Completely Mining Planets

[Begogian]

As we all know a big part of Dual Universe will be mining and collecting resources to sell and construct with. As the game progresses, organizations will start to optimize large scale mining to who knows how large of a scale. My thought is on the effect of large scale mining on planets/moons/asteroids. If there is a large scale operation that is quickly mining up a planet, will the planet have any effect on its surroundings or be effected itself? Along with this, is it possible to mine a planet completely?

 

-- Addressing the first question, as a planet, let's say Earth, is mined away, the mass will decrease causing gravitational issues. At the same time a certain area that is mined away will throw the planets axis off their normal locations. As players mine in-game, will the planets be effected by the loss of mass all together as well as in certain locations? Could this cause the planets to start moving around? Also are planets similar to Earth, with mantles and a core, or could you literally dig a hole through the planet and pass ships through it?

 

-- Addressing the second question, I really see 2 main things that could possibly occur:

 

1 - Planets are so unbelievably large that there is no way anyone will ever completely mine a planet - OR - you can't build an operation large enough to take on such a task.

 

2 - Organizations will optimize large scale mining and as the game progresses, planets will start to "disappear" as they are fully mined away, leaving ruins of old planets and/or debris of old planets floating around.

 

 

These are just some thoughts

[BliitzTheFox]

After around 2km of digging there will be no technology to dig any deeper into a planet's surface. Stripping an entire planet would leave it with 4km less in diameter than it originally was on a scale of thousands of kms. It may no longer be very beneficial to mine from, but you could probably still settle on it, not sure why you'd want to though.

[wizardoftrash]

After around 2km of digging there will be no technology to dig any deeper into a planet's surface. Stripping an entire planet would leave it with 4km less in diameter than it originally was on a scale of thousands of kms. It may no longer be very beneficial to mine from, but you could probably still settle on it, not sure why you'd want to though.

depending on how resource management works in the game though, players might have to dispose of unused material volume (effectively trash) by placing it, making stripped out planets perfect landfills.

[ATMLVE]

As was said, planets are not actually spheres, more like shells, which you cannot dig through. As such, I don't think the loss of mass will actually even be quantified, and thus not used for anything. Despite this, the volume of a still enormous object will ensure that completely mining out a planet would take an outrageous amount of time and resources, and quite probably would not be worth it. And, like wizardoftrash said above, I believe resources are not completely "deletable".

 

But despite all this, I think the main issue is that the amount of time it would take to completely mine a planet with respect to how beneficial it would be in regards to return, will ensure it simply doesn't happen. Maybe someones project, just for the heck of it!

[Deacon]

I also believe there is no gravity to speak of ....   but I can see it now, fleets of dump truck ships, heading to landfill planet   

[Bluestorm]

Think about sending a ship in a pocket of lava

[Saul Retav]

Even if you could mine through the entire lithosphere of an earth-like planet, you'd only be about 4% of the way to the center. Mining the 1300C semi-liquid asthenosphere past that would be virtually impossible.