On 20 Jan 2018 at 2:07, Caleuche wrote:

> Depending on how hard of SciFi a setting you are maintaining, it's
> difficult to imagine what resource you would want to exploit from a
> planetary surface that isn't much easier to get from a asteroid belt -
> you're not working against gravity and whatever resource it is that
> you're after is never very far from the surface. It's further
> difficult to imagine that those kinds of resources wouldn't be more
> easily available in the asteroid belt (if it has one) or cometary halo
> of the star system with the high population world in it. 

Thing is, if you are looking for raw elements, that's fine. Though in
Traveller, energy costs to orbit are low enough to get rid of a lot
of that.

Asteroids are pretty low grade ore for the most part as well.

Also, except for the larger ones (or chunks split off of larger ones
by collisions) you've got only a limited amount of geological
"processing" taking place.

While you may find some interesting minerals and crystals that the
low gee helped form, you *won't* find much that relies on geothermal
processing.

So you aren't going to find gemstones, nor a lot of metamorphic
rocks. And even sedimentary rocks (yes, they can form on asteroids)
are going to be significantly different.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com