Board Thread:Fiction Universe Discussion/@comment-9141454-20150625191138/@comment-9141454-20150626134000

I'd like to describe you guys one method of mining, though extremely advanced, multiscale and invasive.

Sifting.

I found this method many years ago on another fiction universe, and as it's name says, this method envisages sifting whole planet by gathering as much matter as possible, preferably all metals and/or silicca & non-metals.

While gathering resources by such a way from asteroids isn't really expensive, planetary sifting described on this wikia needs a lot, a lot of work, but guarantees extracting all possible resources.

One of the empires just dug very deep hole in surface, almost reaching planet's core (method efficent for sifting dead planets), then plants apparatus that literally explodes the rock material creating huge amount of asteroids easier to mine (Molten zones of astenosphere contains huge amounts of different elements, while core gives a lot of iron and other heavy metals, often in crystal form).

So that's one way to do it. Very expensive, though big empires could afford that and get a lot of profit and raw resources ready to process.