How do you think mining will be handled?

[RogueZephyr]

Mining lasers and machines or some other way ?

[Philip Coutts]

I would imagine it is either going to be mining lasers / transfer beam or a drone of some sort because we aren't going to be able to land on anything to set up a mining machine of any sort.

[Silverwolf]

Either mining laser
or send droids to it and back.
or nano bots.


Limit theory already does it with lasers if I remember correctly.

[Avago-Earo]

I'm not really a sci-fi reader unless you count The War Of The Worlds (I had a go at Aasimov's 'Robots Of Dawn' when I was a kid but preferred the looking at the picture on the cover). So how do mining lasers work? I mean a laser breaking something down to smaller pieces or even to molecular scale I think I can imagine, but how is it collected? If I'm right lasers (when considered physically) are made up of photons so even if there was a direct reflection back to the ship I don't get how this would be carried with the beam. I should have watched star trek more.