On Aug 26, 8:30 pm, Keith Henson wrote:
On Aug 25, 6:59 pm, byblow wrote:

What equipment, materials and amount of electricity are needed to
produce steel (in space) from ores found on NEOs?

It depends on the object. Some of them, 1986 DA for example, are
thought to be solid nickel-iron. Depending on what you wanted to do
with it, the material could be melted using an open ended induction
furnace, electromagnetically pumped out and rolled into I beams.

So the nickel-iron on a metallic NEO (like 1986 DA) is totally pure
and doesn't need to be refined? Does it become nickel *steel* after
it's melted?

Do you happen to know how many kilowatt hours it would take to melt a
tonne of nickel-iron using induction heating? How about to melt 100
tonnes?