Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station

Chapter 8 Mining Attempts

Chen Ming's consciousness can control the operation of the spacecraft.

Naturally, you can also control the equipment inside the spacecraft.

Under the control of Chen Ming's consciousness, the asteroid scanning detector quickly located all the asteroids containing minerals on the screen of its own device.

Although the number was small, it was enough for Chen Ming just to get familiar with the spacecraft equipment.

Under normal circumstances, this part of the spacecraft's system will plan its own route to collect minerals based on the material priorities set in advance and the different mineral contents inside the asteroid.

But now Chen Ming just did it for experiments, so he manually locked an asteroid about half the height of a man.

Scans revealed that its interior contains a large amount of iron and some scattered associated minerals.

Among them are materials for repairing the landing module.

Chen Ming controlled the spacecraft to approach the asteroid and turned on the asteroid traction device.

After locking the target in advance, the asteroid was quickly towed and fixed in the direction opposite the work cabin of the spacecraft.

The Type II mining laser started working, and the orange-yellow laser shot out from the side of the cabin quickly shattered it.

The traction equipment accurately collected the high-quality ore that was crushed into the spacecraft through the pipes connecting the inside and outside of the spacecraft, and sent it to the ship's smelting furnace.

Before the working cabin heated up due to smelting, Chen Ming had the foresight to put on a partially charged protective suit.

Stay in the work cabin and watch the ship's smelting furnace gradually separate metal materials with different melting points and cast them into ingots.

Until the smelting is completed, the slag waste is discharged from the interior of the spacecraft.

Chen Ming stepped forward and immediately counted the harvest of this mining work.

36.5 kg of iron, 2 kg of whole zinc, 1.63 kg of copper, 0.9 kg of lead and 0.3 kg of aluminum.

The amount of aluminum that Chen Ming most hopes to have is very small.

However, at the end of the furnace, Chen Ming spit out about half a gram of gold, which was enough to make up for it.

Even if the value of gold is not considered, its properties alone determine that it is indispensable in many electronic devices, which means that it will be one of the materials needed to repair the spacecraft in the future.

Although the most desired and high-value harvest was not much, it was just an asteroid that Chen Ming randomly found that looked pleasing to the eye.

Any asteroid has such a rich variety of minerals. It’s no wonder that the company has to spend so much effort building a space station in such a ghost place.

Looking at it this way, the problem behind the company's abandonment of the space station becomes even bigger.

Chen Ming didn't bother with this problem that he couldn't figure out just by thinking about it.

Instead, the smelting results were piled on a trolley and placed in the storage cabin.

By the way, I plan to take inventory of the warehouse and find out how much stuff I have now.

But before Chen Ming started, he suddenly had an idea and opened the panel of the storage compartment.

【Storage cabin】

[Space: 5*5*5]

[Items in the warehouse: metallic minerals (iron, zinc, copper, etc.) totaling 135.15 kilograms, fuel (fusion fuel) totaling 492 kilograms]

[Items in the cold room: food (packaged survival food) totaling 102.5 kilograms, sundries (Thorne stratopod corpses, Thorne stratopod egg corpses) totaling 72.6 kilograms,]

"Forehead……"

Although as Chen Ming expected, everything in the warehouse was written on the panel in great detail.

But when Chen Ming looked at the two items in the refrigerator room, he suddenly didn't know what to say. He didn't expect that these were also included in the items of his spaceship.

After thinking about it, Chen Ming decided to ignore them for now, as they might be useful in the future.

Chen Ming continued to look at other places on the panel.

You can also click on the large categories such as metal minerals and food in the storage area to see more detailed information about the different materials contained in each category.It allows Chen Ming to clearly know what is in the storage compartment.

Chen Ming looked at it carefully, and after having a clear understanding of the material situation of his spaceship, he turned off the panel.

After all, this kind is rare, and looking at the empty warehouse always makes people feel a little sad.

It may be that the crew of the Iron Ore sold the mining items directly to the space station, that is, the company, and exchanged them for common currency to facilitate the next mining activity quickly.

Only a small amount of materials that may be used to repair the spacecraft are left.

It would be hard for Chen Ming to find trouble at this time with his former crew members who might have been dead somewhere in the space station for 30 years.

At least they left some materials for Chen Ming to repair his weapons.

And with this mining spacecraft, it would not be difficult for Chen Ming to dig from scratch.

Three months may not be enough to go to the pirate space station, but it is more than enough for Chen Ming to mine in space, repair the spacecraft and land on the planet.

After thoroughly completing the mining process, Chen Ming returned to the work cabin again.

The first mining test took less than an hour, and the dozen or so hours left until the planet rotated once could not be wasted.

The mining work of the spacecraft can be completely automated. You only need to set the types of minerals you need in the program, and the spacecraft can automatically navigate, capture, collect, and smelt automatically.
Everything is fine except that the smelted minerals cannot be automatically sent to the storage compartment.

Although the number of asteroids with minerals near the space station is not large, it is not something that the Iron Mine can collect in one day.

When Chen Ming was resting, he didn't need to worry about his spaceship flying too far away and not being able to find the space station.

The real disadvantage of this system is that the overall fuel consumption of the spacecraft will be higher when mining.

But Chen Ming could afford these necessary expenses.

After the asteroid scanning detector is set to have the highest priority of metal materials such as aluminum and gold that are currently in urgent need of repairing the spacecraft.

Chen Ming thought for a while and thought about what else he urgently needed to do.

I just wanted to get familiar with the overall spacecraft.

The spacecraft has a total of six cabins, the captain's cabin, engine cabin, work cabin, planting cabin, living cabin and storage cabin.

I had already seen the engine compartment before when I put fuel in it, and there was nothing special to pay attention to.

Apart from a layer of dust, the living cabin is actually very tidy overall and can be lived in with a little cleaning.

After all, few people would want to sleep on a spacecraft after returning to a mining space station after working in space for an extended period of time.

So at the end of a mining operation, the former crew members packed up their living cabins, left a new set of daily necessities for the next trip, and chose to find a place to live on the space station.

Then never came back.

The things left behind were cheaper for Chen Ming.

At this time, Chen Ming doesn't care whether these daily necessities will be expired for 30 years. After all, there is nothing in the entire space station that is not expired for 30 years, as long as it can be used.

At this point, Chen Ming basically has a complete understanding of the spaceship.

But less than four hours had passed since Chen Ming woke up from the freezer.

Although he was a little mentally exhausted because he had just repaired two machine guns, Chen Ming was not sleepy at all.

After thinking about it, Chen Ming now has two choices.

One is to use existing materials on the spacecraft to repair part of the outer armor of the spacecraft.

The armor of the spaceship is aluminum-steel composite armor. Although aluminum comes first in the name, overall steel accounts for the majority.

Compared with the steel materials needed to repair the armor, the aluminum consumed now will not affect the subsequent repair of the landing module at all.

Another option is that Chen Ming can take this opportunity to take a look at what is in the two personal terminals he has on hand.

(End of this chapter)