Rocket mining system, subsystems, components and methods
AssigneeAstrobotic Technology, Inc.
InventorMatthew Kuhns
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Mining apparatuses, systems and methods related to the use of a rocket engine's plume and a collection manifold to efficiently displace, collect, process and store frozen volatiles embedded within or below a surface is disclosed. The plume contacts and churns up the surface. The frozen volatiles are displaced and/or evaporated within a closed environment under a collection manifold. The collection manifold has related components for addressing these frozen or gaseous volatiles downstream. Various apparatuses and subsystems are also disclosed including a rover, processing plants, collection manifold, and vapor manifold.
Claims20
A method of mining frozen or trapped volatiles from a surface or subsurface source, the method comprising:
- combusting propellant within a rocket engine and creating a plume;
- aiming the plume into or through ground to heat a frozen volatile source within the ground or underground;
- capturing volatiles released from the heated frozen volatile source using a collection manifold surrounding a ground access point of the plume;
- and
- removing the volatiles from the collection manifold.
A collection manifold for capturing volatiles released by plume impingement, the collection manifold comprising:
- a collection manifold that defines an interior volume and is configured to disengageably seal with ground to be engaged while mining and disengaged while offline or changing mining locations,
- a nozzle entry hole configured to seal or attach to a nozzle from a rocket engine;
- a vapor manifold configured to collect the vapors from a volatile collector;
- the volatile collector configured to route the volatiles away from the interior volume into the vapor manifold;
- and
- a volatile exit from the vapor manifold.
A water mining system, comprising:
- an excavation system comprising a rocket engine, a collection manifold, a condenser, and a water storage tank;
- a plume from the rocket engine configured to penetrate regolith beneath the collection manifold;
- the condenser being configured to condense volatiles resulting from the plume penetration of the regolith;
- and
- the water storage tank is configured to store water from the condensed volatiles in liquid or frozen form,
- wherein the excavation system weighs less than 150 kg and is configured to extract at least 400 kg of water in under 4 days.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.