Ok this is a purely hypothetical question, but assume that at some time in the future we find large hydrocarbon reserves an asteroid in the asteroid belt (a really large one, that can't easily be moved closer to earth), at a time where terrestrial oil resources are scarce and the price of oil has mushroomed. There would be a strong demand to mine the reserves on the asteroids, but how would we get at them? And more importantly how would we get them back to earth? If you want a large supply of oil you couldn't really use space-bound supertankers because the cost would be astronomically silly.

Could you fire the oil out of some sort of gun? That would get the oil to earth orbit but the oil would diffract at the 'barrell', meaning collecting it would be seriously hard work.

Would it be possible to assemble the oil into a ring in earth orbit? That would be a sight to see.

Cheers,
Zac.

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the solar system