mining

Filk: “Space Uranium Fever”

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Ttto and blatantly imitating: “Uranium Fever”, by Elton Britt [1955].

Verse 1

Well I don’t know but I’ve been told
Reactor fuel’s worth more than gold
I sold my hab, bought an OTV
With a smeltin’ stack and refineree-

Chorus

Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever – it’s spreadin’ all around
With a Geiger counter for spacewalks
I’m a-goin’ out to stake me some orbitin’ rocks
Uranium fever has done and got me down.

Verse 2

Well, I had a talk with the I.G.S.
Bought some charts to the stars they thought were best
Picked out a belt ’round a star of class B
So I laid out my course; loaded up delta-v.
A hundred lights I surely burned
Chasin’ that metal for which I yearned
When three weeks later I braked to meet
That shiny rock that I aimed to deplete.

Chorus

Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever – it’s spreadin’ all around
With a Geiger counter for spacewalks
I’m a-goin’ out to stake me some orbitin’ rocks
Uranium fever has done and got me down.

Verse 3

Well, I took my Geiger and I opened the lock
Got on my candle and headed to the rock
Set up my bore and started to drill
(As all the space-burned rock-rats will)
I drilled that ‘roid from crust to core
But of ion clicks there were no more
And for all the gas that I spent that day
Not a single core would earn my pay.

Chorus

Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever – it’s spreadin’ all around
With a Geiger counter for spacewalks
I’m a-goin’ out to stake me some orbitin’ rocks
Uranium fever has done and got me down.

Verse 4

Well, you pack up your kit and you burn again
For another lonesome rock where nobody’s been
You find a spot where there’s clickin’ ore –
And that spot’s been staked seven times before…
Well, I ain’t kiddin’, I ain’t gonna quit
That bug’s done caught me and I’ve been bit
So with a Geiger counter for spacewalks
I’ll keep right on stakin’ them orbitin’ rocks.

Chorus

Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever – it’s spreadin’ all around
With a Geiger counter for spacewalks
I’m a-goin’ out to stake me some orbitin’ rocks
Uranium fever has done and got me down.

 

Trope-a-Day: Mercurial Base

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Mercurial Base: There are actually quite a few of these, as apart from relatively easy mining (assuming you have had to solve the heat problem anyway), those innermost planets are very useful places to put the antimatter generation infrastructure powered by the solar panels even closer to the sun, where power is dense and largely free.  Usually most of the colliders and other infrastructure doesn’t move around the planet – often the colliders are wrapped right around it – because the unmanned hardware can handle the radiation just fine, it’s just the squishy organics and more delicate computers and such that have to be kept out of the glare of the sun.

A variation, without the intense sunlight or radiation problems, is to be found on any number of spacer asteroid settlements, who sometimes wrap a track around their asteroid and mount a habitat on it to get spin gravity as a courtesy to visitors from places with the natural kind.