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Description
The Prospector Mk 3 is a mid-sized mining extraction dropship commonly deployed from Mercury-class or larger mining motherships. It is a variable-operation miner, able to extract everything from turine to Corellium using a variety of different extraction techniques. The three hull flanges contain the multi-head drills, nanite injectors, and multiple extractor conveyors necessary for most types of mining. The drills use plasma heads for conventional mining and vibroblade cutting heads for Corellium to burrow down up to ten miles into the crust of a planet or asteroid. Upon contacting the vein of ore, the drill shaft then injects the extraction nanites.
These nanites dissolve everything other than the target material(s), converting the raw matter into duplicates of themselves which link into the Prospector's programming matrix, and then begin to divide the ore up into easily-transported ingots or crystals. Once these nanites are dispersed, the drill withdraws, glassing the shaft with a plasma module to ensure its stability, and the extractor module descends. The conventional extractor is an AG field module that launches the ore up the shaft into the processing hold above. Due to the notorious instability of hyper-valuable Corellium ore when exposed to energy, the Prospector uses a conventional traction conveyor extractor that sticks to the Corellium crystals with a chemical adhesive and ferries them up to the surface.
While slower than the AG field module, it avoids the cataclysmic chain reaction explosions that errant energy discharges can cause. More than one mining operation that decided to cut corners and use the AG module found themselves meeting their respective deities at a high rate of speed as the Corellium took a static discharge and converted it into several kilotons of raw energy, which in turn hit the remaining Corellium, which in turn converted it into terratons of energy, which in turn blew a chunk out of the planet the size of Texas. Cutting corners = bad. Remember this.
The Prospector, like most extractor dropships, lands in a vertical configuration to draw the ore up and funnel it via conveyor located in the "underside" (relative to the cockpit) into waiting cargo modules. These modules, once full, are either picked up by tender ships or launch on their own using AG field lifters, depending on the strength of the gravity and speed of the operation. The AG field lifters can carry the modules up from just about any gravity well, but take quite a while to reach orbit. If the operation needs to get in, get the ore, and get out- either because it is a claim-jumping operation, or in hostile territory, then high-speed tender extraction is preferred.
Prospectors lock onto their mothership in the conventional nose-first manner, hanging off of the underside or sides like rows of bats hungry for more ore. This allows them to drop dirtside quickly, hit the pre-designated spot the survey ships have already pinpointed, and begin milking the planet or asteroid of its valuable resources. Most legitimate mining operations will dump raw fill material into the caverns they create and trigger the excess nanites to convert it to rock, thus leaving little environmental impact. Some even drop industrial construction nanites to begin converting the caverns into usable living or manufacturing facilities.
Turning an extra credit on top of their mining operations, wildcatters or mining corps who own the planet or asteroid can then sell these facilities off to anyone from colonists to corporations who would find a deep subterranean facility or colony of value (common in hostile territory or in an area prone to gamma ray bursts). Claim-jumpers and marauding miners, on the other hand, usually just yank-and-go, leaving hundreds of surface holes three meters wide descended hundreds of feet to several miles into the planet, where massive caverns sometimes kilometers across are left behind. Mind your step.

Description
The Prospector Mk 3 is a mid-sized mining extraction dropship commonly deployed from Mercury-class or larger mining motherships. It is a variable-operation miner, able to extract everything from turine to Corellium using a variety of different extraction techniques. The three hull flanges contain the multi-head drills, nanite injectors, and multiple extractor conveyors necessary for most types of mining. The drills use plasma heads for conventional mining and vibroblade cutting heads for Corellium to burrow down up to ten miles into the crust of a planet or asteroid. Upon contacting the vein of ore, the drill shaft then injects the extraction nanites.
These nanites dissolve everything other than the target material(s), converting the raw matter into duplicates of themselves which link into the Prospector's programming matrix, and then begin to divide the ore up into easily-transported ingots or crystals. Once these nanites are dispersed, the drill withdraws, glassing the shaft with a plasma module to ensure its stability, and the extractor module descends. The conventional extractor is an AG field module that launches the ore up the shaft into the processing hold above. Due to the notorious instability of hyper-valuable Corellium ore when exposed to energy, the Prospector uses a conventional traction conveyor extractor that sticks to the Corellium crystals with a chemical adhesive and ferries them up to the surface.
While slower than the AG field module, it avoids the cataclysmic chain reaction explosions that errant energy discharges can cause. More than one mining operation that decided to cut corners and use the AG module found themselves meeting their respective deities at a high rate of speed as the Corellium took a static discharge and converted it into several kilotons of raw energy, which in turn hit the remaining Corellium, which in turn converted it into terratons of energy, which in turn blew a chunk out of the planet the size of Texas. Cutting corners = bad. Remember this.
The Prospector, like most extractor dropships, lands in a vertical configuration to draw the ore up and funnel it via conveyor located in the "underside" (relative to the cockpit) into waiting cargo modules. These modules, once full, are either picked up by tender ships or launch on their own using AG field lifters, depending on the strength of the gravity and speed of the operation. The AG field lifters can carry the modules up from just about any gravity well, but take quite a while to reach orbit. If the operation needs to get in, get the ore, and get out- either because it is a claim-jumping operation, or in hostile territory, then high-speed tender extraction is preferred.
Prospectors lock onto their mothership in the conventional nose-first manner, hanging off of the underside or sides like rows of bats hungry for more ore. This allows them to drop dirtside quickly, hit the pre-designated spot the survey ships have already pinpointed, and begin milking the planet or asteroid of its valuable resources. Most legitimate mining operations will dump raw fill material into the caverns they create and trigger the excess nanites to convert it to rock, thus leaving little environmental impact. Some even drop industrial construction nanites to begin converting the caverns into usable living or manufacturing facilities.
Turning an extra credit on top of their mining operations, wildcatters or mining corps who own the planet or asteroid can then sell these facilities off to anyone from colonists to corporations who would find a deep subterranean facility or colony of value (common in hostile territory or in an area prone to gamma ray bursts). Claim-jumpers and marauding miners, on the other hand, usually just yank-and-go, leaving hundreds of surface holes three meters wide descended hundreds of feet to several miles into the planet, where massive caverns sometimes kilometers across are left behind. Mind your step.