>>11632325>may not have every chemical element neededMass-spectroscopy is a thing, even from Earth we've identified thousands of asteroids composed of rare-Earth minerals and valuable elements. Anything and everything from gold to water is abundant and plentiful in the asteroid belt. Hell, mining out a portion of Ceres alone would provide for the next 1000 years of human space colonization.
>are often rather smallThere are hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of asteroids over 10km^2 in the Solar system. Even more if we found a cheap way to get to the Kuiper belt. We could mine just asteroids and comets for the next 10k years and probably not run out of material.
Humans are tiny compared to even a small asteroid. To put it in perspective, humans have mined like .0001% of the minerals on Earth, and the total mass of all the asteroids in the Solar System is like 1000x that.
>It is mostly solar protons which are easier to shield than galactic cosmic raysThat's actually news to me, i'll have to look into that in more depth. Radiation is honestly an area I could be more knowledgeable. I would appreciate a source if you have one.
I'm also still confused about what resources you plan on mining from Callisto? The only resource you could viably mine would be water ice and water. Anything heavier is probably beneath miles of subsurface ocean and well beyond our current tech to get at.
