Quote:Suggestion: Most people don't know about Rockhound's "secret weapon". Know by the company as "Agent White" and never talked about outside the company to maintain their leg up on the asteroid mining competition these special microbes are handwaved through a process known only to a single Rockhound sceintist.
They mined out 6 asteroids in roughly as many months? Isn't that a little fast?
The microbe is based off of the experimental "pollution eating" mircobes in production today. The stuff eats mayonaise and in the process produces a power acid that eats away at natural rock, while leaving iron and other salvageable materials unharmed (the acid is also completely ineffective against anything organic, of course).
Rockhounds staff drill into the center of rocks and just plant a huge colony of this bacteria and a supply of mayonaise in the center. The bacteria multiples and consumes the mayonaise, creating the looping curving paths through the rock Rockhounds is famous for. They never put in enough to dissolve the whole rock (since when it runs out of food the bacterium rapidly dies off). Using this method they can hollow out a 5km thick asteroid in a month. Retrofitting the rock with airlocks and doors and other amenities can take up to another week.
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Epsilon