Microgravity Engineering and Off-World Resources
Space Manufacturing, Mining, and Innovation for Earth and Planetary Exploration ApplicationsBy Inês Cardoso
Length12h 32m
About this audiobook
Off-world mining is usually sold to you as a story. This book gives you the numbers instead.
Microgravity Engineering and Off-World Resources is a quantitative engineering reference for turning asteroid, lunar and orbital material into useful products. It treats space manufacturing as an industrial system: feedstock, energy, heat rejection, autonomy, logistics and law. You will see what microgravity does to melting, mixing and settling, work through the delta-v that separates a near-Earth asteroid from a lunar pole, and compare hydrogen reduction, carbothermal reduction and molten regolith electrolysis on kilowatt-hours per kilogram of oxygen.
The book follows the full chain from prospecting to product. It explains how ice is thermally mined and turned into propellant, how regolith is beneficiated into printable feedstock, how extrusion and wire-fed metal deposition behave in free fall, and why fluoride optical fibre and semiconductor crystals may be worth pulling in orbit. Power, radiators, dust, autonomy, cost per kilogram and the legal framework each get a chapter, so the engineering is never separated from the mission economics that decide whether a process closes.
What you will learn:
• How microgravity changes melting, mixing, settling and solidification, and what that means for process design
• How to compare orbits, delta-v budgets and mission architectures for near-Earth asteroid and lunar resource access
• Where the material is, and how to prospect and assess resources with remote and in-situ methods
• How excavation, material handling and dust control work at low gravity
• How water ice is thermally mined and converted into propellant
• How oxygen and metal are extracted from regolith by hydrogen reduction, carbothermal reduction and molten regolith electrolysis
• How refining and feedstock preparation produce printable and manufacturable materials
• How manufacturing in orbit and microgravity materials processing differ from terrestrial practice
• How power, thermal control, autonomy, cost per kilogram and the legal framework constrain real operations
Written for aerospace and mining engineers, graduate students and serious space-industry followers, this book assumes you want the engineering numbers, not the narrative. If you are designing processes, evaluating mission concepts, teaching off-world resource systems, or investing in the space industrial base, it gives you the quantitative grounding to judge what is feasible and what is not.
Audiobook details
GenreTechnology
Length12 hrs 32 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 27, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Microgravity Engineering and Off-World Resources
2Foreword
3Preface
4About This Book
5Chapter 1: What Microgravity Actually Is
Show all chaptersShow less
61.1 Free Fall, Weightlessness and Residual Acceleration
71.2 Suppression of Buoyancy-Driven Convection
81.3 Loss of Sedimentation and Density Separation
91.4 Surface Tension, Capillarity and Marangoni Flow
101.5 Vacuum, Atomic Oxygen, Thermal Cycling and Radiation
111.6 What Microgravity Does Not Change
12Chapter 2: Getting There: Orbits, Delta-V and Mission Architectures
132.1 The Delta-V Ledger and the Rocket Equation
142.2 Hohmann Transfers, Low-Energy Transfers and Windows
152.3 Lunar Mission Architectures and Staging
162.4 Near-Earth Asteroid Access and Return
172.5 How Transportation Cost Shapes the Business Case
18Chapter 3: Where the Material Is
193.1 Lunar Mare and Highland Regolith Mineralogy
203.2 Regolith Physical Properties and the Dust Problem
213.3 Permanently Shadowed Polar Volatiles
223.4 C-, S- and M-Type Asteroids and Phobos
233.5 Martian and Other Resources in Context
24Chapter 4: Prospecting and Resource Assessment
254.1 Reflectance and Emissive Spectroscopy
264.2 Neutron, Gamma-Ray and Radar Sounding
274.3 Grade, Tonnage and Uncertainty
284.4 Ground Truth: Sampling, Rovers and Sample Return
29Chapter 5: Excavation and Material Handling at Low Gravity
305.1 Traction, Reaction Forces and Anchoring
315.2 Excavation Methods: Mechanical, Pneumatic and Thermal
325.3 Conveying, Hoisting and Storage in Reduced Gravity
335.4 Dust Generation, Adhesion and Mitigation
34Chapter 6: Water Ice Extraction and Propellant Production
356.1 Thermal Mining and Sublimation Capture
366.2 Cold Traps, Purification and Contaminant Control
376.3 Electrolysis, Liquefaction and Cryogenic Storage
386.4 Propellant Depot Sizing and Payback
39Chapter 7: Oxygen and Metal from Regolith
407.1 Hydrogen Reduction of Ilmenite
417.2 Carbothermal Reduction
427.3 Molten Regolith Electrolysis
437.4 Molten Salt and Other Routes Compared
44Chapter 8: Refining and Feedstock Preparation
458.1 Magnetic and Electrostatic Beneficiation
468.2 Alloy Control and Melt Homogenization Without Convection
478.3 Powder, Wire and Filament Feedstock
488.4 Quality Control Without Gravity Settling
49Chapter 9: Manufacturing in Orbit
509.1 Polymer Extrusion and Deposition in Free Fall
The Honey BusMeredith May9h 31m4.4 (16.6K)$25 · $0.00
Collected Writings of Nikola TeslaThomas Commerford Martin, Nikola Tesla19h 42m4.4 (2.8K)$1.99 · $0.00
Operation PedestalMax Hastings12h 29m4.4 (5.2K)$29 · $0.00
When the Heavens Went on SaleAshlee Vance18h 20m4.4 (3K)$40 · $0.00
Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You)Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Griffin McElroy5h 9m4.3 (2.3K)$24 · $0.00
Hands of TimeRebecca Struthers8h 8m4.4 (1.3K)$26 · $0.00
Never Lost AgainBill Kilday10h 1m4.4 (805)$29 · $0.00
How the Internet HappenedBrian McCullough13h 28m4.3 (2.7K)$23 · $0.00
Collected Writings of Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla, Thomas Commerford Martin21h 50m4.3 (1.7K)$1 · $0.00
Just AspireAjai Chowdhry9h 13m4.4 (260)$29 · $0.00
The Little Book of AliensAdam Frank8h 20m4.3 (1.3K)$26 · $0.00
The inventions, researches and writings of Nikola Tesla (Annotated)Thomas Commerford Martin16h 59m4.3 (1.3K)$2 · $0.00
KargilV.P. Malik15h 18m4.3 (2K)$24 · $0.00
Experiments with Alternating CurrentsNikola Tesla9h 16m4.3 (874)$1.99 · $0.00
Fire on the HorizonTom Shroder, John Konrad8h 23m4.3 (858)$26 · $0.00
The Smell of Kerosene (Annotated)National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Donald L. Mallick, Peter W. Merlin11h 32m4.3 (523)$2 · $0.00
The Boy Who Harnessed the WindWilliam Kamkwamba, Bryan Mealer10h 5m4.2 (78.9K)$29 · $0.00
Across the Airless WildsEarl Swift10h 8m4.3 (1.3K)$29 · $0.00
Console WarsBlake J. Harris20h 41m4.2 (13.7K)$46 · $0.00
Improvised Munitions HandbookU.S. Department of Defense4h 49m4.3 (1.6K)$1.99 · $0.00
You may also like
There Are (No) Stupid Questions … in ScienceLeah Elson MS, MPH5h 34m4.2 (389)$17
Across the Airless WildsEarl Swift10h 8m4.3 (1.3K)$29 · $0.00
The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and MankindH. G. Wells47h 33m4.0 (6.3K)$2.30 · $0.00
The Weather MachineAndrew Blum4h 50m3.7 (2K)$20 · $0.00
Galaxy GirlsLibby Jackson3h 8m4.4 (870)$18 · $0.00
LiftoffEric Berger9h 4m4.6 (9.5K)$29 · $0.00
The First Men in the MoonH. G. Wells7h 47m3.9 (22.9K)$6 · $0.00
Mission to MarsBuzz Aldrin4h 47m3.9 (1.7K)$17
The Weather MachineAndrew Blum4h 50m3.8 (1.8K)$20 · $0.00
Aircraft and Spacecraft Engineering FundamentalsTomas Berenguer12h 45m$75
Atomic Rocket Engines and Fission PowerYuri Petrossian12h 28m$70
Astronomy for AmateursCamille Flammarion5h$1 · $0.00
Graphic Films Collection - woman in the moon – act 2G. B. Royer7m$11 · $0.00
Rocket Launch (Annotated)Cyril M. Kornbluth7h 48m$2 · $0.00
Astrodynamics and Spaceflight for EngineersTomás Ferreira12h 9m$70
Spacecraft and Launch Vehicle EngineeringRueben Murchison15h 14m$90
A plasma chemistry study on global model for argon gas as a propellant to electrostatic gridded ion thrusterBernardo Vieira Magaldi2h 15m$22 · $0.00
An epitome of astronomyWilliam Walker3m$1 · $0.00
Thinking An Warp DriveEdson Schenkel1h 11m$30 · $0.00
Mars: Our New Home? - National Plan to Conquer the Red Planet (Official Strategies of NASA & U.S. Congress) (Annotated)National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Congress6h 12m$1.99 · $0.00