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SunMiner

Sun Miner
Image from Steve Bowers
A SunMiner starscoop extracting matter from a star using a ramscoop.

SunMiners are a highly derived, cyborgised clade that during the ComEmp and early post-ComEmp periods specialized in stellar mining and star-lifting, acquiring great wealth. They are now largely "old money", although they will still take on projects, especially if those are challenging or aesthetic.

Starscoops

A SunMiner starscoop uses ramscoop technology to extract material from the outer atmosphere of a star; a rotating field lifts hot material into the extraction/collection facility, where the metals and other useful elements are separated out centrifugally. Most of the hydrogen and helium is discarded, taking excess heat away from the vessel with it (although some of the hydrogen and helium may also be exported).

Cooled Orbital Rings

Larger scale extraction projects are carried out with cooled orbital rings; highly eccentric rings carry material and heat away from the star, allowing the rapid extraction of large quantities of matter.

Star-lifting and Grazers

Polaris starlifting
Image from Steve Bowers
The star-lifting array around Polaris squeezes this brillant star using intense magnetic fields, causing mass to be ejected from the polar regions

Even larger projects use star-lifting technology, and since the Gati Hertzprung Russell ascension, transapient level SunMiners have increasingly used godtech such as Grazer wormholes.

Grazer
Image from Steve Bowers
This grazer wormhole is extracting hot matter from the surface of a star

 
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Development Notes
Text by Steve Bowers
from an original article by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 31 December 2007.

rewritten and expanded by steve Bowers, June 2, 2013
 
 
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