True, but that's not what they usually depict on screen. We see lots of "normal looking", i.e. rounded, well-aged, thoroughly cratered asteroids, neither the fresh shards or glowing/molten material we would expect from a collision.
I do like the idea of prospectors diving into the debris of a recent asteroid collision to gather halfway pre-refined resources. With the rarity of asteroid collisions relative to human lifespans, I imagine the response the way deep sea creatures respond to a whale fall, sudden massive availability of resources. I might try to write that someday.
> neither the fresh shards or glowing/molten material we would expect from a collision.
That's also an undesirable "area" of space for mining. A too-recent collision would be a dangerous area because of the excessive density. A "just right" area for mining might be a hundred thousands years old, but not tens of millions or older.
The terran analogy would be a volcano: Too soon and you're still ankle-deep in lava. Some decades later you have the most fertile land on the planet for your crops. A billion years later it's no different to any other part of the planet and not especially productive.
> whale fall
That's precisely what I was thinking of!
> I might try to write that someday.
I'd read that story! It's a ripe context for drama: the luck of discovery, the gold rush, the fight over the territory by rival groups, the "frontier" aspects and lack of civilized law and order, etc...
>A too-recent collision would be a dangerous area because of the excessive density.
This doesn't seem like it should be a problem. The space miners don't need to jump straight to the middle of the debris field; they can just start at the very edges. The density of the debris field won't be uniform; it'll be spread out, even shortly after the collision. They can just go to the less-dense areas at the periphery, where it's safer.
I do like the idea of prospectors diving into the debris of a recent asteroid collision to gather halfway pre-refined resources. With the rarity of asteroid collisions relative to human lifespans, I imagine the response the way deep sea creatures respond to a whale fall, sudden massive availability of resources. I might try to write that someday.