet must be big enough or tidally-stirred for tectonics. Even Mars has some borates in ancient crater lakes' clay strata...
The ship's crew need boron / borates to supplement their 'Ponics, especially if they want to grow Coffee, which is famously greedy. Boron is essential for metallurgy, to alloy into the bits and cutters to make the tools to make the tools they'll need. Boron is also essential for boro-silicate glass to do 'bench' and 'prep' chemistry...
So, for boron, are they likely to glean more from a younger 'Pop_l' system, with 'geologically recent' tectonic activity ?
Or from a tired, old, 'Pop_ll' system that's had much more 'deep time' to accumulate cosmic-ray spallation ??
I'm writing an 'As Hard Science As I Can' about a star-ship far astray in the 'Deep & Dark'.
'City of Fresno' has about 20~~25 LY fuel range as-is, currently doing a 360º/4_Pi passive mapping scan. Then they'll travel about a light year, repeat. Another light-year but skew, repeat. After two more such to complete tetrahedron, they'll have a good map of locale out to their fuel range, with stellar spectra.
Icy moons or Oort comets may be tediously mined for H/D fusion fuel, side-streams should provide a lot of micro-nutrients to top-up the 'Ponics.
But Boron is a 'gotcha': It is remarkably rare, produced by random cosmic ray spalling of eg carbon, then concentrated unto 'accessible' by natural leaching of volcanic materials. So, planet must be big enough or tidally-stirred for tectonics. Even Mars has some borates in ancient crater lakes' clay strata...
The ship's crew need boron / borates to supplement their 'Ponics, especially if they want to grow Coffee, which is famously greedy. Boron is essential for metallurgy, to alloy into the bits and cutters to make the tools to make the tools they'll need. Boron is also essential for boro-silicate glass to do 'bench' and 'prep' chemistry...
So, for boron, are they likely to glean more from a younger 'Pop_l' system, with 'geologically recent' tectonic activity ?
Or from a tired, old, 'Pop_ll' system that's had much more 'deep time' to accumulate cosmic-ray spallation ??